02_History and Philosophy

Question 1

What does Ayurveda mean?

Answer 1

The science of life

Question 2

What is TCM?

Answer 2

an aggregate of systems and approaches dating back to Confucianism (~BCE550) and Taoism (~BCE400).

Question 3

What does TCM entail?

Answer 3

holistic approach to life and health:
- complete diagnostic system
- acupuncture
- herbal medicine
- diet
- Tuina (pressure-point massage)

Question 4

What does Ayurveda entail?

Answer 4

Complete system of health care and lifestyle medicine:
- herbal medicine
- mineral medicines
- diet
- exercise
- detoxification

Question 5

Who was Asclepius?

Answer 5

A mythical character credited with miraculous healings who lived around BCE1250.

medicine was mixed with magic and superstition

gave rise to the Cult of Asclepius

Question 6

What did the Greeks formalise in 450BCE?

Answer 6

A system of Four Elements (air, fire, water, earth)

Question 7

Who was Empedocles?

Answer 7

Greek philosopher who founded the doctrine of Four Elements (Principles of Transformation): Air, Fire, Water, Earth, which was formalised in BCE 450 (100 years before the Yellow Emperor’s Classic was written)

Question 8

How did the philosopher Aristotle contribute to ancient Greco-Roman Medicine?

Answer 8

He assigned the four primary qualities to each of the elements of Empedocles doctrine: dry, hot, moist, cold

Question 9

Name a famous Aphorism by Hippocrates

Answer 9

Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food

Question 10

What earned Hippocrates the title of ‘Father of Modern Medicine’?

Answer 10

His rational system of observation and categorisation, which took medicine out of the realm of religion, superstition and myth

Question 11

What part of the Hippocratic Oath is famous for Doctors having to sign it?

Answer 11

First, do no harm

Question 12

What was Hippocrates system of priorities?

Answer 12

1st reform Lifestyle (diet, exercise etc)
2nd use Herbs if needed
3rd only as a last resort use intervention (surgery, purging, blood letting, etc)

Question 13

What did Hippocrates say about Nature?

Answer 13

Nature is the Physician of Man

Question 14

Hippocrates was a major influence on which important pioneers and schools of medicine?

Answer 14

• The Salerno School (Italy)
• The Myddfai physicians (Wales)
• Samuel Thomson (North America)
• The Physiomedicalists (North America)
• Nicholas Culpepper (England)

Question 15

Who created the first definitive Western Materia Medica?

Answer 15

Pedanius Dioscorides

Question 16

What was ‘De Materia Medica’?

Answer 16

first definitive Western Materia Medica by Pedanius Dioscorides
- described 600 herbs in detail
- became prototype model ‘herbal pharmacopoeia’

Question 17

Who is famous for practising and further developing Hippocratic Medicine

Answer 17

Claudius Galenus (Galen)

Question 18

Why was the fall of the Roman Empire important for medicine?

Answer 18

it left Galenic medicine unchallenged at the height of its influence, so theories and medicines alike transplanted into foreign soil and left to flourish as they could

Question 19

Who introduced the use of Mercury for skin complaints?

Answer 19

Ar Razi (Rhazez) 869-925CE

Question 20

What did Ibn Butlan (d1068CE) advocate?

Answer 20

clean air
moderate diet
balance in rest and work
emotional positivity
evacuation of superfluities

Question 21

What is Ibn Sina (Avicenna 869-1037CE) known for?

Answer 21

• He wrote Canon of Medicine
• expanded Dioscorides’ work on materia medica by observation and experimentation
• his academic approach was forerunner of the modern university-trained physician
• was a follower of Galen and a respected physician by the age of 17

Question 22

What did Avicenna (Ibn Sina) believe in?

Answer 22

Patients and plants are subject to the influences of Astrology

Question 23

What was Myddfai?

Answer 23

an independent, rational school of medicine, developed in the 6th century CE that flourished for 1000 years

Question 24

What was the centre of excellence in medicine in Mediaeval Europe?

Answer 24

There were 2: Myddfai and Salerno

Question 25

When were the 'Bald's Leechbook & The Lacnunga' written?

Answer 25

10th Century

Question 26

Why are there little to no recordings of indigenous Medicine in the British Isles?

Answer 26

The symptom based Folk medicine was bound up with religion, superstition and magic, so it became associated with witchcraft in the 15th century and persecuted almost out of existence

Question 27

What is an Old English word for remedies?

Answer 27

Lacnunga

Question 28

What is The Lacnunga?

Answer 28

A collection of miscellaneous Anglo-Saxon medical texts and prayers

Question 29

What is the 'Nine Herbs Charm of Odin' ?

Answer 29

A poem dedicated to the following herbs: Mugwort Betony Lamb's Cress Plantain Chamomile Nettle Crabapple Thyme Fennel

Question 30

What did surgeons use to treat syphilis?

Answer 30

Mercury

Question 31

Which plants were brought from searching the Orient and New World to treat syphilis?

Answer 31

Gum Guaiacum and Sarsaparilla

Question 32

Who drew up the 'Quacks' Charter'?

Answer 32

Henry VIII

Question 33

What was the purpose of the 'Quacks' Charter'?

Answer 33

to permit access to herbs for all for their own health as many couldn't afford the services of the competing Physicians, Surgeons and Apothecaries

Question 34

Who authored 'The Herball, or General Historie of Plantes'?

Answer 34

John Gerard 1545-1612

Question 35

What did Nicholas Culpeper (1616-1654) name himself?

Answer 35

The People's Herbalist

Question 36

What is Culpeper known for?

Answer 36

- emphasising local garden herbs for all instead of expensive imported remedies - translated medical texts into English - his book 'The Compleat Herbal' has never been out of print to this day

Question 37

What is the Doctrine of Signatures?

Answer 37

Developed by Paracelsus (1493-1541) 'nature marks each growth....according to its curative benefit' ->Herbs resembling various parts of the body can be used by herbalists to treat ailments of those bodyparts e.g. lungwort leaves look like the human lung, walnut like a brain

Question 38

What was Samuel Thomson's simplicity of theory and what herbs did he mainly use?

Answer 38

3 basic disease states: hot, cold and wind (alternating hot and cold). he advocated Cayenne and Lobelia (hot and cold) as a dynamic herbal polarity

Question 39

Who founded the Physiomedicalists and why?

Answer 39

Alvah Curtis. He was dissatisfied with the limitation of Thomson's 3 disease states and believed there needed to be a greater degree of differentiation.

Question 40

What were the 2 classes of herbal actions defined by the Physiomedicalists?

Answer 40

Organ specific and action on the tissue state

Question 41

What does the Six Tissue States (J M Thurston 1900) describe?

Answer 41

extremes of pathological affects on human tissue

Question 42

What is considered the greatest influence on herbalism in the British Isles and Ireland up to the present day?

Answer 42

The Physiomedicalists

Question 43

Who founded the Eclectics?

Answer 43

Wooster Beech (1794-1868)

Question 44

What were the Eclectics trying to achieve?

Answer 44

a comprehensive inventory of pathologies matched to specific remedies: sought to find single herbs with an exact fit to specific disease patterns (simpling)

Question 45

Who wrote 'Professor King's Dispensatory 1898?

Answer 45

the Eclectics John Uri Lloyd and Harvey Wickes Felter

Question 46

What did Rockefeller commission to subject 'irregular' schools to tough regulatory measures in order to impose newly decided standards?

Answer 46

The Flexnor Report (1910)

Question 47

What was established in America to standardise medicine and put Herbalists, Naturopaths and Homeopaths out of business?

Answer 47

The AMA (American Medical Association)

Question 48

Who coined the phrase 'Allopathic medicine triumphs, exclusively white and male'

Answer 48

Griggs, 1997

Question 49

Who was Albert Isaac Coffin?

Answer 49

Student of Samuel Thomson who arrived in London in 1839, bringing Physiomedicalism with him. He founded the National Association of Medical Herbalists

Question 50

Who introduced the Eclectic tradition to the UK?

Answer 50

Dr. John Christopher on his visit in 1981

Question 51

NAME 3 INFLUENCES ON WESTERN HERBAL MEDICINE

Answer 51

for example: AYURVEDA TCM HIPPOCRATES GALEN SALERNO NORTH AMERICA SCIENCE

Question 52

WHY IS HIPPOCRATES IMPORTANT

Answer 52

FATHER OF MEDICINE WHO FIRST CAME UP WITH A RATIONAL SYSTEM OF OBSERVATION AND CATEGORISATION, BRINGING MEDICINE OUT OF THE REALMS OF RELIGION, SUPERSTITION AND MYTH

Question 53

WHY WAS THE DECLINE OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE IMPORTANT IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF MEDICINE?

Answer 53

IT LEFT GALENIC MEDICINE AT THE HEIGHT OF ITS INFLUENCE AND THEORIES AND MEDICINES SPREAD TO FOREIGN SOILS AND LEFT TO FLOURISH

Question 54

WHAT WAS IMPORTANT ABOUT THE ITALIAN CITY OF SALERNO?

Answer 54

-LOCATION OF FAMOUS MEDICAL SCHOOL OF SALERNO WHICH TURNED OUT SEVERAL NOTABLE PHYSCIANS, FOR EXAMPLE AVICENNA

Question 55

WHAT IS MEANT BY THE 'QUACKS' CHARTER'?

Answer 55

LEGISLATION TO PERMIT ACCESS TO HERBS FOR ALL FOR THEIR OWN HEALTH CARE (after Henry VIII got fed up by squabbles of the Physicians, Surgeons and Apothecaries)

Question 56

WHAT IS THE 'DOCTRINE OF SIGNATURES'?

Answer 56

HOW A PLANT SUGGESTS ITS MEDICINAL USES BY ITS PHYSICAL APPEARANCE

Question 57

WHO WAS SAMUEL THOMSON AND WHAT DID HE CONTRIBUTE TO WESTERN HERBAL MEDICINE?

Answer 57

AMERICAN PIG FARMER WHO WAS INTERESTED IN HIPPOCRATES AND STUDIED WITH NATIVE AMERICAN HEALERS. HE DEVELOPED HIS OWN MEDICAL SYSTEM, OUT OF WHICH THE ECLECTICS AND THE PHYSIOMEDICALISTS SPRANG

Question 58

WHY WAS ALBERT ISAAC COFFIN IMPORTANT TO UK HERBAL MEDICINE?

Answer 58

HE TOUGHT PHYSIOMEDICALISM UPON HIS ARRIVAL IN LONDON IN 1839 FOUNDED THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF MEDICAL HERBALISTS