How does ancient people know which medicinal herb works for an illness?
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Trial and error.
About how it might have started: Perhaps two people, far in prehistoric times and possibly not even Homo Sapiens, fell ill at the same time. One of them liked to chew on a certain plant while the other didn’t. The chewer became healthy much quicker and some other smart person wanted to know why. They looked at what was different and saw that one chewed on a certain plant.
The next time people got ill with that illness, they tried if they got better faster if they chewed on the plant. They did and so MIGHT have the first ever medical treatment happened.
Edit: From there it was likely “hmmm. This plant works for this coughing illness, but it didn’t help that guy with that sneezing illness. Does another plant work?”
Pretty much trial, error, and happy(or unhappy) accidents. People tried feeding or use specific plants on wounds or sickness. What worked kept being used.
Its also worth noting a lot of old medicinal herbs tended to be either placebo, a sedative that made you less likely to care about your symptoms, made you vomit up whatever was making you sick, or made you shit out whatever was making you sick. herbs with actual medicinal value beyond purging your GE tract were more uncommon.
Trial and error and passing down tribal knowledge. Some of the time it’s good but this is also where superstitions come from.
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