The Untold History of Healing: Plant Lore and Medicinal Magic from the Stone Age to Present

by Wolf D. Storl

Overview

This captivating history of medicine traces healing practices from the Stone Age to modern times, highlighting ancient knowledge and plant-based treatments.

This absorbing history of medicine takes the reader on a sweeping journey, revealing that Western medicine has its origins not only in the academic tradition of doctors and pharmacists, but in the healing lore of Paleolithic hunters and gatherers, herding nomads, and the early sedentary farmers.

Anthropologist and ethnobotanist Wolf D. Storl vividly describes the many ways that ancient peoples have used the plants in their immediate environment, along with handed-down knowledge and traditions, to treat the variety of ailments they encountered in daily life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781623170936
Publisher:	North Atlantic Books
Publication date:	03/21/2017
Pages:	344
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Wolf D. Storl, PhD, is an ethnobotanist and the author of some two dozen books on herbalism, alternative medicine, ethnobotany, and shamanism. Born in Saxony, Germany, he received his PhD in ethnology from the University of Berne, Switzerland. His early post-doctorate career includes research in a Swiss biodynamic farming community, teaching anthropology and organic gardening at Rogue College in Oregon, participant-observer research at a traditional Swiss farm, and two years in India as a visiting scholar at the Benares Hindu University. Always interested in local gardening practices in his travels around the world, 25 years ago Dr. Storl was able to put his learning to the test when he and his family moved to a mountain farmstead in southern Germany. There he maintains a year-round vegetable garden and continues to teach, also appearing on television in the U.S. and many countries in Europe as a spokesman for natural horticulture. The author lives in Rohrdorf, Germany.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Traditional European Medicine (TEM) 1

The Assumed Origin of Medicine 3

A Modern Myth 8

The Ecological Embedding of Classical Healing Systems 9

European Woodland Culture 12

Great Tradition, Little Tradition 19

Cultural Convergences 21

Chapter 2 One Cup of Tea, Three Times a Day 25

The Herbal Tea of the Forest People 26

Chinese Tea Culture 28

Herbal Practices in Other Cultures 31

Fire and Water 35

Rain and Sun 37

From the Beer Mug to the Holy Grail 42

The Daily Cycle 48

The Cross as a Primal Symbol 53

Chapter 3 Stone Age Roots, Ice Age Medicine 59

The World of the Paleolithic Big Game Hunters 62

Healing Plants and Diseases of the Old Stone Age 64

The Main Circumpolar Healing Herbs 67

Sweat Lodge and Baking Oven 82

Emetics and Purgatives 91

Shamanism 93

Chapter 4 The Healing Lore of Neolithic Farmers 99

The First Farmers 100

Witches, Stags, and Forest People 103

Sedentary Lifestyle and New Diseases 107

Arable Weeds (Segetal Flora) 110

Apophytes 113

Tough Wayside Dwellers 114

Chapter 5 Indo-European Roots 121

The Appearance of the Nomads of the Steppes 122

Illness Is a Bad Spell 126

Agents and Causes of Disease 127

Healing Gods 132

Healing Arts 136

Destroying "Worms" 140

The Essence of Healing Herbs 159

Signatures and Signs 162

Roots and Wortcunners 170

Chapter 6 The Transitional Period and the Christian Middle Ages 173

Cloister Gardens 176

Religious Legends 180

The Saints and Their Plants 192

The Comeback and Metamorphosis of Heathen Customs 203

Hildegard of Bingen 216

The Turning of the Wheel 219

Chapter 7 Alcohol and Burning Pyres 221

Professionalization 222

Heretics 226

Pestilence and Syphilis 227

Arabic Influence in Medical Vocabulary 233

Chapter 8 Wise Women and Their Remedies 241

Housewives and Grandmothers 242

Herdsmen and Smiths 252

Midwives 254

Magical and Shamanic Women of the Forest Peoples 258

The Remedies of the Womenfolk 269

Final Words: The Return of Ancestral Wisdom 283

Notes 291

Bibliography 309

Index 317

About the Author 333