ABSTRACT
Before the advent of medical textbooks, and even the written word, we used plants, roots, leaves, and owers, not only for nutrition, but also as a protection against disease-particularly infection arising as a result of wounds, traumas, and accidents. This instinctive, or folk, medicine has been around as long as we have walked the earth, and ofcinal plants are still widely used as natural remedies today, the practice evolving alongside progress in scientic understanding. Indeed, primitive preparations of plant matter for medicinal use involving simple processes such as crushing, mastication, and maceration were largely superseded by more complex methods of preparation, such as infusion, digestion, decoction, percolation, distillation, and eneurage (eneurage-both hot and cold-is the most ancient “technical” method of obtaining plant-based remedies), made possible by the discovery of re.
