ABSTRACT
This chapter explores some of the sophistications of plant medicines and just why they exist. It examines chaos theory and self-organization to really understand both microbial pathogens and the sophistication of plant medicines. At the simplest level, evolutionary changes have stimulated the development of exceptionally sophisticated resistance mechanisms in all the planet's bacterial populations. Though the rise of bacterial resistance has begun to stimulate a moderately wide recognition among scientists that microbial intelligence exists, it is for the concept of plant intelligence that most scientists retain the greatest disdain. Chemical innovations flow into and out of the plant over time in response to environmental inputs. Plant medicines are exceptionally good for healing resistant infections. They are also very good at dealing with what is coming to be known as stealth infections such as the spirochete that causes Lyme disease. Herbal medicines are specific for modulating cytokine cascades—plants, when infected, experience them.
