History
Salvia officinalis has been used since ancient times for warding off evil, snakebites, increasing women's fertility, and more. The Romans likely introduced it to Europe from Egypt as a medicinal herb. Theophrastus wrote about two different sages, a wild undershrub he called sphakos, and a similar cultivated plant he called elelisphakos. Pliny the Elder said the latter plant was called salvia by the Romans, and used as a diuretic, a local anesthetic for the skin, a styptic, and for other uses. Charlemagne recommended the plant for cultivation in the early Middle Ages, and during the Carolingian Empire, it was cultivated in monastery gardens. Walafrid Strabo described it in his poem Hortulus as having a sweet scent and being useful for many human ailments—he went back to the Greek root for the name and called it lelifagus.
The plant had a high reputation throughout the Middle Ages, with many sayings referring to its healing properties and value. It was sometimes called S. salvatrix (sage the savior), and was one of the ingredients of Four Thieves Vinegar, a blend of herbs which was supposed to ward off the plague. Dioscorides, Pliny, and Galen all recommended sage as a diuretic, hemostatic, emmenagogue, and tonic.
Read more about this topic: Salvia Officinalis
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Every literary critic believes he will outwit history and have the last word.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“False history gets made all day, any day,
the truth of the new is never on the news
False history gets written every day
...
the lesbian archaeologist watches herself
sifting her own life out from the shards she’s piecing,
asking the clay all questions but her own.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“It would be naive to think that peace and justice can be achieved easily. No set of rules or study of history will automatically resolve the problems.... However, with faith and perseverance,... complex problems in the past have been resolved in our search for justice and peace. They can be resolved in the future, provided, of course, that we can think of five new ways to measure the height of a tall building by using a barometer.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)