Grandma’s herbal remedies have been the foundation of our national health care system for countless generations particularly in those rural areas that are not well served with the formal health care usually provided by governments. But grandma’s herbal remedies have a longer tradition of service and have played a far more significant role in our health care system than as a mere alternative to mainstream medicine.

Grandma’s herbal remedies are as old as the proverbial Garden of Eden for they are based on the natural therapeutic values inherent in plant and animal life. An important aspect of grandma’s herbal remedies is that they are based on the results of trial and error tests conducted from virtually the birth of Man to this day using human sujects and authenticated not by laboratories and scientific tests but by the living proof of man’s survival since time began.Think about it!

This is admittedly a gross generalization but what is beyond doubt is the importance and relevance of herbal medicine to our survival - the foundation of grandma’s herbal remedies - to our health care system, to our more healthy lifestyles and to our physical and emotional well-being. In fact herbal medicine has never been more popular than it is today. Herbal medicines improve the functions of the body permitting the body to strengthen its own systems for growth and curing while at the same time treating the underlying causes of negative conditions.

Herbalists treat the whole person and not just the symptoms. Thus two persons could visit the same herbalist with apparently the identical ailment yet receive two totally different prescriptions. The evidence indicates that more and more people are turning to herbal medicine as a kinder alternative to mainstream medicine with its reliance on increasingly expensive pharmaceutical products.

Herbs have been the main tools in treating various forms of illness and improving the health of all civilizations. The ancient Greek theories of health and illness have been the basis of medieval medical science and the foundation of current medical knowledge. Healers the world over have learned the use of plants that exist in their immediate environment in order to heal a range of illnesses and injuries. Indeed such medicines serve as a public health safety net in many developing countries.

Grandma’s herbal remedies are much more than the result of an intuitive knowledge of what plants to use to treat the symptoms of particular illnesses or to provide a cure for a recurrent ailment. My own grandmother it is true used a handful of a spider’s web to staunch the flow of blood from a particularly bad wound and to ensure that it healed properly. Teas from carefully selected plants were used for ailments ranging from the common cold to high fevers; and the leaf of the aloe plant treated severe burns without leaving disfiguring scars.

Today however the use of herbal medicine, including grandma’s herbal remedies, has incorporated a scientific approach that combines the ancient philosophical concepts that are at the foundation of its development with the holistic approach of western physiology. Herbal medicine is therefore much more than replacing pharmaceutical medicine with natural medicine. It is in fact a deep philosophy of healing as ancient as the human race and as modern as clinical studies today.

There is therefore a qualitative difference between the philosophical approach to herbal medicine and grandma’s herbal remedies both of which use herbs as alternative medical treatments. There should always be a place in our health care system for grandma’s herbal remedies. I hope so. However, as modern scientific and technological advances continue to dominate our daily lives, grandma’s herbal remedies may soon become a mere footnote in the records of our health care system.

The author, Rudy Collins, is a retired government functionary who has developed an interest in medical concepts relating to longevity and anti-aging. He hosts an information based website on folk medicine and related interventions at: www.folkmedicineblog.com and regularly contributes articles on various aspects of folk and herbal medicine.