Ancient Herbs


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Ancient Herbs in the J. Paul Getty Museum Gardens


Book Description

The Getty Museum building recreates an ancient Roman villa on the shores of the Pacific Ocean, where guests can feel that they are visiting the Villa dei Papiri before it was buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. The climate of southern California has made it possible to plant the gardens with dozens of herbs, flowers, and fruit trees known to the Greeks and Romans. In classical times they were practical as well as beautiful, providing color, perfume, home medicines, and flavorings for food and drink. Martha Breen Bredemeyer, a San Francisco Bay area artist, was inspired to paint two dozen of the garden's herbs. Her watercolor gouaches combine vibrant color with the fragile delicacy of these short-lived plants while her pen-and-ink drawings share their wiry grace. Jeanne D'Andrea discusses twenty-one of the herbs in detail after presenting their place in myth, medicine, and home in the introduction.




Herbs and Healers from the Ancient Mediterranean through the Medieval West


Book Description

Herbs and Healers from the Ancient Mediterranean through the Medieval West brings together eleven papers by leading scholars in ancient and medieval medicine and pharmacy. Fittingly, the volume honors Professor John M. Riddle, one of today's most respected medieval historians, whose career has been devoted to decoding the complexities of early medicine and pharmacy. "Herbs" in the title generally connotes drugs in ancient and medieval times; the essays here discuss interesting aspects of the challenges scholars face as they translate and interpret texts in several older languages. Some of the healers in the volume are named, such as Philotas of Amphissa, Gariopontus, and Constantine the African; many are anonymous and known only from their treatises on drugs and/or medicine. The volume's scope demonstrates the breadth of current research being undertaken in the field, examining both practical medical arts and medical theory from the ancient world into early modern times. It also includes a paper about a cutting-edge Internet-based system for ongoing academic collaboration. The essays in this volume reveal insightful research approaches and highlight new discoveries that will be of interest to the international academic community of classicists, medievalists, and early-modernists because of the scarcity of publications objectively evaluating long-lived traditions that have their origin in the world of the ancient Mediterranean.




Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers


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This is the first comprehensive book ever written on the sacred aspects of indigenous, historical psychotropic and herbal healing beers of the world.




Ancient Remedies


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Bestselling author Dr. Josh Axe explains how to treat more than seventy diseases, lose weight, and increase vitality with traditional healing practices passed down through the ages. Long before the first pharmaceutical companies opened their doors in the 1850s, doctors treated people, not symptoms. And although we've become used to popping pills, Americans have finally had it with the dangerous side effects, addiction and over-prescribing—and they're desperate for an alternative. Here's the good news: That alternative has been here all along in the form of ancient treatments used for eons in traditional Chinese, Ayurvedic and Greek medicine. Ancient Remedies is the first comprehensive layman's guide that will bring together and explain to the masses the very best of these time-tested practices. In Ancient Remedies, Dr. Axe explores the foundational concepts of ancient healing—eating right for your type and living in sync with your circadian clock. Readers will learn how traditional practitioners identified the root cause of each patient's illness, then treated it with medicinal herbs, mushrooms, CBD, essential oils, and restorative mind-body practices. What's more, they'll discover how they can use these ancient treatments themselves to cope with dozens of diseases, from ADHD to diabetes, hypothyroidism, autoimmune disease, and beyond. Through engaging language and accessible explanations, Ancient Remedies teaches readers everything they need to know about getting, and staying, healthy—without toxic, costly synthetic drugs.




An Ancient Egyptian Herbal


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"The ancient Egyptians were skilled in the use of herbs and spices for medicines, cooking, cosmetics, perfumes, and many other purposes. Drawing on texts written by the Egyptians and their neighbors, and on works by classical authors and the Copts, Lise Manniche has reconstructed an herbal of 94 species of plants and trees used from before the pharaohs to the late Coptic period. Each plant is named in Latin and English, and where known in ancient Egyptian, Greek, and modern Arabic. An account is given of the plants' special properties, with authentic recipes for cosmetics and cures. In her introduction the author discusses the many uses the ancient Egyptians made of herbs and flowers, and the importance of plants for funerary and festive occasions." --Publisher description.




Herbal Medicine


Book Description

The global popularity of herbal supplements and the promise they hold in treating various disease states has caused an unprecedented interest in understanding the molecular basis of the biological activity of traditional remedies. Herbal Medicine: Biomolecular and Clinical Aspects focuses on presenting current scientific evidence of biomolecular ef




Ancient Herbs, Modern Medicine


Book Description

The best of Eastern and Western medicine in an integrative healing system for the mind, body, and spirit. Now, for the first time, a Western physician and a doctor of Oriental medicine combine the unparalleled technological advances of the West with the unmatched wisdom and healing touch Chinese herbal medicine provides for many diseases and conditions that elude modern medicine. Ancient Herbs, Modern Medicine demonstrates the many important, highly effective ways Chinese medicine and Western medicine can complement each other in treating everything from allergies and insomnia to mental illness and cancer. This accessible, comprehensive guide offers many informative and enlightening case studies and up-to-the-minute information on: • How integrative medicine combines the best of Western pharmacology and Eastern herbology • How integrative medicine helps fight the diseases and illnesses of our time, including allergies, asthma, and chronic fatigue syndrome, and eases and even reverses symptoms of arthritis, diabetes, depression, osteoporosis, AIDS, heart disease, and cancer--often without side effects • How Chinese medicine can help you recognize signs before an illness becomes a crisis • The importance of Western techniques in diagnosing serious diseases • Why Chinese medicine offers the most effective treatment for many chronic/recurrent illnesses • Restoring essential balance to the Five Energetic Systems--the Heart, Lung, Spleen, Liver, and Kidney Energies • The Eight Strategies of Herbal Therapy--how herbs work in your body Plus illuminating discussions of the basic principles of Chinese medicine, as well as food remedy recipes, diagrams, glossaries of medical terms and herbs, resource listings, and much more to help you tailor an integrative health regimen that is right for you.




Eve’s Herbs


Book Description

In Contraception and Abortion from the Ancient World to the Renaissance, John M. Riddle showed, through extraordinary scholarly sleuthing, that women from ancient Egyptian times to the fifteenth century had relied on an extensive pharmacopoeia of herbal abortifacients and contraceptives to regulate fertility. In Eve’s Herbs, Riddle explores a new question: If women once had access to effective means of birth control, why was this knowledge lost to them in modern times? Beginning with the testimony of a young woman brought before the Inquisition in France in 1320, Riddle asks what women knew about regulating fertility with herbs and shows how the new intellectual, religious, and legal climate of the early modern period tended to cast suspicion on women who employed “secret knowledge” to terminate or prevent pregnancy. Knowledge of the menstrual-regulating qualities of rue, pennyroyal, and other herbs was widespread through succeeding centuries among herbalists, apothecaries, doctors, and laywomen themselves, even as theologians and legal scholars began advancing the idea that the fetus was fully human from the moment of conception. Drawing on previously unavailable material, Riddle reaches a startling conclusion: while it did not persist in a form that was available to most women, ancient knowledge about herbs was not lost in modern times but survived in coded form. Persecuted as “witchcraft” in centuries past and prosecuted as a crime in our own time, the control of fertility by “Eve’s herbs” has been practiced by Western women since ancient times.




The Ancient Wisdom of the Chinese Tonic Herbs


Book Description

Physical health, this book explains, is irrelevant if it is accompanied by unhappiness and failure. Herbal expert Ron Teeguarden explains how to apply natural Chinese herbal medicine in order to lead a full and energetic life.