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HISTORY AND MATERIA MEDICA OF HERBS Therapeutic use of plants and plant products precedes recorded history and seems to occur in all indigenous and preliterate cultures. We have no record of the original concepts of how these substances were thought to work. When we have explanations from ancient Western or Asian civilizations, or obtained from members of primitive cultures, the proposed explanations can often be charaterized as Magical —invoking mechanisms or relationships not recognized by Science as natural phenomena. For example, Folk Healer s among European Peasant ry believed that some of the visible characteristics of plants provided clues to humans about the specific therapeutic value of each plant-- a concept known as the Doctrine Of Signatures . In the early twentieth century, the body of knowledge termed materia medica was transformed by the methods and knowledge of Medicinal Chemistry into the Science of Pharmacology . HOMEOPATHY The term ''materia medica'' is still used in Homeopathy . Minute dosages of materia medica are used in its lower potency medicines, and in Herbal Therapy . Homeopathy still considers there to be an inverse relationship between the presence of physical substance and the strength or action of the remedy. The higher potencies are those which have been Potentised beyond the last Molecule and are believed to act and effect a cure on a Metaphysical level. SEE ALSO EXTERNAL LINKS
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