Excerpt
Dioscorides, a Greek physician, described lavender as having slender twigs and hair similar to thyme, only longer. The Greeks apparently used mainly
L. stoechas medicinally, making wines and vinegars from the spikes and foliage. The Romans used it to scent their baths and relieve their aching limbs. It may be that the Romans distinguished between
L. stoechas and
L. vera, using the first for wine-making and the second for their exotic perfumes. However this is not clear.
It is generally assumed that the Romans introduced lavender to England but it may well have been introduced earlier. No records exist to confirm this. During the Dark Ages, monks recorded their herbal knowledge and lavender thrived in their monastery gardens. Abbes Hildegarde (1098 — 1180), a learned female botanist, made a study of lavender and wrote of her findings. Subsequently herbalists such as Turner and Gerard (16th century) attributed lavender with an ability to heal anything from colds and headaches to limb paralysis and neurosis, as well as with use as both a tonic and a laxative. Lavendula stoechas was referred to as 'Sticadore' and was one of the main ingredients of 'Four Thieves vinegar' used to combat the plague during the Middle Ages. The spikes of L. stoechas were still being used medicinally until the middle of the eighteenth century. Even today in France and Spain, fresh spikes of L. stoechasand L. dentata are suspended in water in closed bottles placed in the sun, for use as a haemostatic or for cleansing wounds.