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Explore nature’s treasure chest of healing herbs. This lecture looks at the evidence – from folklore and magic to biology and clinical medicine – of the value of medicinal plants. Find out what a physic garden is and how herbal medicines are used, along the way uncovering the array of healing plants at Dilston Physic Garden. Discover how plants such as sage, lemon balm and belladonna may impact upon mind, body and spirit, and the medicinal properties of two healing trees, willow and elder. Spirit of mugwort will also be considered and how this common wormwood or ‘witch’s herb’ came to be the favourite ‘plant of the gods’. 

This lecture also looks at developments in clinical medicine, such as the testing of herbal teas and aromatherapy oils for their impact on memory, along with interesting stories about the garden’s history – including visions of a Peruvian shaman, suggesting it may be a ‘psychic’ garden after all!

Professor Elaine Perry is a neuroscientist who has researched diseases of the human brain for over three decades. Some of her early research contributed to our current drugs for Alzheimer’s disease. However, frustration that many drugs were not being made widely available led Professor Perry to start looking to traditional medicinal plants for new approaches to the treatment of brain disease. This was followed by research into how plants could be used to improve memory and mood and to the setting up of the Dilston Physic Garden.

Elaine Perry was appointed Professor of Neurochemical Pathology at Newcastle University in the 1990s. She has been awarded prizes for her work in the area of neurodegenerative disease, including the Luigi Amaducci Memorial Award in 2002 and the International Geriatric Psychopharmacology Senior Award in 2008.