A HISTORICAL VIEW OF NATURE AND HEALTH

A HISTORICAL VIEW OF NATURE AND HEALTH

The ability of nature and the natural world to relieve stress and promote healing has long been understood by humans. People started experimenting with herbal cures and natural healers in ancient times. Shamans, wise women, and men conducted rituals to ward against sickness, often in specifically designated outdoor locations. Traditional folk medicine made extensive use of magical reasoning.

The Greek physician Hippocrates (460–370 BC) is credited with being the first person to consciously reject conventional wisdom and the idea that illness is a punishment meted out by the gods or other supernatural creatures. To place his patients in the best possible condition for recovery, he often recommended garden stays and walks in the forest to his patients. He maintained a hospital with a garden on the island of Kos. Because of his ground-breaking contributions to the medical industry, he rose to prominence and is now revered as the father of medicine. A few hundred years later, the Romans built field hospitals in picturesque settings because they thought that the natural setting promoted recovery. In ancient Rome, gardens, paths, and tree plantations were created as a result of complaints from the populace about the city's loudness and congestion.

In Europe throughout the Middle Ages, monasteries were largely responsible for medicine and an interest in nature and gardening. While tending to the ill, they often planted therapeutic plants and vegetables. A monastery treatment could include time spent resting and working in the garden. Before we began to discuss nature as a health advantage available to a larger population, it would be the 1600s. In those days' thriving main cities across newly industrialized Europe, parks were constructed. Citizens were thought to require the chance for rehabilitation since they often lived in small spaces and worked in industries with unsanitary conditions. In London, Hyde Park was made accessible to the general public after years of being used primarily by the wealthy for hunting.

It was also common at this period to go out to picturesque locations outside of the towns to enjoy the fresh mountain or sea air, relax in the sun, go on a nature walk, and "take the waters" (drinking spring water was thought to have major health advantages). In addition to sanatoriums (for TB patients) and mental institutions, which were often located outside of cities, health resorts, and thermal baths were also constructed in appropriate locations. At this time, the man had nearly always cultivated or constructed the natural settings that were thought to have therapeutic virtues.

The remainder of the environment, the untamed nature, was often seen as unpleasant and dangerous. This mindset was widespread up to the end of the 1700s and the beginning of the 1800s, which is known as the Romantic era.

At that time, the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau emerged, whose ideas are still important today on topics like pedagogy, child education, and our connection with nature from both a religious and existential standpoint. Rousseau believed that it was good for a person to learn about themselves in connection with their natural environment. He said that everyone who engaged with nature and sensed its peace outside was at one with it. It nearly seems like something a modern-day therapist who uses nature as a working setting would remark.

Medical science advanced in the late 1800s as a consequence of a growing understanding of human physiology and the causes of illnesses. The value of nature as a source for human health was gradually lost, and it was completely supplanted by a modern healthcare system that used cutting-edge drugs, therapies, X-ray machines, and other equipment in sterile indoor settings.

It was out of style to use herbal remedies, drink from wells, take spa baths, or remain outside. However, animal and garden care was effectively employed when contemporary medicine did not seem to be effective, such as in psychiatry or in the post-World War II rehabilitation of troops who had been shell-shocked in the US and Great Britain. Modern studies on the importance of nature to health started to take off in the United States in the 1960s. Back then, the focus was mostly on outdoor pursuits and wilderness leisure. Early in 1980, several investigations by an environmental psychologist marked a significant development. He was able to show in his research that recently operated patients who had a view of green areas from their hospital room healed more rapidly and felt better overall than those who had a view of a brick wall. Following this, studies on the health benefits of nature gained more widespread acceptance.

According to research, our stress levels are influenced by our surroundings and may rise or fall. Your neurological, endocrine, and immunological systems' functions are all changed at any one time by what you are seeing, hearing, and experiencing. You could experience anxiety, sadness, or helplessness as a result of the stress of an uncomfortable situation. Your immune system is subsequently suppressed as a result, which also raises your blood pressure, heart rate, and muscular tension. Positive surroundings change that. And people find nature to be beautiful regardless of their age or country.