Overview

Once early humans developed the ability to reason, they began to experiment with various plants and herbs. Through the process of trial and error, early humans discovered which plants might be used as a food source, which could be used to flavor food or drink, which caused sickness or death, and which had medicinal value. Over time, nearly every type of herb and plant was classified into one of these categories. Pharmacy at that time was not a scientific discipline; rather, it was a mixture of medicine, superstition, and magic.

However, such primitive study of the medicinal value of plants and herbs established the roots of the modern branch of medicine called pharmacology. Traditionally, the field of pharmacology relies heavily on the subdiscipline of medical botany, the...