Could weeds cure all ills?

“It had herbs in it. Good for you, herbs.”

The Sweeper; from Nightwatch by Terry Pratchett

If the rise in alternative therapies has taught us anything, it’s that people love things that are ‘natural’. And home-grown herbal treatment is as close to nature as you can get without hugging a tree.

However, the use of plants in medicine goes beyond hippie culture. Unlike leeching and trepanning (where people used to drill holes in the head to let out evil spirits), herbal medicine has survived the test of time, albeit with some improvements and caveats.

While people have used herbs and plants to help treat themselves for many thousands of years, the medical community took a little longer to incorporate these kinds of treatments into accepted practice.

Here in the UK, the oldest known example of herbal medicine is found in a medical text from around the ninth century, which includes a cure for male impotence using the wildflower Agrimony (Agrimonia eupatoria) boiled in milk. . . . . . . much more about how herbs have been used and continue to be used to treat illness from GrowWild https://www.growwilduk.com/blog/could-weeds-cure-all-ills