User:LeadSongDog/medmush1

History

 * "Mushrooms have long been valued as highly tasty and nutritional foods by many societies throughout the world. Early civilizations, by trial and error built up a practical knowledge of those suitable to eat and those to be avoided, e.g. poisonous or even psychotropic. However, in the Orient several thousand years ago, there was the recognition that many edible and certain non-edible mushrooms could have valuable health benefits."

Lentinula edodes (shiitake) and Grifola frondosa (maitake) have a history of medicinal use spanning millennia in parts of Asia. In ancient Japan, Grifola frondosa was considered medicinal, and was worth its weight in silver. Ganoderma lucidum, brewed as a form of herbal tea, is known in Chinese as língzhī (spirit plant) and in Japanese as mannentake (10,000 year mushroom). As early as the sixteenth century, Inonotus obliquus (chaga) was used as a folk medicine in the form of brewed tea, in Russia and Northern Europe.

The ancient Egyptians considered mushrooms food for royalty. The prophet Muhammad said, "Truffles are 'manna' which Allah, sent to the people of Israel through Moses, and its juice is a medicine for the eyes". Ötzi the Iceman, a mummified human from 3300 BC, was found carrying Fomes fomentarius (ice man fungus) and Piptoporus betulinus (birch polypore) wrapped in a leather string. Fomes fomentarius was was used topically in Europe during the 18th and 19th centuries, and was known to Hippocrates as mykes.

Genetic research has indicated fungi are more closely related to animals than any other kingdom. Although medicinal molds do not produce mushrooms, these fungi were the original source of penicillin, lovastatin, griseofulvin and allowed for the development of the statin medications.