How ancient is ancient medicine

Khush Raho with Sangeeta 

A body older than 5000 years was found in 1991; preserved in ice. Melting glaciers in Alpine mountains revealed him. Scientists have named him Ötzi, A BBC News video about his ‘medicine kit’* got my attention. These were pieces of birch polypore, a tree fungus with antibacterial properties, and a dried sloe berry, a fruit with a long place in herbal medicine. In his stomach was bracken, a toxic fern that could have helped clear the parasites he is known to have had. His 61 tattoos sit mostly over worn joints and the lower back, many of them close to current acupuncture points, which suggests they were meant for relief and not for decoration. 

The Chinese acupuncture tradition that exists in writing is only about 2,000 years old, which puts it roughly three thousand years after Ötzi, so the link is interesting but it is not a straight line. What the evidence does show, taken together, is a person who knew how to use what the land around him offered to ease pain and illness.

So how ancient is what we call ancient medicine? Here is a short map of the evidence, oldest to youngest. (This is an indicative list only, culled from Europe, Asia and Egypt only. Africa and the Americas have their own history of plant medicine) Neanderthals in Spain chewed on plants with no nutritional value that we now know are soothing. Ancient Egyptians learned that resin and plant extracts slowed decay long before they had writing. The Greek physicians gave us careful observation of illness, even though their theory of four humours was later proven wrong. Ayurveda's surviving texts are about two thousand years old, but the knowledge and practice they describe is far older, and practitioners still read the Charaka and Sushruta texts today.

Writing came very late in this story. Everything in the table before the Egyptian papyri was passed on by hand, by mothers, healers and elders, and most of it was never written down at all. The record we have is only the part that survived.

Aspirin is a good example of how ancient knowledge is used in modern medicine. Its ancestor is salicin, the compound in willow and meadowsweet bark, which people used for pain and fever for a very long time. Modern aspirin is a synthetic version of that compound, first made in 1897, which was 3,500 years after the first known use of willow for pain. The plant use came first, and modern chemistry, after.  

Paclitaxel, used against breast, ovarian and lung cancers, was isolated from the bark of the Pacific yew, Taxus brevifolia. Paclitaxel stops microtubules from breaking down, so the cancer cell cannot finish dividing. Today the drug is made from a precursor found in the needles of the common European yew.

Like Otzi I carry ancient wisdom in a small medicine pouch. It has a blend of essential oils for pain or injury, an anti-bacterial sanitizer spray  for hands and toilet seats, and a mosquito repellent. Best to be prepared! Until next time.

Khush Raho! Stay happy, stay healthy. 

*Caveat: not all scientists agree on this definition. 

Sangeeta Bhalla is an Energy Healer, Instructor, Therapeutic Aromatherapist. She can be reached at sangeetabhalla.net