During the Middle Ages, ancient Persians began to experiment with heating implements for their herbs. Herbs such as frankincense, benzoin and aloe wood were heated in bronze cast braziers or atop flat warming stones with a fire kindled beneath.
These devices warmed a room and released healthful plant essences all at once. Many of Persia's most profound contributions to the world of health and herbology, come from the research and writing of a single man.
Born in 980 AD, Ibn Sina (Hakim Abu Ali al-Husayn Abd Allah Ibn Sina), eventually known in the West as simply Avicenna, has been referred to as the most famous individual physician in the history of humanity.
Referencing texts from memory, the Iranian physician wrote 276 books, which covered a vast range of topics including: medicine, natural history, physics, chemistry, mathematics, music, economics, morality and religion. His unprecedented work, Kitab aI-shira' or The Book of Healing, was extremely influential and is generally considered the largest volume ever produced by a single man.
His second book sealed his infamy: al-Qanunfial-Tibb or The Canon of Medicine. The Encyclopredia Britannica calls this work "the single most famous book in the history of medicine, in East or West."
The Canon was comprised of five volumes that gathered and refined all of the medical knowledge in existence at the time. Avicenna developed his theories of medicine through the related the doctrines of the natural sciences, and considered the evaluation of a "disease" incomplete until all components of a person had been included in the diagnosis.
Avicenna's works became the basis for most medieval schools of thought, especially that of the Franciscan monks, and through the ages has held vast influence on the development and practice of all medicine.
Through his teachings, Muslim civilizations made several very important contributions to medicine: developments in botany, pharmacy, and the founding of hospitals.Avicenna himself created a procedure of the distillation of floral minerals and was the first to distill essence of rose. Centuries later, Avincenna's work inspired Samuel Hahnemann (1755 -1843) to found homeopathy.
This gives you an idea of how ancient and intrinsic herbs are to human life.
