Hildegard's Healing Plants

Rating:
Summary: A natural healing manual by a woman
Review: Before echinacea and homeopathy there was Hildegard and her medieval herb remedies. Hildegard's Healing Plants provides a natural healing manual by a woman who used herbs around her convent in the early 1100s. Listings from her medieval Physica book provide reviews of the various herbs and their properties.

Rating:
Summary: A slice of a great woman's mind
Review: Hildegard Von Bingen was a mystic, a musician, a moralist, as well as a poet, playright, and prophet. She added a little science in there, too, and some believe she must have been a physician. She follows the tradition of the time in that created things are composed of four elements: hot or cold, and wet or dry. She then goes on to tell the medicinal uses for over 200 plants. From aloe to oats to valerian, even an opinion on St. John's wort, it is amazing that the same plants continue to be a part of natural healing over 800 years after this book was written. That alone makes the book very interesting...