A little known wonder, but did you know Wales has been attributed as being the birth place of modern medicine?
The Red Book of Hergest is one of the most ancient manuscript volumes in existence, dating from the years immediately following 1382. Now kept in the Bodleian Library on behalf of Jesus College, Oxford, as well as containing early prose and pieces of poetry the red vellum book also holds a collection of herbal remedies from the Physicians of Myddfai.
The Physicians of Myddfai were herbalists, living and working in and around the Carmarthenshire village of Myddfai. Their origins and dates are a little unclear but certainly the Lord Rhys - the same man who instigated the first eisteddfod - established and sponsored a new monastery at Strata Florida in about 1177.
Strata Florida means layers of flowers and, before too long, the monastery had become a centre for herbal healing. The Lord Rhys had a personal physician called Rhiwallan who probably received his training there and he and his three sons - Cadwgan, Griffith and Einon - were given land in the village of Myddfai in recognition of their work.
The legend of the Physicians of Myddfai originates from this period, a time of new ideas and of great cultural development, not just in Wales but in the whole of Britain. And over the years the knowledge of these physicians, their healing arts and remedies, were passed down from one generation to the next.
Remedies were made from only natural products, over 170 of them, grown locally in the Myddfai area. They included cures for such things as headache, sunburn, swellings and pain in the legs, coughs and sneezes. It has been claimed, with some justification, that the birth of modern medicine can be traced back to these Physicians of Myddfai.
I had no idea until a few years ago, and one day a friend and I decided to go on a road trip there. They have a visitor centre there if anyone else is interested in going 
