Herbalism is a traditional medicinal or folk medicine practice based on the use of plants and plant extracts. Herbalism is also known as botanical medicine, medicinal botany, medical herbalism, herbal medicine, herbology, and phytotherapy.

Sometimes the scope of herbal remedial agent is extended to include fungi and bee products, as well as minerals, shells and certain animal parts. Many plants synthesize substances that are beneficial to the maintenance of health in humans and other animals.

These include aromatic substances, principally of which are phenols or their oxygen-substituted derivatives such as tannins. Many are minor metabolites, of which at smallest 12,000 have been isolated - a number estimated to be less than 10% of the aggregate. In many cases, these substances (particularly the alkaloids) serve as plant defense Buy Herbal mechanisms against predation by microorganisms, insects, and herbivores. Many of the herbs and spices used by humans to be seasoned food yield useful medicinal compounds. Anthropology of herbalism fabricate from Project Gutenberg EBook of Culinary Herbs:

Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses, by M. G. Kains People on all continents have used hundreds to thousands of native plants for treatment of ailments since prehistoric times.

There is evidence from the Shanidar Cave in Iraq that suggests Neanderthals living 60,000 years ago used medicinal plants. A carcass that was unearthed there had been buried with eight species of plants which are still widely used in ethnomedicine around the world.