Élelmi és gyógynövények jelentősége a gyógyítás korai kultúrtörténetében

For many thousands of years, men recognised, collected and cultivated vegetables, fruits, cereals and other herbs not only as food but also as medicine in many cases for fighting various diseases. Ethnomedicine and early scientific medicine incorporated gradually and empirically in their own specific way the aetiology, diagnostics and therapy. The way of recognising and treating conditions included beliefs and rational and irrational elements respectively. The knowledge enhanced over millennia resulted eventually in the development of healing systems. The early medical practices of European people were influenced primarily by Greco-Roman and Asia Minor scientific medicine that was based also on Old-Egyptian traditions. Remarkably, there is no detectable direct impact of Far Eastern or American Indian medicine on the European medical culture, the cause of which is not only the large distance but also the significant difference in understanding health and ill health. This overview based also on the authors’ former research in the history of medicine concerns only the findings equally relevant both in nutrition and medicine.