• Hippocrates (circa 460-377 B.C. ), known as the “Father of Medicine”, is the most important figure in ancient Greek medicine. His contributions to medicine include detailed observations of a disease and its effects, and an understanding of how health is often influenced by diet, breakdowns in bodily processes, and the environment.  He developed the Hippocratic Oath for physicians, which is still in use today.
  
  
• The Greek physician, Pedanius Dioscorides (c. 40–90 CE), was a Greek botanist and pharmacologist. He wrote the encyclopedia De Materia Medica describing over 600 herbal cures, forming the basis for the Western pharmacopeia through the 19th century, a testament to the efficacy of the medicines described.
  
  
• Around the 5th century as the Roman empire fell and the Tradition of Greco-Arabic Medicine began.
  
  
• Between the 8th and 13th centuries, Arab scholars revived the art and science of medicine the advances made in the Middle East in botany and chemistry led medicine in medieval Islam substantially to develop pharmacology.
  
  
• Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi (Abulcasis) (936-1013) pioneered the preparation of medicines by sublimation and distillation.
  
  
• Sabur Ibn Sahl (d 869), the first physician to initiate pharmacopoeia, describing a large variety of drugs and remedies for ailments.
  
  
• Al-Biruni (973-1050) wrote one of the most valuable works on pharmacology entitled Kitab al-Saydalah (The Book of Drugs), where he gave detailed knowledge of the properties of drugs and outlined the role of pharmacy and the functions and duties of the pharmacist.
  
  
• Ibn Sina [(Avicenna) (980-1037)], developed The Canon of Medicine which became a standard medical text at many medieval European universities.  The Canon of Medicine presents an overview of the contemporary medical knowledge of the medieval world which had been influenced by earlier traditions including Greco-Roman medicine, Persian medicine, Chinese medicine, and Indian medicine.
  
  
• From the 8th to the 13th century, the Arab world became the Western world’s great center of learning and discovery. Chemistry was applied to the processing of medicines, and pharmacy became an independent discipline from medicine. The approach was rational, experimental, exploratory, Hippocratic, and open. What emerged was a major and intact medical system, which became Greco-Arabic medicine.
  
  
• An era of profound medical, scientific and healing wisdom flourished for the next 500 years. Arabic physicians laid the foundations of the institutions and the science of modern medicine.
  
  

Chemistry and pharmacology were invented as independent disciplines. Arabic healers pioneered the concept of hospitals as places where sick patients were cared for, diagnosed and treated. Arabic physicians used specific herbs for anesthesia, conducted surgeries, understood pathologies and realized the role of environmental influences and specific diets for healing. Their knowledge of herbal medicine was rational and vast, creating complex herbal formulations.

Contact with Arabic cultures directly influenced the healing renaissance in Europe. Much of what is now European herbal knowledge was actually first introduced from the Middle East. Many common herbs such as milk thistle, olive leaf, feverfew, licorice, lemon balm and bay leaf, came from the Greco-Arabic tradition. The influence of Greco-Arabic herbal medicine is still felt in the 21st century. In fact, more than 25 percent of prescription drugs are based on chemical constituents discovered in plants.

Although this herbal tradition provides the basis for the health care for millions of people through the Middle East and Mediterranean region, the profound healing knowledge from Greco-Arabic medicine has been mostly forgotten by the West. The World Health Organization estimates that 80 percent of the world’s population presently use herbal medicine for some aspect of health care.