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Lavender has been used for healing purposes since primitive times, but the first mention of its specific use can be traced back to ancient Greece. Dioscorides is credited with having compiled the first extensive Materia Medica during the 1st century AD, in which he described the therapeutic qualities of over 500 plants taken from both Egyptian and Greek herbal lore. He refers to French lavender (L. stoechas) as:

An herb with slender twiggs having ye haire like Tyme, but yet longer leaved … sharp in ye taste and somewhat bitterish, but ye decoction of it as the Hyssop is good for ye griefs in ye thorax …¹

Dioscorides also attributed certain laxative and invigorating properties to it, and recommended its use in a tea-like infusion for chest complaints. The great doctor Galen (AD 129–199) prescribed French lavender as an antidote to poisons, and for uterine disorders. Pliny the Elder, a contemporary of Dioscorides, used it for promoting menstruation and for treating snake bites and stings as well as, when taken in wine, for digestive, liver, renal and gall bladder disorders. He also ascribed it with some psychological benefit by claiming that it banished the ‘pain of the bereft’. Indeed,

… from the Greek medical practice there is derived the term ‘iatra-lypte’, from the physician who cured by the use of aromatic unctions.²

But whereas the Greeks regarded lavender principally as a medicine, the Romans used it extensively for its fragrance. Pliny was the first to distinguish between French lavender (L. stoechas) and ‘true’ lavender (L. vera), revealing that the Romans used the latter for ‘stretching’ exotic perfumes. The Romans spent vast sums of money on their ritual ablutions, and at the public baths the Unctuarium or ‘Oil Room’ housed innumerable ready-mixed lotions, many of which contained lavender. The Romans also traditionally used the dried crushed leaves of lavender as a form of incense in honour of their gods. It was burnt on hot coals at ceremonial occasions as well as in preparation for childbirth.

It was the monks who preserved the knowledge of herbal lore in Europe during the Dark Ages. The Abbess of Hildegarde (1098–1180) from the diocese of Mainz made some of the earliest medicinal references to lavender in her prolific writings. She dedicated a whole chapter to lavender, which she described as a fierce, dry and strong-smelling herb, albeit without edible value.³ She prescribed it for, among other things, clearing the eyes, getting rid of lice and banishing evil spirits! She also recommended lavender for ‘keeping a pure character’.

The monasteries, in addition, cultivated elaborately laid out herb gardens behind their high walls. A special plot was usually designated for the herb garden near the kitchen, which was often planted with a single herb in each bed, grown especially for its specific culinary or medicinal use. This type of classically arranged formal herb garden lasted right up to the mid-17th century, and reached a peak of popularity during the Elizabethan era. In A Winter’s Tale, Shakespeare describes a few of the herbs one might expect to find growing in such a garden;

Hot lavender, mints, savory, marjoram;

The marigold, that goes to bed wi’ the sun,

And with him rises weeping; these are flowers

Of middle summer …

Throughout this period, lavender was employed principally as a domestic household item and as a medicinal agent. It was also occasionally used for culinary purposes, especially as a flavouring for vinegar. The dried powder was sometimes added to dishes as a condiment to ‘comfort the stomach’, and Queen Elizabeth I apparently enjoyed a conserve of lavender.

William Turner, often called the Father of English Botany, wrote a pioneering work on herbalism between 1538 and 1568 which he dedicated to Elizabeth I. In this New Herball he recommended true lavender for all diseases of the brain that ‘come of a cold cause’, and lavender water for ‘dulness of the head’.

All the early European herbalists were in general agreement that true lavender was particularly effective for nervous complaints, and that its fragrance alone could combat melancholy and comfort and revive the spirits. John Gerard, writing at the end of the 16th century, claimed that:

The distilled water of lavender smelt unto, or the temples and forehead bathed therewith, is a refreshing to them that have the Catalepsy, a light migram, and to them that have the falling sicknesse, and that use to swoune much …⁴

while 50 years later, John Parkinson confirmed that lavender was ‘especiall good use for all griefes and paines of the head and brain’. In Culpeper’s Complete Herbal, the well-known astrologically based treatise first published in 1652, the author describes lavender in the following terms:

Mercury owns this herb. It is of especial use in pains of the head and brain which proceed from cold, apoplexy, falling-sickness, the dropsy, or sluggish malady, cramps, convulsions, palsies and often faintings … the tremblings and passions of the heart, and faintings and swoonings, applied to the temples or nostrils, to be smelt unto …⁵

Culpeper also recommended lavender for digestive upsets or weakness, liver and spleen obstructions, menstrual problems, toothache or the loss of voice, but he warned that Oil of Spike should be used with care due to its ‘hot and subtle spirit’.

Reports on the virtues of lavender reached a peak with William Salmon’s herbal of 1710, in which he described 12 different preparations using lavender for various diseases of the head, brain, nerves and womb. Its many properties were listed by Salmon as:

Abstersive, Aperitive, Astringent, Discursive, Dieuretic, and Incisive … Cephalick, Neurotick, Stomatick, Cordial, Nephretick and Hysterick. It is Alexipharmic, Analeptick and Antiparatitick, being of very subtle and thin parts.⁶

The 18th century saw interest in traditional folk remedies begin to wane, however, in the growing light of chemical science. Over the next two centuries the use of lavender as a remedy dwindled, as people put their faith in the newly developed medicines and drugs. It was only in the mid-20th century that herbal remedies began to be re-assessed seriously in modern scientific terms.