The Greeks used garlic to bring strength to their athletes at the Olympic games and in other contests, and employed it, as well, to help heal battle wounds. Hippocrates, who lived 460 to 370 B.C. and is considered the father of western medicine, recommended garlic for pneumonia and other infections, for cancer and for digestive disorders, as well as a diuretic to increase the flow of urine and a substance to improve menstrual flow. Another Greek, Dioscorides, who lived in the first century A.D. and is held in esteem as the founder of the modern pharmacy, dispensed garlic to treat rabid dog bites, snake bites, infections, bronchitis and cough, leprosy, and clogged arteries, as well as other conditions. The ancient Romans carried the garlic medicinal practices of the Greeks forward. Galen (129-199 A.D.), personal physician to the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, and whose writings were to influence Arabic and western medicine for over the next thousand years, called garlic "the theriac of the peasants," an inexpensive near "cure all" for a wide variety of almost countless ailments. In the Middle Ages, a German nun, St. Hildegard of Bingen, who wrote two medical textbooks, advocated raw garlic to heal the sick. The London College of Physicians recommended garlic for the great plague in 1665. A leading English physician, Sydenham, also used garlic about the same time to cure small pox.
Posted on: Wed, 21 Aug 2013 04:03:16 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015