Modern medical science has provided antibiotics, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines, laser surgery, organ transplants, and many other life-saving advances. Amid this valuable progress, however, individuals often lose sight of the history of healing. Humans have not always looked to technology to heal.
During much of human existence, people relied on a connectedness to nature and its healing powers. Nature was part of everyday life, and people were intimately familiar with it. Plants, for example, have been used by humans for food, medicine, clothing, and tools, and for religious ceremonies, prior to recorded history. Most traditional belief systems consider plants a gift of nature and access to them a basic human right. Even the World Health Organization (WHO) refers to herbs as the “people’s medicines.”
For centuries, people believed that each herbal plant contained a sign left by God, intended to give humanity clues to its healing effects. This ancient philosophy, called the Doctrine of Signatures, maintains that God marked everything with a “sign” or “signature” designating its purpose. The Doctrine of Signatures indicates that plants have parts that resemble and are relevant to human body parts, animals, or objects. These features of the plant resemble the condition or body part that can be treated by the plant. For example, the goldenseal, whose yellow-green root indicates its use for jaundice or lobelia and whose flowers are shaped like a stomach, reflects its antiemetic properties (Center for Northern Woodlands Education, 2016; Freeman, 2008).
Ginseng is another example of this doctrine. Used in China for over 5,000 years, ginseng is the Anglicization of the Chinese word for “man-root” or “man-essence” and its Latin genus name is Panax (“cure all”). The plant’s signature is easy to see—it resembles a man and is thus thought to heal and strengthen all parts of the body. American ginseng has been exported to China since the early 1700s but wild ginseng currently sells for about $550 per pound so its use is rare in the United States.