We know for a fact, from a combination of written records and artefacts left in tombs, that garlic in one from or another has been and important medicine in most of the world’s great civilisations. Of course, the use of garlic must have been widespread for many thousands of years before the first surviving records, which refer to garlic as a well established remedy for a number of ailments. Perhaps the most intersting finding are that the uses to which garlic was put appear to have been very similar amongst populations who had no known contacts with one another, and who therefore must have discovered garlic’s benefits through trial and, no doubt, error, on their own.