The tradition continues
The tradition of age-old wisdom, combined with the most advanced scientific techniques, are the strengths of a great company: Erbamea.
Interest in medicinal plants is as old as humanity itself, and their use as ‘medicine’ has accompanied us through the centuries. Documents dating back to over 3000 BC attest to the use of plants for health purposes by the Chinese, Egyptians and Indians; and, later, Greek and Roman civilisations alike were renowned for illustrious physicians and naturalists such as Hippocrates, Theophrastus, Dioscorides, Galen and Pliny, who left us treatises on medicinal plants and their valuable uses.
Galen (130–210 AD), for example, studied the use of plants in therapy in depth and contributed significantly to increasing the number of preparations that could be derived from herbs; preparations that still bear his name today. Meanwhile, Dioscorides (1st century AD) compiled as many as 500 monographs on plants across five books, classifying them according to their therapeutic properties and also noting possible adulterations and advice on how to detect them.
His works remained an important reference for scholars right up until the 16th century. Moving forward through the centuries, we then come to the Middle Ages, a period in which monasteries were the guardians of culture in general and medicine in particular, and medicinal plants were cultivated in the gardens within the abbeys.
Modern herbal medicine has its origins in the Renaissance, with the emergence of the first secular medical schools and universities (the Salerno School of Medicine, 11th–13th centuries, and the University of Montpellier, 12th century). It was Paracelsus, the Medici family and the House of Este who brought about a gradual shift away from empiricism towards scientific verification. This led to Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778 AD), his systematic classification of plants and the establishment of rules for the cultivation and harvesting of medicinal herbs.
The tradition of millennia-old wisdom, combined with modern scientific knowledge, the most advanced technologies and rigorous controls applied throughout the entire production process, now forms the basis of phytotherapy, which uses plants and their extracts to create herbal formulations capable of meeting the most varied demands and a renewed need to rely on natural solutions, so as not to forego the pleasure of a sense of well-being as unique as nature itself.
