ABSTRACT
Many products based on traditional knowledge are important sources of income, food, and health care for the large parts of the populations throughout the world. By the time ancient civilizations began to evolve, a large number of treatments had been discovered by prehistoric and primitive peoples alongside a body of magical or mythological therapies and won widespread use (Forrest 1982). Honey has been used for centuries for its nutritional as well as medicinal properties (Ajibola et al. 2012). The human use of honey is traced to some 8000 years ago as depicted by Stone Age paintings. Different traditional systems of medicine have elaborated the role of honey as a medicinal product. Sumerian clay tablets (6200 BC), Egyptian papyri (1900-1250 BC), Vedas (5000 years), Holy Koran, the Talmud, both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, sacred books of India, China, Persia, and Egypt (Mcintosh 1995; Beck and Smedley 1997), and Hippocrates (460-357 BC) (Jones 2001) have described the uses of honey. The latter described its use for baldness, contraception, wound healing, laxative action, cough and sore throat, eye diseases, topical antisepsis, and the prevention and treatment of scars (Bansal et al. 2005).
