On the history of lavender

Edith’s post on the long history of lavender as a relaxant reminded me that you can now vape herbs just as you’ve always been able to smoke them.

There’s a long history of lavender being used to combat anxiety and other feelings of distress. In 1551, for instance, naturalist William Turner, in his nature guide Herball, wrote that “flowers of lavender, quilted in a cap, comfort the brain very well.” And herbalist John Parkinson, in his 1640 Theatrum Botanicum, wrote that lavender is of “especiall good use for all griefes and paines of the head and brain,” as well as for “the tremblings and passions of the heart” — and not just drunk as a tonic but “even applied to the temples, or to the nostrils to be smelt unto.”

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• history