The Herbalists Were Right

Most of what the herbals claimed has not survived scrutiny. Some of it has, and spectacularly. Willow bark, prescribed for fevers and aches since Sumer, led to salicylic acid and then aspirin. A Shropshire herbalist's foxglove recipe for dropsy became digoxin, still used for heart failure.

Cinchona bark from the Andes gave quinine. Sweet wormwood, listed for fevers in a 4th-century Chinese handbook, gave artemisinin and a Nobel Prize in 2015. The Madagascar periwinkle and the Pacific yew gave vincristine and paclitaxel, two of the most important cancer drugs ever made.