A home remedy is a treatment to cure a disease or ailment that employs certain spices, vegetables, or other common items. Home remedies may or may not have medicinal properties that treat or cure the disease or ailment in question, as they are typically passed along by laypersons (which has been facilitated in recent years by the Internet). Many are merely used as a result of tradition or habit or because they are effective in inducing the placebo effect. A significant number, however, have been demonstrated to effectively treat ailments such as sprains, minor lacerations, headaches, fevers, and even the common cold.

One of the more popular examples of a home remedy is the use of chicken soup to treat respiratory infections such as a cold or mild flu, and according to recent studies, this may actually be effective. Other examples of medically successful home remedies include willow bark tea to cure headaches and fevers (willow bark contains a form of acetylsalicylic acid, also known as aspirin); duct tape to help with setting broken bones; and duct tape or superglue to treat plantar warts; and Kogel mogel to treat sore throat. Most home remedies are made up of things that are already in the home.

In earlier times mothers were entrusted with all but serious remedies. Historic cookbooks are frequently full of remedies for dyspepsia, fevers, and female complaints.

Many European liqueurs or digestifs were originally medicinal remedies. In Chinese folk medicine, medicinal congees (long cooked rice soups with herbs), foods, and soups are part of the healing repertoire.

A common error is to confuse home remedies with homeopathic remedies. In fact, the two concepts are unrelated.

In the written record, the study of herbs dates back 5,000 years to the ancient Sumerians, who described well-established medicinal uses for plants. Ancient Egyptian medicine of 1000 BC are known to have used various herbs for medicine. The Old Testament also mentions herb use and cultivation.
Many herbs and minerals used in Ayurveda were described by ancient Indian herbalists such as Charaka and Sushruta during the 1st millennium BC. The first Chinese herbal book was the Shennong Bencao Jing, compiled during the Han Dynasty but dating back to a much earlier date, which was later augmented as the Yaoxing Lun (Treatise on the Nature of Medicinal Herbs) during the Tang Dynasty. Early recognised Greek compilers of existing and current herbal knowledge include Hippocrates, Aristotle, Theophrastus, Dioscorides and Galen.
Roman writers included Pliny the Elder and Celsus. Pedanius Dioscorides included the writings of the herbalist Krateuas, physician to Mithridates VI King of Pontus from 120 to 63 BC in his De Materia Medica. De Materia Medica was translated into several languages and Turkish, Arabic and Hebrew names were added to it throughout the centuries. Latin manuscripts of De Materia Medica were combined with a Latin herbal by Apuleius Platonicus (Herbarium Apuleii Platonici) and were incorporated into the Anglo-Saxon codex Cotton Vitellius C.III.

These early Greek and Roman compilations became the backbone of European medical theory and were translated by the Persian Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā, 980–1037), the Persian Rhazes (Rāzi, 865–925) and the Jewish Maimonides. Translations of Greek medical handbooks and manuscripts into Arabic took place in the eighth and ninth centuries.

Arabic indigenous medicine developed from the conflict between the magic-based medicine of the Bedouins and the Arabic translations of the Hellenic and Ayurvedic medical traditions. Spanish indigenous medicine was influenced by the Arabs from 711 to 1492. Islamic physicians and Muslim botanists such as such as al-Dinawari and Ibn al-Baita significantly expanded on the earlier knowledge of materia medica. The most famous Arabic medical treatise was Avicenna's The Canon of Medicine, which was an early pharmacopoeia and introduced the method of clinical trials. The Canon was translated into Latin in the 12th century and remained a medical authority in Europe until the 17th century. The Unani system of traditional medicine is also based on the Canon.

Translations of the early Roman-Greek compilations were made into German by Hieronymus Bock whose herbal published in 1546 was called Kreuter Buch. The book was translated into Dutch as Pemptades by Rembert Dodoens (1517–1585), and from Dutch into English by Carolus Clusius, (1526–1609), published by Henry Lyte in 1578 as A Nievve Herball. This became John Gerard's (1545–1612) Herball or General Hiftorie of Plantes. Each new work was a compilation of existing texts with new additions.

Women's folk knowledge existed in undocumented parallel with these texts.] Forty-four drugs, diluents, flavouring agents and emollients mentioned by Discorides are still listed in the official pharmacopoeias of Europe. The Puritans took Gerard's work to the United States where it influenced American Indigenous medicine.

Francisco Hernández, physician to Philip II of Spain spent the years 1571–1577 gathering information in Mexico and then wrote Rerum Medicarum Novae Hispaniae Thesaurus, many versions of which have been published including one by Francisco Ximénez. Both Hernandez and Ximenez fitted Aztec ethnomedicinal information into the European concepts of disease such as "warm", "cold", and "moist", but it is not clear that the Aztecs used these categories. Juan de Esteyneffer's Florilegio medicinal de todas las enfermedas compiled European texts and added 35 Mexican plants.

Martín de la Cruz wrote an herbal in Nahuatl which was translated into Latin by Juan Badiano as Libellus de Medicinalibus Indorum Herbis or Codex Barberini, Latin 241 and given to King Carlos V of Spain in 1552. It was apparently written in haste[citation needed] and influenced by the European occupation of the previous 30 years. Fray Bernadino de Sahagún's used ethnographic methods to compile his codices that then became the Historia General de las Cosas de Nueva Espana, published in 1793.[13] Castore Durante published his Herbario Nuovo in 1585 describing medicinal plants from Europe and the East and West Indies. It was translated into German in 1609 and Italian editions were published for the next century.

Traditional medicine (also known as indigenous or folk medicine) comprises medical knowledge systems that developed over generations within various societies before the era of modern medicine. Practices known as traditional medicines include herbal, Ayurveda, Siddha medicine, Unani, ancient Iranian medicine, Islamic medicine, traditional Chinese medicine, acupuncture, Muti, Ifá, traditional African medicine, and other medical knowledge and practices all over the globe.

The World Health Organization (WHO) defines traditional medicine as:

"the health practices, approaches, knowledge and beliefs incorporating plant, animal and mineral-based medicines, spiritual therapies, manual techniques and exercises, applied singularly or in combination to treat, diagnose and prevent illnesses or maintain well-being."

In some Asian and African countries, up to 80% of the population relies on traditional medicine for their primary health care needs. When adopted outside of its traditional culture, traditional medicine is often called complementary and alternative medicine. Herbal medicines can be very lucrative, generating billions of dollars in sales, but adulteration or counterfeit herbs can also be a health hazard.

The WHO also notes, though, that "inappropriate use of traditional medicines or practices can have negative or dangerous effects" and that "further research is needed to ascertain the efficacy and safety" of several of the practices and medicinal plants used by traditional medicine systems Core disciplines which study traditional medicine include ethnomedicine, ethnobotany, and medical anthropology.