Interestingly, although the Prunella vulgaris is also nicknamed ‘heal-all’ or ‘self-heal’ denoting that the herb is a virtual panacea, researchers studying the plant are basically bewildered as the herb has always had a limited therapeutic use. According to many, the plant got its Latin name from the word ‘brunella’ a distortion of the German word braune which literally translated into English denoted ‘a brown one’. In fact, besides its medicinal usage, the self-heal is an ideal example of the Doctrine of Signatures followed by medieval physicians. According to this theory, the plants healed the organs of the body they resembled. It may be mentioned here that John Gerard, a 16th century herbalist who was also the chief secretary of state to Queen Elizabeth I, praised the self-heal highly for its therapeutic properties. According to Gerard, there was no better medication for wounds than self-heal in the world and suggested that when the herb is combined with water and wine, it is highly effective in treating all kinds of wounds whether internal or external. Following the Doctrine of Signatures whereby the plant’s flowers resembled the mouth, the herb was extensively used to treat sore throats and other infections of the mouth. In addition, the herb was prescribed for treating diarrhea and boils. Some recent researched conducted on self-heal is said to have shown signs of remedies prepared from the herb’s extract to slow down the cell division in HIV. Chinese herbal medicine practitioners use self-heal to lower the blood pressure as well as an antibiotic. According to ancient French and German adages, ‘He needs neither physician nor surgeon that hath self-heal and sanicle to help him.’ For ages, self-heal has been extensively used as a wound herb for its properties to impede bleeding from the wounds as well as the ability to speed up the repairing process. While English herbalist John Gerard had lauded self-heal as the best medication to heal wounds in 1597, several years later, in 1735, Irish herbalist K’Eogh had observed that self-heal not only healed all internal and external wounds, but also helped in getting rid of all impediments of the liver and the gall bladder. Hence, K’Eogh recommended the use of self-heal to treat jaundice. The use of self-heal as a herbal medication has been greatly reduced over the years, but it still continues to be used widely as a would healer. As mentioned above, the herb is often taken as a gargle to treat sore throats and as infusion or tincture to cure internal wounds. The herb is generally applied externally to treat leucorrhea or white discharges from the vagina and also hemorrhoids or bleeding from anal veins. Many herbal medicine practitioners also recommend preparations with the herb as a tonic to stimulate various organs. Herbalists in China recommend taking self-heal on its own or combined with ju hua better known as the Chinese chrysanthemum to treat fevers, headaches, dizziness as well as vertigo. In addition, the herb is also used to soothe the swollen and sore eyes. The Chinese herbalists also use self-heal to calm the ‘liver fire’ that occurs owing to weakness of the liver. The herb is also recommended for use to treat all infected and enlarged glands, mainly the lymph nodes or organ filtering nodes of the neck. Following the finding of a few researches conducted on self-heal, herbal medical practitioners are now also prescribing the self-heal or heal-all to cure high blood pressure and related conditions.