While the norm in most places nowadays is to run into a pharmacy and pick up some medication if one is feeling ill, the truth is that pharmacies, as we know them, have only been around for a couple hundred years. People, however, have been on planet Earth for thousands of years. What then did our ancestors use for medicine when they got sick? The answer, which many people have forgotten, is that many of the original medicines were plant-based. Humans, through trial and error, careful observation of the animals around them, and experimentation, learned over time which plants could heal and which could harm. This knowledge, obviously, was very valuable and carefully passed on from generation to generation.
Today, a significant number (40% – 50%) of prescription medicines still contain extracts from plants, while many other drugs ( 50% – 70% of those developed in the last 25 years) contain plant derivatives – chemicals made in a laboratory but based on elements found in nature. Aspirin,