Herbal remedies and alternative medicines are used throughout the world and in the past herbs often represented the original sources of most drugs. The plant kingdom has provided an endless source of medicinal plants first used in their crude forms as herbal teas, syrups, infusions, ointments, liniments and powders. Evidence of use of herbal remedies goes back some 60 000 years to a burial site in a cave in northern Iraq, which was uncovered in 1960. An analysis of the soil around the human bones revealed extraordinary quantities of plant pollen of eight species. Seven of these are medicinal plants and still used throughout the herbal world. With the development of chemistry and Western medicine, the active substances of many species have been isolated and in some cases duplicated in the form of synthetic drugs. Read more
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