Healing Plants in Folk Tradition

Medicinal Plants in Folk Tradition

The use of plants in folk medicine is ancient and initially developed independently among various peoples in the most diverse parts of the world. Often dearly bought experiences were frequently accompanied by various superstitions. This primarily involved comparing similarities in the shapes of plant parts with the shape of human or animal body organs, and deriving supposed healing effects of plants or their parts on similar organs of the human body. Healing practices were often connected with religious ceremonies, witchcraft, incantations, and similar rituals.

If people considered these practices a necessary part of treatment and believed in their effectiveness, one cannot deny them a certain psychotherapeutic significance, which today is finally replaced by the convincing word of a doctor. Some profit-seeking herbalists know how to use this effect in other ways, particularly through their assistants and promoters, managing to significantly psychologically influence their customers.

As humans discovered the healing properties of plants, they also became acquainted with plant poisons and narcotics, and began to use these properties as well - sometimes for hunting fish and game, other times misusing them against people. In Europe, this knowledge and misuse of plants and some poisonous animals culminated in the Middle Ages in poisoning, drug addiction, and toxicomania. Society defended itself against this with drastic punishments for witchcraft, torture, and burning at the stake, which however often affected innocent people, either unknowingly or out of hatred. Selecting and verifying from folk traditions and old herbalists what is truly good and useful is an extremely difficult but highly significant task.