Abstract
Herbal medicine has had a terrible 20th century. An evolving relationship between humans and plants ground to a shuddering halt in the industrial world somewhere around the end of the 19th century. This was astonishing: humans had for millennia been articulating and finessing a primal co-evolution with the plant world and all sentient beings. The insights and benefits for health that had emerged were rich and real. However, while suited to living close to the land, these had become increasingly inadequate to meet the needs of urban life, often involving squalor and pandemic diseases, and when the principles of science and engineering became applicable to medicine the old ways were rudely thrown aside.
