Native Americans had and still have a vast knowledge medicinal herbs and plants, sometimes referred to as Myths and Legends by may tribes. They instructed the early settlers in healing wounds, disease, safe childbirth practices and setting fractures. The aspiring medicine-men were extensively educated in the various plants, then they specialized in one disease or related group of diseases. We can thank our Native American brothers and sisters for the vast knowledge of many herbs that we use today, like cascara sagrada, American ginseng, joe-pye weed, goldenseal, sassafras and witch hazel.

American Indian Medicine has been around for thousands of years before those that claim discovery of these natural remedies.

A Neanderthal burial ground some 60,000 year old have show discoveries that indicated these early people used marshmallow, yarrow and groundsel, which are still in use today.

In India the use of herbs dates back some 3500 years or even longer. Underlying the medical culture of India both folk traditions as well as knowledge systems has a deep understanding of the medicinal value of the plants, there is strong evidence of a tradition of use of medicianal plants that is more than three thousand years old.

It is estimated that about 80,000 species of plants are utilized by the different system of Indian medicine. The indigenous knowledge about plants and plant products is rather detailed and sophisticated and has evolved into a separate branch of learning. According to the World Health Organization more than 1 billion people rely on herbal medicines to some extent. They have listed 21,000 plants have reported medicinal uses around the world.

Other cultural history of the relationship between products from living plants and healing medications goes back to 3700 B.C. with Egypt, followed by the Chinese and later the Greeks and Romans. In the early frontier days of West Virginia, the vast majority of settlers in the region were cut off from any kind of "formal" medical care and moreover, competent physicians long remained beyond the reach, both physically and financially, of a vast segment of the population. For residents deprived of these benefits, folk medicine derived from time-honored and age-old traditions along with much of the aboriginal traditions was used.