The earliest written records of herbal medicine date from the sixteenth century BC and are to be found in the Ebers Papyrus. Plants mentioned include cannabis, myrrh, frankincense, castor oil, fennel, senna, thyme, henna, juniper, linseed, opium, and aloe. However, archaeologists believe that herbal medicine has been used since the Palaeolithic Age 60,000 years ago.
Garlic cloves have been found in Egyptian burials, including the tomb of Tutankhamun and the sacred underground temples. The earliest known female physicians cared for the Pharaohs in Egypt as long ago as the Dynastic period in 2700BC. Women regularly became doctors, acknowledged in inscriptions as Merit-Ptah or “Chief Physician”.
At this time, an all-female school was the norm. Records from Rome, Greece, and Germany show that women practised their healing art all over the world. However, much knowledge was lost during wars and conflict, especially with the burning of churches, where much knowledge was kept. During the Renaissance, women’s role in medicine started to be undermined more and more and they were not given permission to practise or study at university.
In spite of the fact that women have been excluded from traditional educational institutions, at least in Britain, up until the late 19th century, they have resorted to developing an understanding of the plant world to address some of the particular issues that women face in the course of their lives.
Herbal knowledge was passed down through generations of women keeping the knowledge alive. Women in the Middle Ages who practised herbalism worked underground and illegally, in fear of being labelled as witches and being burnt at the stake.
This book is not about women’s role in history, it is about medicinal plants. However, I cannot talk about women and plants without acknowledging the women who went before us and died helping others.
There are a few women that I think were outstanding in the herbal world. These women have inspired me greatly in the way they think about health care. Their support of the suffrage of women, their protection of herbal legislation, their creative thinking in a man’s world, and their deeds of action transformed medicine.
Hildegard von Bingen (1098–1179)
I first came across Hildegard von Bingen, a medieval nun, at a concert in Exeter, where they were performing her medieval music. The women chanting sent shivers down my spine. I was in awe, caught in a trance of monastic healing.
Hildegard lived at a time when women were not allowed to study or go to university. Despite that, she became one of the first female German physicians. She was a herbalist, botanist, feminist and, in some eyes, a prophet. She was also a composer, moralist, counsellor to kings and church leaders, author, scholar, and scientist.
She took multitasking to a new level and, at a time when the life expectancy of women was 40 years, this amazing herb-growing nun lived to eighty. The visions that she experienced along with migraines guided her way.
She inspires me because she came into her creative years at a time when the menopause could easily have been a distraction. She stepped out of the gender role that was given to women in that time. She also used her migraines, and internal dialogue, as a tool of inspiration to write her music and poems. She held court with the nobles when other women would have been burnt at the stake accused of being a witch. Hildegard was an original campaigner, fighting for the rights of her convent and advocating the equality of men and women in her teachings. She was a revolutionary teacher and managed to get away with it as she was sheltered by the church.
Going green was all the rage then. Hildegard von Bingen was known for her emphasis on the vital connection between the “green” health of the natural world and the holistic health of the human person. Viriditas, or greening power, was thought to sustain human beings and could be manipulated by adjusting the balance of elements within a person.[5 8] Thus, when she approached medicine as a type of gardening, it was not just as an analogy. Hildegard understood the plants and elements of the garden as direct counterparts to the humors and elements within the human body, whose imbalance led to illness and disease.
Mary Seacole (1805-81):
Another amazing woman, Mary Seacole was a Jamaican-born herbalist who I discovered when my son studied the Crimean War as part of a school project. The joy of thinking my son’s school was teaching herbal medicine on their syllabus didn’t last long. Yet it was at this point I became a true admirer of Mary and the depth she would go to help others in need. Mary had learnt the use of medicinal plants and healing from her mother, who was a traditional healer. She knew the soldiers needed looking after and set up a hotel where she fed and cared for them with plants and good food. Plants are often used during war when medicine is scarce, so Mary made herbal poultices and decoctions to help the sick. Using the hotel as a base, she would load a mule with medicine and go to the battlefield to attend the wounded. She had a special pass that enabled her to tend the sick on both sides of the war.
Mary is an unsung hero, who was committed to delivering the basic need of care no matter what side of the war you fought on. She understood the need for aftercare and brought soldiers back to the hotel to convalesce and cared for them with good food and rest. The selfless sacrifice she made to help care for the sick in such a danger zone using her own funds is very humbling.
Hilda Leyel (1880 – 1957)
I came across Hilda Leyel when searching for links between suffragettes and the plants they used. Little did I know the importance of Hilda Leyel and her passion in fighting for herbal medicine during the early 1900s.
As a child, Hilda had a keen interest in plants and flowers, and she went on to study medicine. She married at 19 and had two children. She became a connoisseur of food and wines and lived in London, where she had many friends. She came up with the idea of a charity lottery and this changed the face of charity funding forever by legalizing lotteries for charities.
She fundraised for those injured in war, determined to distribute wealth to those who needed it. She put on plays to entertain soldiers and distract them from their pain, giving them the opportunity to change their internal soundtrack and see things differently, even if only for a short moment.
She founded a non-profit organization for herbalists called the Herb Society, with the aim of increasing the understanding of the use of herbs and well-being. The society provided information for professionals and amateurs and a worldwide forum to exchange ideas. She also wrote many books in herbal medicine and edited Mrs M. Grieve’s Modern Herbal. She opened a Culpeper shop in 1927 and created consulting rooms offering advice. In 1941, the practise of herbal medicine was under threat by the Pharmacy and Medicine Bill. Hilda, along with many herb supporters and friends, managed to protest against this and the Bill was modified, allowing herbalists to practise and saving our herbal health care system.
Not so long ago, I was giving a talk in Sussex and at the end, a lady approached me and told me a story about her aunt, who in the 1920s was very ill with serious digestive problems. Her aunt was told by the doctors that there was nothing they could do for her and she did not have long to live. It turned out, however, that Hilda Layel cured her aunt with herbal tinctures and diet alone and she went on to have three husbands and live a very long and happy life.
Tu Youyou (1930- )
The last of these women whom I greatly admire is a Chinese scientist, Tu Youyou, a woman who dedicated her life to discovering the hidden treasures in plant life. A qualified pharmacist, Tu Youyou practises evidence-based herbal medicine using modern science.
When Tu contracted tuberculosis at the age of 15, she was forced to abandon school for two years, but her health inspired her to pursue a career in medicine. Aged 24, Tu Youyou graduated with a degree in pharmacology and was employed by the Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine in 1955.
Tu Youyou was recruited in 1969 by a Chinese secret government unit known as Mission 523 to find a cure for malaria. Collecting herbs and traveling to remote parts of China, Tu Youyou came across a reference in an ancient text written around 400 AD to treating malaria with the herb Artemisia annua. The herb showed promising results and after tweaking the preparation method, it was deemed a safe drug to use in clinical trials.
Tu Youyou was the first woman in China and the first Chinese scientist to win a Nobel Prize. Tu was awarded the Prize in 2015 for her discovery of treating malaria with Artemisia annua. This incredibly bitter herb had been used for 2000 years to treat fevers, nausea and headaches. The method of extraction was important; she noticed that the locals would soak the plant, wring it out and then drink the juice. Her research showed hot water would damage the active ingredient so she proposed a low temperature of extraction would be more effective. This research has saved millions of lives in developing countries.
Tu Youyou and her husband made huge personal sacrifices; her four-year-old daughter was cared for by the state nursery and their one-year-old was cared for by Tu’s parents. When she finally saw her children after 3 years of overwhelming responsibility for the research, they did not recognise her.
Direction of Battles
Traditionally, women have been seen predominately as carers and childbearers, with their principal benefit to society consisting of their work in the home. During World War l, with so many men away fighting, the jobs men had undertaken became the responsibility of women. From policing and fire fighting to postal workers and bus drivers, women took on the traditional male roles.
This role change ushered in a whole new era in inequality for women, as they were perceived as being of less worth than men and paid less. While men were receiving 26 shillings a week, women were expected to do the same job for between 5 and 11 shillings a week. This led women to join the suffragette movement and revolt against the injustice with strikes and daily marches. Even today, despite decades of equal pay laws there can still be disparity between the genders.
References:
1. Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: A History of Women Healers (Glass Mountain Pamphlets, P. O. box 238, Oyster Bay, N.Y., 11771
2. Barbara Newman, Sister of Wisdom: St. Hildegard Theology of the Feminine (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1987), 35. (Sweet, V. (1999) .” Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 73(3), pp. 381–403. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/bhm.1999.0140 )
3. http://www.herbsociety.org.uk
4. McGovern PE, Christofidou-Solomidou M, Wang W, Dukes F, Davidson T, El-Deiry WS. Anticancer activity of botanical compounds in ancient fermented beverages (review). Int J Oncol. 2010 Jul;37(1):5-14.
5. http://www.striking-women.org/module/women-and-work/world-war-i-1914-1918
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Julia Behrens
Herbal Consultant
UMEnourish Practitioner