A groundbreaking reassessment of existing research and new data on traditional botanical medicine.

Traditional medical systems continue to impact the lives of people around the globe. These systems vary greatly in their underlying beliefs, but all commonly rely on the consumption of plant matter as a central practice. An Ancient Mesopotamian Herbal is a new, fully illustrated book that explores the uses of plants in traditional medicine and how these botanical roots extend to modern, “conventional” medicinal treatments.

Divided into two parts, An Ancient Mesopotamian Herbal introduces the lands and ancient cultures of Mesopotamia before surveying the different forms of evidence and research methods informing this academic book. The book then looks to the modern day, focusing on thirty case studies of plant-based drugs. Bridging the divide between the humanities and sciences and using new research and data from modern-day Iraq and surrounding areas, An Ancient Mesopotamian Herbal draws on the expertise of archeo-botanists, scientists, and Assyriologists specializing in historic Mesopotamian medicine to provide new identifications of Assyrian and Babylonian herbal medicines while giving a concise overview of ancient Mesopotamian herbal lore.
 

Barbara Boeck is part of the Spanish National Research Council and has published multiple research papers on the medicinal uses of plants. Shahina A. Ghazanfar is a senior botanist at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and the author of multiple books, including Plants of the Qur’an, also published by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Mark Nesbitt is an ethnobotanist and curator of the Economic Botany Collection at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.