By the definition given in the encyclopedia, a collection of people accumulated empirical evidence on the remedy, herbal medicine and hygiene, as well as their practical application for the preservation of health, prevention and treatment of disease. Handed down from generation to generation by oral, this information is reflected in the folk customs and traditions and reinforced in writing in medical, herbalists and other literature.

Traditional medicine has emerged in the primitive society: the people in those days knew how to treat fractures, reduce a dislocation, known plants with analgesic and healing effects, understand the curative value of sunlight and water.

After the division of society into classes, traditional medicine has become the property of the poor. Significant influence exerted on her superstition. Medicine of the ancient world wide to use the accumulated experience of the people. The doctors of ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt possessed the richest arsenal of knowledge of traditional medicine. Egyptians with curative intent was used opium. Tibetan Buddhist medicine asserts that "there is in the nature of such a substance that no good would be as a healing agent.

The People's Health - the most ancient branch of traditional medicine, laid the foundation of scientific hygiene. Worked out by the experience of many generations of hygienic measures in the slave system included in the legislation of individual countries. Thus, the Babylonian law "seventh day", during which banned all types of work, was to some extent an attempt to regulate the mode of work and rest. Literary monuments of ancient India contain much information on the effect of climate and seasons on health, hygiene of the body, the value of exercise, proper nutrition. Tibetan medicine gave great importance to clean air and sunshine; Chinese - healthy sleep, cleanliness, moderation in eating. Knowledge accumulated over centuries, reflected in the writings of leading physicians and scientists of the ancient world - Hippocrates, Galen, Ibn Sina and others

In Russian folk medicine existed since time immemorial. Fever were treated with wormwood, birch sap is used in contaminated surgery, tar was used as a disinfectant, cranberries, cloudberry, mountain ash - to treat scurvy. Many proverbs and sayings Russians promote compliance with hygiene rules, such as: "From going to the Baths (soap) body is pure lives," "Bath soars, bathhouse rules," "In the bath wash - be born anew." To this day, alive the traditions of Russian folk medicine, struggles with lzheznaharyami and lzhetselitelyami.

Such representatives of Russian medicine, as M. wisely, F. Inozemtsev Botkin, G. Zakhar'in and their followers were put into practice various methods of traditional medicine. Scientific medicine in Russia took and takes all the most valuable of the millennial folk experience. To study the healing power of herbs designed All-Russian Institute of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants (VILAR).

Modern reader has become available huge amount of literature on this topic. Many reprints withstood the People's medical manual "physician, Dr. Fine sciences, philosophy and medicine F. Loeeskogo. He first came to light at the end of the XVIII century in St. Petersburg. Many of the recipes contained in it, have not lost their relevance and be useful.