Medicinal plants of the Mexican highlands

The use of medicinal plants is as old as man himself. The process by which Homo sapiens selected the plants that served to eat, cure or intoxicate, is lost in the long night of the origin of humanity. This stage of learning passed slowly, at the pace of evolution, but with some shocks. The first written documents, which tell us about the use of medicinal plants, we find them with an antiquity of about 4,000 years B.C. We also have the ideograms of the Sumerians written about 2,500 years B.C., where we find descriptions of plants used for medicinal purposes. In the code of Hammurabi, about 2,000 years B.C. we find how the Babylonians already used many plants to restore their health; among them we have: mint, senna, henbane, garlic, poppy, hemp, among others.

Autorentext

O Dr. JUAN LUIS SANTOS DE LA CRUZ é professor investigador na Unidade Académica de Agronomia da Universidade Autónoma de Zacatecas, México. Concluiu os seus estudos de pós-graduação em Produção Animal.