DP Tool Club 26/CD_ASCQ_26_1295.iso/vrac/mherbs09.zip/MHERBS09.TXT

Text File | 1995-09-22 | 237KB | 5,167 lines

 introduction to and a resource list for medicinal herbs.


Archive-name: medicinal-herbs/part1

FAQ Keeper: Henriette Kress, [e-mail].

Contributors so far (listed alphabetically):   ;)
  Aine Maclir ([e-mail])
  Al Czap ([e-mail])
  Alex Standefer ([e-mail])
  amethyst ([e-mail])
  David Powner ([e-mail])
  Dennis McClain-Furmanski ([e-mail])
  Duane Weed ([e-mail])
  Elizabeth Toews ([e-mail])
  Eugenia Provence ([e-mail])
  Gloria Mercado-Martin ([e-mail])
  Howie Brounstein ([e-mail])
  Jonathan Treasure ([e-mail])
  Julia Moravcsik ([e-mail])
  Kathjokl ([e-mail])
  Kay Klier (temporarily without email)
  Ken Rice ([e-mail])
  Kenneth R. Robertson ([e-mail])
  Lawrence London ([e-mail])
  Mark D. Gold ([e-mail])
  Mary Decker ([e-mail])
  Noel Gilmore ([e-mail])
  Paul Iannone ([e-mail])
  Penny ([e-mail])
  Peggy Wilbur ([e-mail])
  Peter L. Schuerman ([e-mail])
  Rene Burrough ([e-mail])
  Rob McCaleb ([e-mail])
  Robert Gault ([e-mail])
  Ron Rushing ([e-mail])
  Roy Collins ([e-mail])
  Roy Upton ([e-mail])
  Rusty Taylor ([e-mail])
  Sharon Rust ([e-mail])
  [e-mail]
  Steve Dyer ([e-mail])
  Tim Keenan ([e-mail])
  Todd Caldecott ([e-mail])
  Torrey Peacock ([e-mail])
  _urban shaman_ (reached over [e-mail])

This FAQ is available as a textfile by anonymous ftp from sunSITE :
  sunsite.unc.edu /pub/academic/medicine/alternative-healthcare
                               /herbal-medicine/faqs/mediherb.txt

Get the html file from:
  - http://sunsite.unc.edu/herbmed/mediherb.html

==========
CONTENTS
-----
1  Introduction
  1.1  Wishlist - CHANGED
2  Frequently asked questions and other useful stuff
  2.1  Single herbs
*   2.1.1  Valeriana - ADDITION
      2.1.1.1  Valeriana is not derived from Valium
*   2.1.2  Yohimbe - ADDITION
*     2.1.2.1  Yohimbine is not a MAO inhibitor - CHANGED
    2.1.3  Absinthe FAQ pointer
    2.1.4  St. John's Wort (Hypericum) and photosensitivity
    2.1.5  Ginseng
    2.1.6  Stevia Leaf - Too Good To Be Legal?
    2.1.7  Poison Ivy / Oak / Sumac
    2.1.8  Echinacea
    2.1.9  Feverfew and migraine
*   2.1.10 Ginkgo - CHANGED
    2.1.11 Kava kava
    2.1.12 Pau d'Arco
*   2.1.13 Wild yams and contraception - ADDITION
*   2.1.14 Red raspberry and pregnancy - ADDITION
*   2.1.15 Green tea (and caffeine) - ADDITION
*   2.1.16 Comfrey carcinogenity - ADDITION
*   2.1.17 Cat's claw - ADDITION - well, almost. Not quite yet.
  2.2  Herbs for specific things
    2.2.1  Herbs for mosquitoes and other bothersome bugs
    2.2.2  Herbs for Migraines
    2.2.3  Herbs for vivid dreams
    2.2.4  Herbs for colds and flu
*   2.2.5  Herbs to make you sleep - CHANGED
*   2.2.6  Aphrodisiacs - ADDITION
  2.3  Processing herbs
    2.3.1  Distilling things
  2.4  Pointers to related documents
    2.4.1  Tinnitus FAQ pointer
    2.4.2  Plants by Mail FAQ pointer
    2.4.3  Carpal Tunnel Syndrome WWW page pointer
    2.4.4  Hint for Kombucha posters
*   2.4.5  Hint for Essiac posters - NEW ADDRESS
    2.4.6  Thinking of growing herbs for sale?
    2.4.7  Saw Palmetto and Prostata problems: Newsgroup/FAQ pointer
    2.4.8  Natural high FAQ pointer
    2.4.9  Natural vision FAQ pointer
*   2.4.10 Smoking herbs document pointer - ADDITION
*   2.4.11 Gout FAQ pointer - ADDITION
3  General Info
  3.1  Introduction to side effects, safety and toxicity of medicinal
       herbs
  3.2  Wildcrafting Ethics
  3.3  Different schools of Herbal Healing
    3.3.1  Traditions in Western Herbal Medicine
    3.3.2  East Asian traditional Healing - an introduction
*   3.3.3  Ayurveda - an introduction - ADDITION
    3.3.4  Pointers to homeopathy sites and stuff
  3.4  Commercial posts and how to get rid of them
  3.5  The Ames Test
  3.6  Trying out the placebo effect
4  Good Printed Sources
  4.1  Good Books on Herbal Medicine
  4.2  Good Books for further studies
  4.3  Good Magazines
5  Other sources
  5.1  Napralert - on-line commercial database
  5.2  Medline - on-line commercial database
  5.3  Good Herbprograms for the PC
  5.4  Good Herbprograms for the Macintosh
  5.5  Herbal CD-ROM
6  Teachings and stuff
  6.1  Apprenticeships offered lately
* 6.2  Pointers to schools - CHANGED
  6.3  Other stuff
7  Check these sites
  7.1  Medicinal Herb Archives at sunSITE.unc.edu
  7.2  Interesting WWW pages
8  Mailing lists
  8.1  The Herblist
  8.2  The Aromatherapy list
  8.3  The Holistic list
  8.4  The Kombucha list
  8.5  The Paracelsus Mailing list
  8.6  The OrMed Mailing list
  8.7  The Homeopathy List
  8.8  The Phytopharmacognosy List
9  Related newsgroups

==========
1 Introduction

-----
Hi all,
This is the umpth edition of the FAQ / Resource list.
Feel free to suggest additions, corrections and comments:
Email me at [e-mail].

==========

1.1 Wishlist

-----
The following topics are up for grabs:

Wanted for chapter 2.1 (Single herbs):
  More on raspberry and pregnancy
  Guarana
  Ephedra (Ma Huang)
  Pennyroyal oil and pennyroyal

Wanted for chapter 2.2. (Herbs for specific things):
  Herbs for asthma
  More herbs for vivid dreams
  Herbal abortives, safety, dangers and effectiveness (almost taken)

Wanted for chapter 2.3 (Processing herbs):
  Tinctures and stuff
  Dried or fresh herbs?
  Distilling things

Wanted for chapter 3.3 (Different schools of herbal healing):
  Aromatheraphy - an introduction
  Bach flower remedies - an introduction (maybe taken)

Wanted in addition:
  Anything else you see posted every so often, but that I
  haven't included in the FAQ or in the wishlist

If you wish to contribute send me a short note; I'll keep track
of who promised to do what, and if you can't find the time to put
something together in two months your topic will be up for grabs
again.
Your contribution can be as long as you wish to make it; but it
should be GOOD.

Also, if you really know what you are talking about I'd like to hear
your comments on any entry in this FAQ.

==========

2 Frequently asked questions and other useful stuff

==========

2.1 Single herbs

==========
2.1.1  Valeriana
-----
Also see Herbs to make you sleep (2.2.5).

-----
> Valeriana - uses? pros? cons? safety? dosage?

From [e-mail] (Todd Caldecott):
Valerian is an excellent herb to use, in combination with other herbs,
or used alone.  The active constituents are the volatile oil
(isovalerianic/enic acid) and valepotriates.  Valerian depresses the
central nervous system, similar to GABA  (which occurs naturally in the
brain and inhibits nerve inpulse transmission.)  There are no cons to
taking valerian other than if you use it other than in a capsule it can
smell up your house as a tea.  Or if you have cats they may may rub up
and down your leg (they like it, similar to catnip) while you are
drinking you tea, causing you to stumble and fall, spilling hot liquid
all over yourself.  For Valerian to be effective you must take it in
sufficient quantities to work eg. 1-2 tsp of the tincture (alcohol
extract) before bed, or 6-10 capsules of the dried plant.  Onset is
typically 1 hour.  You may awaken a little muddleheaded, which is
quickly relieved as soon as you move about. For a daily dose, 5 ml
(1 tsp) of the tincture 3 times a day between meals is the standard
dose.

About 20% of the population respond to Valerian as a stimulant, so
if you take it and have insomnia or buzzed out, try hops, chamomile,
passionflower, scullcap or avena, which are all excellent herbs to
relieve stress, anxiety and insomnia.

=====
2.1.1.1  Valeriana is not derived from Valium
-----
The best post to date on this subject was seen on AFH on 30 Apr 1994.
Sadly, I couldn't find this one in the archives, but luckily I'd saved
it way back when:

-----
A couple of posters have said that Valium is derived from valerian.

I'm pretty sure that Valium and the active principle of valerian are
totally unrelated chemically.  Valerian contains

       valeric acid  = propylacetic acid

Valeric acid modulates GABA receptors and it is known to be a CNS
depressant.

There is a synthetic CNS depressant, FDA-approved (U.S.) as an
anticonvulsant, which is derived from valerian.  It is

  valproic acid = 2-propylvaleric acid = di-n-propylacetic acid.

Like valeric acid, valproic acid modulates GABA.

Valium (diazepam) is a benzodiazepine, and neither of these compounds
look anything like a benzodiazepine.  (Diazepam is cyclic, and valeric
acid is not, e.g.)

All of the preceding can be verified from the Merck Index.

Another a.f.h.  subscriber in email cites a cyclic compound called
valtratum that is said to be an active component of valerian, and
gives as a reference _Farmakognosi_ by Gunnar Samuelsson, 1982.

Of course this doesn't prove that valerian doesn't contain a valium
analogue, but it does show that a substituted valeric acid (which
isn't related chemically to benzodiazepines) is a CNS depressant, and
that valeric acid is sufficient to account for the sedative properties
of valerian.

I would be genuinely pleased if someone could come up with a reference
which shows Valium to be derived from valerian, and which shows the
compound in valerian from which Valium is said to be derived.

No one was able to do so last time this came up in a.f.h.

On a related etymological note, the amino acid valine, which takes its
name from valerian, is 2-aminovaleric acid.

Peace,
Ash
--
 | Ash | K.A.Rice | [e-mail] | [e-mail]    |
                  | [e-mail] | [e-mail] |

==========
2.1.2  Yohimbe
-----


If people wanted to obtain a legal hyperalert sexually aroused state,
they might find some yohimbe and brew it up by simmering a quart of
water with 1 gm of ascorbic acid to 5 gm yohimbe until there's only 50%
of the original water volume left. Add a lot of sugar afterward. Mixes
synergistically with sassafras and pau d'arco if you're adventurous and
would like to cure your ills and get a hard-on at the same time.
However, most people who have tried yohimbe have been disappointed.
They didn't know know you need to brew it 20 to 30 minutes at approx
200x with an organic acid to release the alkaloid components.

The active alkaloid, yohimbine bitartrate, is the component of the only
allopathic medicines known to cause erection in impotent males and
approaches the concept of an aphrodisiac. Yohimbine bitartrate
particularly affects nerves and changes blood flow regulators in the
genital area. The medical texts never mention that it does the same
thing to women, showing a typical disregard for female erection.

In the best case scenario this decoction will cause many users get a
melting spinal sensation and extreme epidermal sensitivity with high
interpersonal perception and melding. It can be extremely sexually
arousing...or at least all the signs and signals are there...

And the worst case scenario for yohimbe? - well, you have to remember
ethnographic reports documenting cases of some African tribes drinking
it in copious quantities in pre-raid rituals to suppress fear and jack
up physical aggressiveness. After getting to the point where they were
bouncing up and down so much they looked like a mosh pit full of
spears, they'd run 10 miles over to the next village and kill off most
of the neighboring tribe, stopping only to rape the dogs, cattle,
women, children, surviving males, dead bodies, water jugs and tree
boles before running back home. I'm not sure this is something we need
downtown on Friday night.

Yohimbe Caution: it will keep both partners up all night. In the male
of the species this becomes really inconvenient and irritating as after
a few hours an erection becomes more of a liability than an asset -
especially as this aspect continues long past the point - as long as 8
hours - where you'd like to go to sleep and there's this turgid log
attached to you that won't go away and is just beginning to ache.

Note on the Caution: A warm bath can help with the log-on problem, as
can gentle massage. However this should be avoided for at least four
hours after ingestion because of the effect of raised body temperature
on metabolism of the alkaloid - ie, heat could intensify the stimulant
effects.

Females are not exempt from this - it has the same effect on them,
although it is easier to sleep on.

A possible downside of this erectile effect in high doses is the danger
of blood vessel damage and gangrene in the penis resulting from the
localized poor circulation condition known as penile erection.

=====
2.1.2.1  Yohimbine is not a MAO inhibitor
-----

<someone> wrote:
>The problem with yohimbe is that its principle active ingredient
>(yohimbine) is an potent MAO inhibitor.

From [e-mail] (Steve Dyer)
Yohimbine is NOT an MAO inhibitor.  This is one of the most frequently
regurgitated pieces of nonsense on the net (next to "Valium is derived
from Valerian".) The drug is an alpha-2 adrenergic antagonist. By
blocking presynaptic inhibitory neurons it actually acts as a
stimulant.
It also can raise blood pressure, from the same mechanisms.

One might expect to see additive or supraadditive effects from taking
other sympathomimetic drugs simultaneously, so your advice to avoid
such is still good.

-----
There was a post on the AFH about Yohimbine being a MAO inhibitor:
"the natural high faq states yohimbe is a mao inhibitor, the
medicinal herbfaq states it is not".

In that thread [e-mail] (Torrey Peacock) posted:
"This is a misconception that somehow got widely circulated.  Yohimbine
is *not* an MAO inhibitor, and will not cause the "cheese reaction".
It is, however, an alpha-adrenergic stimulant, and the concerns
relative to blood pressure and cardiovascular disease are valid.
Yohimbine is prescribed in conjunction with the SSRI antidepressants,
such as Prozac, to counteract the side-effects of sexual dysfunction,
impotence..."


·


I asked for his sources, and got this reply:

(still from Torrey Peacock:)
I believe I have read this update on the MAO-I scare in several places,
but most recently in "Better Sex Through Chemistry" by John
Morgenthaler & Dan Joy (Smart Publications, Petaluma, California,
1994)
I quote from pages 121-122:
"At least two popular books published in the 'seventies describe
yohimbine as an MAO inhibitor and recommend that the standard dietary
restrictions applying to MAO inhibitors be followed when yohimbine or
yohimbe extracts are used (Stafford, 1993; Gottlieb, 1974).
Additionally, several individuals who provided personal anecdotes for
this book had apparently received similar information from one source
or another.  However, we found no mention of MAO inhibition in
scientific papers on the action of yohimbine.  Furthermore, the
Physician's Desk Reference, which provides extensive safety
information with each entry, does not make reference to the dietary
guidelines for MAO inhibitors in any of the entries dealing with
yohimbine (PDR, 1994).  Given these facts, it is safe to conclude
either that yohimbine does not in fact inhibit MAO, or that its MAO-
inhibiting action is too minimal to warrant concern."

I hope this puts the question to rest forever. If not, please give
references. HeK.

==========
2.1.3 Absinthe FAQ pointer
-----
If you really are serious about Absinthe go get the alt.drugs FAQ on
the subject from hyperreal.com /drugs/faqs: FAQ-Absinthe.
Be warned - thujone IS dangerous, no matter what that FAQ says.

==========
2.1.4 St. John's Wort (Hypericum) and Photosensitivity
-----
Here's the question (on the herblist (see 8.1 below) in November
1994):
-----
As to Hypericum perforatum (St. John's Wort) causing photosensitivity
in humans, I have been unable to find a single study that verifies
this in vivo.  Lots of research on the effects of hypericin on cattle
and insects, but humans? This may be an example of assumptive jumping
from mammalian lab results to humans.  Anyone know a study that
indicates photosensitivity in humans do to Hypericum?

Cheers-
Peggy

-----
Here's the answer:

-----
From Howie Brounstein:

I don't know of any, Peggy.  I have not heard of one case of human
photosensitivity, even in the blond, blue-eyed, fair skinned ones,
from standard dosages of tincture.  Now I haven't asked any albinos
doing truckloads of hypericum a day - maybe they'd have a problem.
I've known a few folks who definitely did not like the feeling they
got from St. John's Wort, but being slightly saner than the average
bear, they stopped taking it.  Perhaps they've shunned the sun if they
continued.  But albino cows definitely have a problem with St. John's
Wort.

And so the authorities that be in charge (of cows and bugs, anyway) in
Northern California has waged a war against the poor St. John, hapless
victim of human transport from Europe.  By releasing bugs from afar,
they strive to rid our pasture of this scourage from the old country.
Alas, for I wonder - when there are only small populations left in the
area, will St. John become a rare and protected plant??

I do know that some common psychiatric pharmaceuticals DO cause
photosensitivity in humans...

And when you hold the leaves of the hypericum perforatum the light
of the sky you will see little holes, actually compartments
(perforations), that trap and use the energy of the sun to run a
biochemical factory, making hypericin, the red colored constituent
assumed to be one of the active ones.  Squueeezze that unopened flower
bud - just a hint of yellow petals peaking so cautiously from its
sepal safety - sqqqueeeezze and you will delight to find a drop of
redness so strong as to dye the fingers.

Now when I teach my students about this Wort, we general use flower
buds and the stems and small leaves attached to them to prepare oils
and tinctures. This appears to work just fine, producing extracts of
wondrous redfulness. But those who wish for an herbal nectar of
delight of greater strength, they sit for hours collecting just flower
petals in some Zen like quest. Well, what good's an herbalist without
patience :) ...Certainly they are rewarded with extract of unequalled
value (not found in Cheapside).

Now I'm not one to believe new herbal scientific data until I see the
experiment reproduced by other researchers (especially if they have
different sources of funding).  Recently I saw an article (was it
Medical Herbalism?) that stated two research teams at about the same
time released results of this Wort being antiviral against enveloped
virus that include herpes, etc.  But of interest to me was the notion
that sunlight increased the Wort's anti-viral effects - that sun again
- somehow, in some mysterious way linked to this plant and it's
effects.  Without exposure to sunlight the herbs anti-viral effect
dropped markedly.

I don't have all that much experience with bipolar and other mental
disorders and Hypericum, although I believe that consistent dosages
long term is the way to go ...and careful with self medication.  With
many of these kinds of problems you may not be able to tell if it's
working, especially since you started taking it and you feel great, I
mean really good, as you swing up into a manic phase and over one edge
or the other.  Have someone who can help you gauge your illness
objectively (ha) or at least tell you if you've fallen off the fence.
It can be hard to tell from the inside.

So ideally the Wort would take away the highs and lows and make the
emotional rollercoaster of todays hectic society more even.  As
opposed to the muscle relaxing tranquilizing effects of Valerian,
Skullcap, Pedicularis, and such.  I don't know about clinical studies,
but in my experience the Wort works for some and not others for simple
depression and light rollercoaster rides that do not incapacitate the
riders.  And it even works as a muscle relaxant in some people.  Not
the "sure and steady" herb that works effectively for everyone (like
that bitter Hore Hound that makes everyone gag ...I mean cough.)

And this even tempered plant grows in disturbed places, roadsides,
lots, loves it when its been bulldozed a year or so ago.  A calming
herb that grows all over disturbed areas ...hmmmmm.  Perhaps one
shouldn't focus on the oddities and quirks of nature and coincidence,
but I think it's cool.

The Wort Oil is good for skin irritations and such. I seen it help
when the calendula, comfrey, penstemon and other herbs won't work.  It
also helps cuts and external physical injuries in general.  But in my
eyes it seems to have an affinity for the nerves, and it seems to be
specific for injuries accompanied by nerve trauma, like I cut my arm
and my finger goes numb. I wouldn't claim it reconnects severed
nerves, but it will aid in healing them if traumatized.  But don't be
mislead by symptoms - put the oil on the arm injury, not the numb
finger.

Howie Brounstein
C&W Herbs
Eugene, Oregon

-----
From Peggy to above:

>But of interest to me was the notion that sunlight increased the
 Wort's anti-viral effects...  (snip) Without exposure to sunlight the
 herbs anti-viral effect dropped markedly.

Yes, and another really neat thing is that the hypericin (and its
phototoxicity in predator insects) is activated, in the presence of
oxygen, at the same wavelength that is given off by the Hypericum
leaves in the sun. (540-610 nm).  Some insects that ingest Hypericum
have adapted by tying together leaves and feeding inside the ties,
therefore protecting themselves from the effects of the hypericin.
(Sandberg, SL, et al. "Leaf-tying by tortricid larvae as an adaptation
for feeding on phototoxic Hypericum perforatum." JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL
ECOLOGY, 1989 15(3):875-886.)

Cheers-
Peggy

-----
From Jonathan Treasure:

Phototoxicity of Hypericum in a small proportion of the (blonde)
population has been clinically noted especially with topical
application whether published or not.  Here is an extract from a
report from this years' Convention of Naturopathic Physicians in the
US which adds some interesting information about the incidence of
Phototoxicity in Puerto Rican AIDS sufferers

begins
One doctor at the conference who treats a lot of AIDS patients said
she had seen frequent cases of phototoxocity in dark skinned Puerto
Ricans, especially with higher doses and long term administration.
AIDS patients started taking hypericum when is was found that the
hypericin had an anti-HIV effect in mice.  Use has persisted in spite
of later discovery that it doesn't help HIV in humans.  Most AIDS
patients feel much better when taking hypericum, probably because of
the antidepressant effect -- depression is probably the least often
mentioned symptom of AIDS.

Another doctor showed us her legs at the conference -- she had used a
hypericum ultrasound gel to treat a sprained ankle.  The ultrasound
drives the contents of the gel directly into the tissues.  She later
worked in the direct sunlight, and soon had second degree burns,
complete with blisters, whenever the sunlight fell on the gel-treated
skin.  Six weeks later we could still see the shadow on the back of
the leg where the sunlight didn't fall, and the shadow of a sandal
strap across the front of the ankle.  There was scarring from the
blisters.  By the way, she said the only thing that would help the
severe pain was aloe vera gel.
end

Jonathan
([e-mail])

-----
From Peggy to above:

Thank you for the reply.  I suspected that incidents of phototox could
be found somewhere, just couldn't come up with them.  I understand
that Hypericin's anti-viral activities (in vitro) are dependent on
"light-dose" (wavelength and duration), drug-dosage, and the presence
of oxygen.  It makes sense, then, that phototoxicity was found at the
higher, long-term usages (in addition to other factors).  Thank you,
again.

Cheers-
Peggy

-----
From Howie Brounstein to above:

Still, I believe that the average user treating depression shouldn't
shy away from trying this Wort.  The chemical alternatives have their
dangers, too, including photosensitivity.  I'll avoid ultrasound/
hypericum treatments.

Howie

-----
From Michael Moore:

I have retailed and wholesaled herbs for 20 years and have taught and
written about green stuff for 16 years (...and breathed and micturated
for almost 54), and I have only run across 1 person to have shown
signs of photosensitization from Hypericum.  He was a student of mine
in an 8-month program a few years ago.  He was what my grandma used to
call "Black Irish" (I guess as opposed to a Dirty-Blond Irish like
myself) and had the semi-transparent skin and jet-black hair of people
like Liam or Patrick Clancy.  Since he suffered from some mild
hereditary neuropeptide imbalances that showed up as a fairly classic
long-cycle bipolarity, he was quite taken with the use of the fresh
tincture of both Hypericum perf. and H. formosum which we gathered
during a couple of field trips.

As he related a year later, he took a fly-fishing vacation after the
class, returning to a place in the San Juans of Colorado (8,500 feet)
that the class had visited.  He had been going through a depressive
period ("Got Those OLD Relationship Blues...scooby do-WOP...
(beat>...(beat>...scooby-dooby...do-WOP!"), and was taking up to an
ounce of the Hypericum tincture (1:2, fresh plant) a day...a truly
excessive amount (it's an Irish thing, y'know?).  He broke out in
hives that lasted nearly a month.  He casually announced that he had
been taking a pharmaceutical anti-depressant for nearly a decade...I
hadn't even noticed.  I guess I am too likely to take people as they
are without a second thought.
(snip>

I figure the photosensitivity resulted from
A.  Racial sensitivity
B.  High altitude
C.  VERY high dosage
D.  (he was a Pisces)
 --and especially--
E.  Synergy with antidepressant meds (that he declined to identify)

Several years later another man (a customer) had a lip herpes
outbreak, possibly the result of playing tennis in the sunlight while
using Hypericum to help some back pain.  He had had sun reactions
before, so it is hard to speculate further.
He too was Black Irish.

In both instances the herbs were taken internally and the media was a
fresh tincture...appropriate, since the dry herb is nearly inert.  The
student was using high quantities along with medication and the
customer showed little more than passing and perhaps serendipitous
symptoms, and I have had GALLONS of my Hypericum tincture and oil go
through my grubbies over a couple of decades (usually used by folks
going through a stretch of somato-psychic flakiness and often
manifesting a peculiar, if temporary, lack of judgement regarding
emotions, dosages, and self-monitoring).  I consider Hypericum to be
safe...this is based on personally observing hundreds of people who
have used quality Hypericum preparations (...mine).
I would need a BIG study to convince me otherwise...or I would need to
start getting negative feedback.

This is not an idle statement.  Like the Wandering Homeopath,
travelling the world seeking provings (you mean you haven't heard THAT
legend? Well, the way I hear it, old Dr. Kent had retired to practice
in Montana and one day this Basque sheepherder came into his
office...) I have always tried my best to keep track of potential
side-effects of herbs.  I use herbs constitutionally, and any synergy
or contraindication I encounter helps me to understand the secondary
effects of a remedy so I can try to fit herbs and people together more
reliably.

Secondary effects are my grist (am I mixing metaphors again??).  I
can't work on Susun Weed's precepts level, that the body takes what it
needs from what you offer it, anymore than I can work with a
phytopharmaceutical model that ignores the multi-systemic effects of a
plant while focusing only on a specific band of pharmacokinetics ...
better even (they say) to refine (reduce) DOWN to single constituents
so as to better exaggerate the band and diminish the "unwanted"
whispers.  Sort of like taking a lovely image and running it through
Photoshop plugins until you only have some raggedy and stark black-
and-white outlines that bear little resemblance to the source.  As
most herbs, only using Hypericum for its anti-anxiety effects is to
ignore the subtle shades and colors it causes as it moves INTO,
THROUGH and OUT of the body.  This three-dimensional hologram of
effects is what makes herbs superior to drugs...  in a wholistic
model...and makes drugs superior to herbs in a medical model.  To view
herbs primarily as safer "little sister" analogs to drug therapies
developed FOR the medical model is to be blind to the greater value
they have in vitalist wholism, and to avoid the greater task and
difficulty (and even glory) we face trying to build (rebuild) models
of health and disease derived from balance and imbalance.
(snip>

Michael
[e-mail]

-----
From Jonathan Treasure:

Well...  I just got 88 pages of bumpf from NAPRALERT on Hypericum and
there isn't a single mention of phototoxicity - so it seems that apart
from a couple of anecdotal cases its not an issue as Michael Peggy
Howie et aial say ...  just keep away from the ultra sound gel in the
solarium.

Further to the Wort being a lover of roadsides etc. Howie, it was
widely distributed through Europe in Roman times by marching
legionaries, who also used it soothe their sore feet.  (another
anecdote not in NAPRALERT)

jonathan
([e-mail])

==========
2.1.5  Ginseng
-----

Ginseng comes from the Chinese "jen shen," which means "man root", so
named because some roots have limb like branches resembling arms and
legs. Because the root has a humanlike shape, it is considered by the
Orientals to be an overall body tonic.  The root is not harvested
until it is two or more years old; the older the root, the higher its
value.  It is held in high esteem in China where it has been valued
for thousands of years, sometimes commanding a higher price than gold.
An ancient Chinese Herbalist is quoted as saying, "Person would rather
take handful of ginseng then cartload of gold and jewels."  There are
three main herbs that fall under the label ginseng. Although all forms
of ginseng have similar properties, there are some subtle differences.

GINSENG, KOREAN (Panax) is the most widely used and studied ginseng in
the world.  As an adaptogen herb, it is believed to help "balance" the
body.  Ginseng's botanical name, Panax, is derived from the Greek
goddess, Panacea, the one who "heals all.".  Ancient Chinese records
dated from 25 AD mention this plant as a superior herb for increasing
overall strength and endurance, and for promoting health and well-
being throughout the body.  Korean Ginseng is said to be hotter than
either the American or Siberian Ginseng.

There are two types of Panax - red and white - which reflect
differences in the processing of the root. The red ginseng is
considered to be of superior quality. David Mowrey in his book, "next
Generation Herbal Medicine, has compiled a "Top Twenty" listing for
Korean Ginseng based on the "mass of clinical data and 3,000 years of
ancient Chinese medicine":

1.  Tumours                     11.  Stress
2.  Diabetes                    12.  Asthma
3.  Radiation sickness          13.  Headaches
4.  Neurosis                    14.  Anemia
5.  Hypotension                 15.  Indigestion
6.  Hypertension                16.  Impotence
7.  Joint swellings and pain    17.  Depression
8.  Cardiac arrythmiea          18.  Nervous - Anxiety
9.  Atherosclerosis             19.  Mental disorders
10. Fatigue - exhaustion        20.  Heart disease

GINSENG, SIBERIAN (Eleutherococcus senticosus) is a member of the
ginseng family, though it is of a different genus than other popular
ginsengs such as the Panax variety.  Natural resources of Siberian
Ginseng can be found in eastern Russian and northern Japan. What makes
Eleutherococcus particularly interesting is that it is a completely
novel plant, unknown in traditional medicine, and discovered by fairly
recent research when the Russians were hunting for a homegrown
substitute for expensive ginseng they were importing from China and
Korea. Screening other members of the same Araliaceae family, they put
this dark-berried plant through their standard mouse-stamina test and

noted that mice fortified with it swam half as far again as the
control mice. Interest sharpened, more tests were done at the U.S.S.R.
Academy of Science's Institute of Biologically Active Substances, and
the decisive test was personally supervised by the Institute's
Director, Professor I. I. Brekhman. He watched the performance of a
large group of athletes running a 10 mile race, and saw that those who
had taken the plant clocked up an average time of 5 minutes less than
the runners who had swallowed a placebo. By 1962, Eleutherococcus was
officially entered in the Russian pharmacopoeia.

Summary of Benefits of Siberian Ginseng:
- Increases physical indurance under stress
- Prevents reduction of endurance after exposure to heartstressing
  activity

·


- Protects against reduced cellular oxygen
- Protects against excessive heat and excessive cold conditions
- Protects against radiation exposure
- Protects against viral and microbial infections
- Augments sexual function
- Helps prevent tumor metastasis
- Favors normalization of neurotransmitter metabolism
- Promotes normal endocrine function
- Functions as a detoxifier, reducing the effect of toxic chemical
  compounds
- Improves visual acuity, color perception and hearing acuity
- Increases output per person-hour in work settings requiring
  attention and nervous tension

GINSENG, WILD AMERICAN (Panax quinquefolius) grows in the northeast
U.S. and Canada.  In the U.S. it is found from Michigan and Wisconsin,
south to northern Florida, Alabama, Louisiana and Oaklahoma. A heavy
concentration lies in the Appalachian Mountains, although wild
American ginseng is considered endangered. Ginseng was valued by the
native American Indians long before the white men began to popularize
it. It gained wide acclaim in the 1700's, when a French Jesuit priest
returned to Paris with a sample he had found in southern Canada.
Sensing the potential profits from the plant, Jesuits sent
missionaries to Canada to find more of it, and for several years the
Jesuits shipped tons of American ginseng to China. In 1784 George
Wahington reported meeting pack horses carrying ginseng.  Daniel Boone
and Davy Crockett are said to have made large sums of money in ginseng
trafficking. American ginseng became a lucrative crop, and not unlike
the gold during the gold rush of California, the wild ginseng was
almost wiped out along the Eastern seaboard due to overharvesting.
American ginseng is considered to have more cooling properties than
its Asian counterparts. It is only used after the roots are at least
four years old. Despite its being very difficult to cultivate, some
farmers have succeeded. Eighty percent of U.S. ginseng is grown in
Marathon County, Wisconsin. Most American ginseng is exported to Asian
countries.

Elizabeth Troews

-----
On the herblist Aug 1994:

>Could someone be kind enough to summarize the possible adverse
effects of ginseng? I've been taking a popular brand for a month now
and am generally happy with the effect on a chronic sinus problem and
energy levels, but beginning to feel kind of strung out ... i am
drinking caffeine and wonder if this could be a problem. Also need to
know about possible adverse interactions with prescription drugs such
as blood pressure medications.

Woah...."Ginseng Abuse Syndrome" is even recognised by the AMA. You do
not mention what kind of Ginseng or how much. I will defer to the TCM
people on this list to give wither you from the Chinese view but ...
surely you're not really doing coffee and ginseng? Oh dear oh dear ...
tut tut.

1. It is nonsensical to take caffeine and ginseng together regularly.
You will stress your adrenals (*get strung out*) and possibly raise
your *stress threshold* to a danger point .

2. Ginseng should be used with extreme caution in hypertensive
situations especially if under medication.

3. Sinusitis? Not the *usual* prescription. Pass.

4. Toxic signs - not uniformly predictable but can include
hypertension, euphoria, nervousness, skin eruptions, morning diarrhea.

5. Contraindications - nervous anxiety, nervous tension, hypertension,
disturbed menstruation, stimulant or rec. drug abuse, good vitality in
younger persons.

Most recommend taking as a tonic for a period then alternating without
eg 3 weeks on 2 weeks off.

Jonathan Treasure

-----
> the Peterson guide I have on edible wild plants recommends wild
american ginseng as a trail nibble...

If you did happen to find a Wild American ginseng, you should leave it
right where it is! Shame on Peterson. The plant is rare, and probably
endangered throughout its range.

Paul  ||  [e-mail]

-----
On alt.folklore.herbs June 1995:
> I've heard the ads for ginseng pills - are they worth the money?
> If so, are all brands the same?

You definitely want to buy from a reputable company.  According to
Professer Wang at the University of Alberta, researchers found that
many prepackaged ginseng products had a major shortcoming designed to
fool the consumer. You guessed it ... no ginseng.

Elizabeth Toews

-----
The UP side of poison ivy

Rarely mentioned but soon enough found out, ginseng and poison ivy are
childhood sweethearts: they grow up in the same neck of the woods.  If
you go digging ginseng in the Cumberlands of Tennessee, you will get
poison ivy -- all over your fingers.  With common roots in the forest
loam, the one looks out for the other.

But if that's not sufficient protection, the 'sang has yet another
look-out in the plant kingdom:  Virginia creeper.  A master of disguise,
ginseng sets up housekeeping in the thick of creeper beds.  Takes a
covite to tell them apart; the untutored need not apply.

Cumberland ginseng endangered?  Don't think so.  Most of the
knowledgeable
diggers have sense enough to harvest after the seeds have matured, and
don't have to be told to replant from what they've dug.  If there's to
be
"more where that came from" (talking car payments), they know they have
to replant.  It's city slickers, out for a test drive of their bean
boots,
we got to look out for.  For their advancement, thank we heavens, there
is poison ivy.

Alex Standefer ([e-mail])

==========
2.1.6  Stevia Leaf - Too Good To Be Legal?
-----  by Rob McCaleb, Herb Research Foundation

For hundreds of years, people in Paraguay and Brazil have used a sweet
leaf to sweeten bitter herbal teas including mate.  For nearly 20
years, Japanese consumers by the millions have used extracts of the
same plant as a safe, natural, non-caloric sweetener.  The plant is
stevia, formally known as Stevia rebaudiana, and today it is under
wholesale attack by the U.S.  Food and Drug Administration.

Stevia is a fairly unassuming perennial shrub of the aster family
(Asteraceae), native to the northern regions of South America.  It has
now been grown commercially in Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Central
America, the United States, Israel, Thailand and China.  The leaves
contain several chemicals called glycosides, which taste sweet, but do
not provide calories.  The major glycoside is called stevioside, and is
one of the major sweeteners in use in Japan and Korea.  Stevia and its
extracts have captured over 40% of the Japanese market.  Major
multinational food companies like Coca Cola and Beatrice foods,
convinced of its safety, use stevia extracts to sweeten foods for sale
in Japan, Brazil, and other countries where it is approved.
Europeans first learned of stevia when the Spanish Conquistadors of
the Sixteenth Century sent word to Spain that the natives of South
America had used the plant to sweeten herbal tea since "ancient
times".

The saga of American interest in stevia began around the turn of the
Twentieth Century when researchers in Brazil started hearing about "a
plant with leaves so sweet that a part of one would sweeten a whole
gourd full of mate." The plant had been described in 1899 by
Dr. M. S. Bertoni.  In 1921 the American Trade Commissioner to
Paraguay commented in a letter "Although known to science for thirty
years and used by the Indians for a much longer period nothing has
been done commercially with the plant.  This has been due to a lack of
interest on the part of capital and to the difficulty of cultivation."

Dr. Bertoni wrote some of the earliest articles on the plant in 1905
and 1918.  In the latter article he notes:

"The principal importance of Ka he'e (stevia) is due to the
possibility of substituting it for saccharine.  It presents these
great advantages over saccharine:

1. It is not toxic but, on the contrary, it is healthful, as shown by
   long experience and according to the studies of Dr. Rebaudi.
2. It is a sweetening agent of great power.
3. It can be employed directly in its natural state, (pulverized
   leaves).
4. It is much cheaper than saccharine."

Unfortunately, this last point may have been the undoing of stevia.
Noncaloric sweeteners are a big business in the U.S., as are caloric
sweeteners like sugar and the sugar-alcohols, sorbitol, mannitol and
xylitol.  It is small wonder that the powerful sweetener interests
here, do not want the natural, inexpensive, and non-patentable stevia
approved in the U.S.
In the 1970s, the Japanese government approved the plant, and food
manufacturers began using stevia extracts to sweeten everything from
sweet soy sauce and pickles to diet Coke.  Researchers found the
extract interesting, resulting in dozens of well-designed studies of
its safety, chemistry and stability for use in different food
products.
Various writers have praised the taste of the extracts, which has much
less of the bitter aftertaste prevalent in most noncaloric sweeteners.
In addition to Japan, other governments have approved stevia and
stevioside, including those of Brazil, China and South Korea, among
others.  Unfortunately, the US was destined to be a different story.
Stevia has been safely used in this country for over ten years, but a
few years ago, the trouble began.

FDA ATTACK ON STEVIA

Around 1987, FDA inspectors began visiting herb companies who were
selling stevia, telling them to stop using it because it is an
"unapproved food additive".  By mid 1990 several companies had been
visited.  In one case FDA's inspector reportedly told a company
president they were trying to get people to stop using stevia "because
Nutra Sweet complained to FDA." The Herb Research Foundation(HRF),
which has extensive scientific files on stevia, became concerned and
filed a Freedom of Information Act request with FDA for information
about contacts between Nutra Sweet and FDA about stevia.  It took over
a year to get any information from the FDA, but the identity of the
company who prompted the FDA action was masked by the agency.

In May, 1991 FDA acted by imposing an import alert on stevia to
prevent it from being imported into the US.  They also began formally
warning companies to stop using the "illegal" herb.
By the beginning of 1991, the American Herbal Products Association
(AHPA) was working to defend stevia.  At their general meeting at
Natural Products Expo West, members of the industry pledged most of
the needed funds to support work to convince FDA of the safety of
stevia.  AHPA contracted HRF to produce a professional review of the
stevia literature.  The review was conducted by Doug Kinghorn, PhD.,
one of the world's leading authorities on stevia and other natural
non-nutritive sweeteners.  Dr. Kinghorn's report was peer-reviewed by
several other plant safety experts and concluded that historical and
current common use of stevia, and the scientific evidence all support
the safety of this plant for use in foods.  Based on this report, and
other evidence, AHPA filed a petition with FDA in late October asking
FDA's "acquiescence and concurrence" that stevia leaf is exempt from
food additive regulations and can be used in foods.

FDA, apparently attempting to regulate this herb as they would a new
food additive, contends that there is inadequate evidence to approve
stevia.  However, because of its use in Japan, there is much more
scientific evidence of stevia's safety than for most foods and
additives.  The extent of evidence FDA is demanding for the approval
of stevia, far exceeds that which has been required to approve even
new synthetic food chemicals like aspartame (Nutra Sweet).

AHPA's petition points out that FDA's food additive laws were meant to
protect consumers from synthetic chemicals added to food.  FDA is
trying, in the case of stevia to claim that stevia is the same as a
chemical food additive.  But as the AHPA petition points out,
Congress did not intend food additive legislation to regulate natural
constituents of food itself.  In fact, Congressman Delaney said in
1956, "There is hardly a food sold in the market today which has not
had some chemicals used on or in it at some stage in its production,
processing, packaging, transportation or storage." He stressed that
his proposed bill was to assure the safety of "new chemicals that are
being used in our daily food supply," and when asked if the
regulations would apply to whole foods, he replied "No, to food
chemicals only." AHPA contends that stevia is a food, which is
already recognized as safe because of its long history of food use.
Foods which have a long history of safe use are exempted by law from
the extensive laboratory tests required of new food chemicals.  The
AHPA petition, however, supports the safe use of stevia with both the
historical record, and references to the numerous toxicology studies
conducted during the approval process in Japan, and studies by
interested researchers in other countries.

To date, the FDA still refuses to allow stevia to be sold in the U.S.
but the recently-enacted Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act
of 1994 may prevent the FDA from treating stevia and other natural
herbs as "food additives."

[e-mail]     --  [also [e-mail]]

==========
2.1.7  Poison Ivy / Oak / Sumac
-----
We're lucky in Finland in that we don't have any of above problem
plants. But since it's asked every week in season it has to be in the
FAQ, so what's in here is mostly pulled from rec.gardens archives 1992
 - 1994, or from alt.folklore.herbs archives 1993 -, or taken off
bionet.plants June 1995. If you wrote some text I've included here
but you aren't mentioned please email - I'll be happy to mention you
in the next posting.

-----
How to recognize PI/PS/PO

courtesy Kay Klier ([e-mail]):
POISON IVY (Toxicodendron radicans = Rhus radicans = Rhus
  toxicodendron) Found in a wide range of habitats, but in the
  midwest often seen in disturbed woods, roadsides, and flood
  plains.  Most widespread of PI, PS, and PO.
Small, slightly woody plant, or shrubby, or vining.   LEAVES
  ALTERNATE (= 1 leaf per node), TRIFOLIOLATE (=3 leaflets), with
  pedicel (leafstalk) and the CENTRAL LEAFLET WITH PETIOLULE
  (=leaflet stalk).  The lateral two leaflets are not distinctly
  stalked.  Leaflets are a variety of shapes, but generally ovate or
  obovate (roughly apple-leaf shaped).  Leaflets may be smooth-edged
  (entire), irregularly toothed, or shallowly lobed.  Leaves of one
  variant look like small oak-leaves (but look again!).
  Leaves apple-green and shiny in the spring, deep green and often
  dusty in the summer, turning a glorious reddish orange in the
  fall.  Flowers tiny, whitish, in clusters; fruits white berries in
  late summer or fall.
Closest look-alike:  Box-elder seedlings (Acer negundo), which has
  OPPOSITE, trifoliolate leaves; the lateral two leaflets are often
  slightly stalked. Older box-elders generally have 5 leaflets per
  leaf.

POISON SUMAC (Toxicodendron vernix = Rhus vernix)   Shrub, to perhaps
  15-20 ft tall, often branched from the base.  LEAVES ALTERNATE
  WITH 7-13 LEAFLETS, lateral leaflets without a petiolule (leaflet
  stalk), TERMINAL LEAFLET WITH A STALK.  MIDRIB OF THE LEAF WITHOUT
  A PAIR OF WINGS OF TISSUE THAT RUN BETWEEN LEAFLET PAIRS.  More
  small, whitish berries in a long cluster. Usually in wetlands,
  Maine to Minnesota, south to Texas and Florida.
Closest look-alikes: Staghorn sumac, Rhus typhina, which has clusters
  of fuzzy, red fruits and toothed leaflets, and likes dry soils;
  Smooth sumac, Rhus glabra, with bright red fruits and slightly
  toothed leaves; much drier soil than PS.

POISON OAK: (Toxicodendron diversiloba = Rhus diversiloba).
  Reputedly the worst of the bunch.  Erect shrub, usually about
  3-6 ft tall (to 12 ft!), bushy, with ALTERNATE LEAVES OF THREE
  LEAFLETS, the LEAFLETS generally lobed slightly or as much as an
  oak leaf; CENTRAL LEAFLET STALKED.  Leaves generally bright, shiny
  green above, paler below.  Fruits are small whitish berries.
  Common on the west coast, esp. low places, thickets and wooded
  slopes. Occasionally a 5-leafleted form is found.

Steve Hix ([e-mail]), in response to above:
>POISON OAK description...
If it were only that simple! In addition to that form, you can find
  poison oak growing as a vine (very like wild grape, but with
  smooth bark) up to six inches in diameter disappearing up into the
  tree tops near streams, or in thickets that look a *lot* like
  blackberry without spines, or sometimes as collections of leafless
  single branches (later the leaves appear, shiny and red, changing
  to oily green, and so on).
  Fortunately, it doesn't seem to grow much above 5000' elevation.

-----
How to avoid the rash

Difficult if you live near PO/PI/PS...
... the best way not to get the rash is to learn to recognize the
plant(s) and avoid it (them) after that.

But:
- You can even get a dose if a bunch of the leaves get dumped into a
  stream or pond ... the oil ends up floating on the surface of the
  water.
- Dogs / cats / horses can get it on their coats and you'll get it
  from them when you pet them barehanded.
- If you burn these plants and inhale the smoke you'll get a bad case
  of internal PI.

-----
Why does it give you a rash? / Spreading the oil about

courtesy Ron Rushing ([e-mail]):
The irritant in poison ivy, poison sumac, and poison oak is urushiol.
  The rash you get is an allergic reaction.  Everything I say below
  about poison ivy should also apply to poison oak and sumac.
If you brush up against a healthy undamaged plant, you won't usually
  get urushiol on you.  You usually have to come in contact with a
  damaged leaf.  Almost all plants have damaged leaves - either from
  insects, weather, or from your stepping on them.
The oil is easily transferred from one place to another.  For example,
  I got some on my shoelaces once, and I kept getting poison ivy on
  my hands for a couple of months. Once it is on your hands, it can,
  and will, end up anywhere on you body.
The rash from poison ivy can take up to 72 hours to appear after
  exposure, and is often spread on the body by taking showers while
  the oils are still on the skin.
Once you get the oil on clothing, it can sit for months and still
  cause a rash upon contact with your skin.  For example,lets say you
  get some poison ivy oil on your boots, then put the boots away for
  the winter. Next spring you get out the boots and go for a walk -
  but not in the woods. A few days later, voila - your hands are
  breaking out from putting on your boots and tying the laces.
As long as you've washed the original oil off your skin, the exudate
  from the blisters should not re-infect your skin.  It's just
  exudate, and does not contain urushiol.

courtesy [e-mail] (K. R. Robertson):
Washing with strong soap merely removes excess poison from the skin,
  but will not remove any which has already reacted, because the
  poison is believed to form a complex with skin proteins and
  therefore is not removable short of removing the skin!  Even so, it
  is difficult to wash off this insoluble poison completely.
Eating a leaf of poison-ivy may have disastrous results.  One may
  surpass his normal level of immunity by the first bite; in this
  case he is in for an internal case of poison-ivy, occasionally
  known to be fatal.
The mechanism of sensitivity is not thoroughly understood.  It does
  not behave like protein sensitivities such as hay fever.  It is a
  hypersensitivity of the delayed type, whose mechanism is related to
  that of organ transplant rejection.
(Originally prepared by William T. Gillis, 1973, Revised by Kenneth R.
Robertson, 1993, Illinois Natural History)

courtesy [e-mail] (Robert Gault):
The active ingredient in poison ivy and other plants in the same
  family is 3-n-Pentadecylcatechol, common name urushiol, which is a
  chemical in the phenol family.
Dermatitis (skin inflamation and blistering) is spread by the act of

·


  scratching which redistributes the urushiol over the body. While
  the normal treatment for poision ivy does not include the
  suggestion below, a reasonable approach would be to convert the
  urushiol into a water soluable material. Phenols are acids so
  washing with a weak base like diluted house hold ammonia or a paste
  of baking soda should do the trick.

courtesy Kay Klier ([e-mail]):
People who react to any of the species of PI/PO/PS will undoubtedly
  react to the others; further, they may cross-react with mango
  (Mangifera indica), cashew (Anacardium occidentale), and Chinese or
  Japanese Lacquer (Rhus verniciflua).  (the cellulose-based spray
  paint that is called lacquer is not involved in this... just "real"
  lacquer, like carved lacquer boxes, etc.).
Generally speaking, it's not a good idea to sit under any member of
  the Anacardiaceae in the rain... they all tend to have a leaf toxin
  that falls on innocent bystanders below.
Most people are NOT sensitive to PI/PO/PS at birth, but become
  sensitized through repeated exposures.  Some people are apparently
  immune throughout their lives, but I really don't know how to test
  that claim... ;-)
There is a barrier cream and a cleanup wash called Technu commonly
  used by those who are sensitized to PI/PO/PS.  Works quite well.
-----
What helps

First a word of caution:
The recommendations listed here are without medical foundation and,
if actually used, are at the sole risk of the reader.

1.  Jewelweed, Impatiens pallida, I. capensis, I. biflora, or similar
    species. AKA Touch-me-not, silverweed.  The plant produces both
    cleitogamous (self-fertilized), and chasmogamous (cross-
    fertilized) flowers.  Mature seed pods will build tension as they
    dry, and can "shoot" seeds 5 feet away when activated by a slight
    disturbance.
 a. Jewelweed, fresh
    Crush some leaves and a bit of the stem and rub the resulting
    juice on the rashy area.  Repeat frequently.
 b. Jewelweed decoction
    Take one part Jewelweed (or stronger as needed), and twenty parts
    water.  Boil water in non-metallic container, add jewelweed, boil
    for fifteen minutes, strain and store in jar in fridge or freeze
    as ice cubes.  Apply frequently.
 c. Jewelweed juice
    From [e-mail] (Robert King):
  - Gather the entire plant, leaves, stems, and all; the plant is very
    succulent and juicy... I have never had a need to add extra water,
    but if you do, use distilled. Don't be greedy, either trim tops &
    outer branches, or selectively take entire plants from the center
    of a crowded stand.  One large (4-foot) plant should be adequate
    for the largest rash on one person.  Plants will lose turgor and
    wilt quickly after cutting, this is OK, just makes it easier to
    emulsify.
  - Liquify the plants in a blender at the highest speed possible.
    Then extract the juice by filtering thru cloth, common strainer,
    or fruit press... a little pulp in the mix won't hurt, this will
    settle out after a couple hours, anyway.  Use immediately, or
    refrigerate... this stuff spoils rapidly at room temperature..!!
  - Apply the juice to the infected area with a common paint brush...
    I've found 1 to 2" size works best. Blow-dry the area as you apply
    it with a hair dryer on low heat... after several coats of
    'paint,' an orange-colored "skin" will develop.  This "skin" will
    protect un-infected areas against the poison ivy allergen.
  - Repeat this procedure as needed, especially first thing in the
    morning, and before bedtime.  Be sure to use common sense in
    keeping any fluid that happens to come from blisters away from
    unprotected areas... yourself AND others.  Keeping the infected
    area as dry as possible will hasten the healing; continue
    application until no more blisters are present... usually about 3
    days.
  - Ironically, jewelweed favors growing in areas of similiar habitat
    as poison ivy, therefore it can often be found nearby, prefering
    moist ground, near water, or often, even in shallow water.  It
    grows rapidly in ideal environs, but usually doesn't reach
    significant size until mid-summer; therefore, it might pay to keep
    a bit frozen in the fridge from the previous year for early-season
    use.  The extract tends to spoil rapidly, even at cooler
    temperatures, so I wouldn't recommend keeping it for much more
    than a week without freezing... the fresh solution works best,
    anyway.
2.  Catnip
    Rub fresh catnip leaves on the affected area.

Poison ivy entry continued in part 2.
==========
End of part 1 of 4
==========



news.eunet.fi!newsmaster
 introduction to and a resource list for medicinal herbs.


Archive-name: medicinal-herbs/part2

==========
2.1.7  Poison Ivy / Oak / Sumac - continued from part 1
-----
3.  Mugwort (Jilara [[e-mail]])
    Pick two large handfuls of fresh mugwort (Artemesia vulgaris) and
    let infuse in 1 cup alcohol for overnight.  Apply to affected area
    with a clean sponge/washcloth/q-tips/whatever every four hours.
    Dries it up quickly.
  Robert Gault reminded me that mugwort is a strong allergen (have I
    told you they keep track of mugwort pollen in the air over here?).
    To quote Robert Gault: 'Can you imagine the result if the poison
    ivy sufferer is also allergic to Mugwort?! '  Ouch - yes, I can.
4.  Aloe vera (Jilara [[e-mail]])
    Take a large leaf from the aloe vera plant you keep on your
    windowsill for burns.  (If you don't have one, get one!) (NOTE:
    "aloe vera gel" sold commercially does NOT work!) Slice lengthwise
    to expose the juicy interior of the leaf.  (This will give you an
    upper and lower leaf, with a juicy side to each.)  Trim off leaf
    edges.  Apply directly to affected area, juicy side against the
    sores.  Bandage in place.  Apply a new leaf every day until
    healed.  This works phenomenally well, but you have to put up with
    bulky slabs of aloe vera leaf against the area.  Which would you
    rather have: oozing sores or a succulent slab of leaf?  Thought
    so.  ;-)  I can't laude this one enough!  It works faster than any
    other remedy! And relieves the dreadful *itching*, too!
5.  Goldenseal
    Liberally dust powdered goldenseal on top of Jewelweed/Aloe juices
    juices before they dry onto the lesions; this will promote rapid
    healing.
6.  Mixed poultice, with (1) (4) and (5):
    Mash leaves and stems of comfrey, plantain leaves, and the remains
    of the jewelweed and aloe leaves/stems you used in (1) and (4).
    Make a poultice or compress and put it on top of the goldenseal
    dusted on the lesions; hold poultice in place with a bandage of
    some sort, if possible.
    After four hours or so remove poultice and clean the lesions with
    water.
    Repeat this entire procedure every four hours as needed until
    itching is reduced and lesions begin to heal.
7.  Gumweed Plant(Grindelia)
    Indians used the resin from the gumweed plant (Grindellia) to
    treat poison ivy.
8.  Baking Soda
    I swear by baking soda paste for poison oak. It not only soaks up
    the oozing mess, it completely stops the itching throughout the
    day.
9.  Mixed alcohol liniment
    Take sweetfern, jewelweed, witch hazel, rubbing alcohol... Zip it
    all up in a blender until it's green and mushed, let it sit for
    two weeks (ouch! I know...not for THIS outbreak, sorry), strain it
    and voila, a marvy linament.
10. Poison Ivy leaf
  Caution: from [e-mail] (K. R. Robertson):
    Eating a leaf of poison ivy may have disastrous results.  One may
    surpass his normal level of immunity by the first bite; in this
    case he is in for an internal case of poison-ivy, occasionally
    known to be fatal.
    Actually, this is just the time of the year to build up your
    immunity by nipping off a very tiny piece of poison ivy leaf (size
    of a head of a pin) and put in a capsule and swallow.  Do 1-2
    times a week.  Stop if you start breaking out.
11. Salt (from [e-mail])
    For the little initial blisters, I rub salt and burst them and
    leave the salt on to dry.  They're history. Also salt worked on
    the moist areas of my face and under my nose where lye soap lather
    couldn't stay dried out long enough to dry out the rash.  Works
    well on large surface rashes in case the blister stage grew
    untreated (but it didn't work on the "mini-mountain" reaction to
    p.i. that my mom got).  MOST essential, leave the salt on to dry,
    adding more salt moistened with water to help create a paste that
    will stick as it dries, thus drying out that nasty, annoying p.i.
    The worse the spread, the longer the duration of salt/soap
    treatment alternated 12 hours to 1) dry out the present fresh
    redness, and 2) dry out *new* fresh red.
    Yep, you guessed it... the salt falls off everywhere. That's 1
    reason I used the lye soap during bed hours.  The other reason was
    that neither treatment, in a prolonged battle (1 1/2 wks) stayed

    effective by itself, i.e.continuous dry-out, but alternating them
    did it. I've wondered why?
12. Lye soap ([e-mail])
    - initially from a pioneer reenactment lady. The older/yellower
    the bar got, the less effective it seemed. Now, I've found it at
    the grungiest grocery store in town, a soap called Oxygon.  Wet
    the bar and lather it up on the rash into a paste and let dry.
    Easier than the salt but since discovering salt, I tend to believe
    salt is more effective for me, at least with my initial tiny
    blisters, which is all I ever have to deal with now.

-----
How to get rid of poison ivy in your yard
(suggestions from rec.gardens/alt.folklore.herbs):

1. Planting catnip should get rid of poison ivy.
2. Goats. They are very effective, but in the end will be a bigger
   bother than the poison ivy. (Be suspicious if someone offers you
   free goats!)
3. Poison ivy again: buy the super concentrated form of Round-Up and
   dilute to 3 times the recommended strength. (Well, hot damn!  It
   killed off nearly every piece of PI in one application and only a
   few (about a dozen) plants returned a year later.)
4. Pull it, but protect yourself (big plastic bag, disposable suit...)
   Immediately wash all clothes you used two-three times. Do not touch
   the plastic bag / disposable suit from the outside. Do not touch
   your clothes / boots / whatever from the outside before washing.

==========
2.1.8  Echinacea
-----
From [e-mail] (Todd Caldecott)

In my training with NA's I learned that Echinacea (blood purifier and
antibiotic) can be used as long as two weeks.  The German research
branch of their equivalent of FDA (called Komission E) Drs. Wagoner and
Bauer demonstrated this fact.  Their studies also showed that tinctured
extract of this plant could be chemically potent or not depending on
how it was grown, harvested and extracted.  In their studies, the
extracts available on the commercial market were far less potent than
their own prepared version.  So their conclusion was 2 weeks on then
off for a week, then one could use it for another two weeks at
diminished activity.  Also the plant variteties of Echinacea
angustifolia, purpurea and to a lesser extent pallida all had
medicinal chemical activity.  The whole plant is medicinal but needs to
be at least 3 years old before you should harvest.

There is no evidence to suggest that Echinacea cannot be used longer
than 2 weeks.  In the original study (and please be patient I'm doing
this from memory) Echinacea was found to be increasingly effective for
5 days, after which the study ceased.  This paper, originally written
in german, was mistranslated, leading one to believe that Echinacea's
effects plateaued after five days.  Echinacea is being used by several
professionals long term.  Typically though, it is used as a surface
immune tonic, useful in chronically immunodepressed patients who suffer
from chronic colds etc. (although its use in AIDS is still a matter of
some controversy).  For most of us who take it seasonally for colds
etc. it is most effective when taken in combination with other herbs
ie. garlic, baptisia, thymus, astragalus etc.

==========
2.1.9  Feverfew and migraine
-----  by Eugenia Provence

It's not at all unusual for people interested in using herbs to
replace over the counter medications with simple herbal counterparts.
What has been unusual enough to generate headlines, though, is the
conventional medical community's research and acceptance of a
traditional European folk remedy, Feverfew, in preventing migraine
headaches.

Migraines are believed to be caused by an upset in serotonin
metabolism, causing spasms of intracranial blood vessels, which then
causes dilation of extracranial blood vessels.

In the 1970s an English research group sought volunteers already using
Feverfew before beginning a study of its efficacy.  Their
advertisement in a London newspaper brought more than 20,000
responses.  Since then, several well-documented double-blind, placebo
studies in England confirm its value.

An interesting one reported in The Lancet (July 23, 1988; 2(8604):189-
192) followed 72 volunteers.  After a one-month trial using only a
placebo, half of the group received either one capsule of dried
Feverfew leaves a day (or a matching placebo) for four months.
Neither the group nor the researchers knew which group was receiving
the Feverfew.  The group kept diary cards of their migraine frequency
and severity.  After four months, the groups switched medications, and
the trial continued for an additional four months.  60 patients
completed the study, and full information was available on all but
one.

The study found Feverfew to be associated with reducing the number
and severity of attacks (including vomiting), with the researchers
concluding that there had been a significant improvement when the
patients were taking Feverfew.  There were no serious side effects.

Feverfew is currently classified as Tanacetum parthenium, a member of
the Asteracea (or Compositae) family, and was formerly named
Chrysanthemum parthenium, where you'll still find it listed in some
references.  Feverfew is a corruption of Febrifuge, based on its tonic
and fever-dispelling properties.  It's been called Maid's Weed,
referring to its emmenagogue qualities, which are also reflected in
its Greek name, Parthenion ("girl").

Its primary actions are anti-inflammatory, bitter, emmenagogue and a
vasodilator.  Aside from migraine relief, long-term users report
relief from depression, nausea and inflammatory arthritic pain.  Drunk
in cold infusion, it can relieve the cold, clammy sweats associated
with migraine.

Additionally, it's  been used externally as an insect repellant, and
topically for insect bites.  Perhaps the insect-repelling quality
accounts for the tradition of planting it around the house to ward off
illnesses and to purify the air.

The tea, drunk cold, has been used for sensitivity to pain, and for
relief of face-ache or ear ache (all migraine-like symptoms).  The
Eclectic physicians of the 19th century called it one of the
pleasantest of the tonics, influencing the whole intestinal tract,
increasing the appetite, improving digestion, promoting secretion,
with a decided action on kidney and skin.

John Gerard's Herbal in 1663, said it to be "...good against summer
headaches to inhale crushed Feverfew blossoms.  Dried and taken with
honey or sweet wine good for those as be melancholic, sad, pensive or
without speech."  Culpepper used in it poultice form for head ache.

Feverfew in blossom is easily identified by its flat or convex yellow
disk and numerous short, broad 2-ribbed white rays.  The leaves are
alternate, petiolate, flat, bi or tripinnate with ovate, dentate
segments.  It quickly escapes cultivation, and has become naturalized
in many areas of the U.S. and Europe, in some places regarded as a
nuisance weed.

Among its constituents are a volatile oil, containing pinene and
several pinene derivatives, bornyl acetate and angelate, costic acid,
B-farnesine and spiroketal enol ethers; Sesquiterpene lactones, the
major one being parthenolide); and Acetylene derivatives.

Pharmacologists say it is likely that the sesquiterpene lactones in
Feverfew inhibit prostaglandin and histimine released during the
inflammatory process, preventing the vascular spasms that cause
migraines.  It appears to regulate the serotonin mechanism.

To attain the maximum benefit from Feverfew, it should be taken daily
as a preventive.   For migraine prevention, parthenolide plays an
important role.  The parthenolide content in Feverfew is highly
variable in different populations grown in different locations or
harvested at different times of the year.

Recent Canadian tests of U.S. Feverfew products found all of them to
be low in parthenolide. Canada, which has recently recognized Feverfew
products as official, over the counter drugs for migraine prevention
and relief, will require that they contain a minimum of 0.2%
parthenolide.

So, this is one of the few cases where a standardized extract may be
more desirable than the whole plant, with a lot to be said for fresh
or freeze-dried preparations.  If you want to use the fresh plant, the
flowers have a higher parthenolide content than do the leaves.  If you
are picking the leaves, they are best just before flowering.

In one of those magical bits of synergy that herbalists love, the
isolated parthenolides used alone don't work on migraines, nor does
the whole plant with the parthenolides removed.  The parthenolide is
bioavailable only in the whole plant.

PRECAUTIONS:   I know of nothing, whether allopathic or herbal
medicine, that I would feel free in saying to have absolutely no
unpleasant side effects.  We're all unique individuals when it comes
to body chemistry.  Some unfortunate people are allergic to chamomile.
They may also be allergic to Feverfew.

A few recent studies of parthenolide in vitro point to toxicity
involving smooth muscle tissue.  However, no side effect resembling
this has ever been reported in human use.  Feverfew's safety and
usefulness are historic.

Pregnant women should never take Feverfew.  Its traditional use as an
emmenogogue underlines the risk here.

The bitter tonic qualities, so useful for indigestion, can cause
gastric pain in people with gall stones or gall-bladder problems, by
making the gall bladder try to empty.   Likewise, the increased
production of stomach acid would make it highly aggravating to anyone
with a gastric ulcer or esophogeal reflux.

Some people have developed mouth ulcers from eating the fresh leaves.

DOSAGE:  Feverfew is most effective fresh or freeze dried.  Take the
equivalent of 1 fresh leaf or 125 mg. freeze-dried herb once a day
(0.2% parthenolides) 1-3 times daily (don't chew the leaf).

In addition to Feverfew on its own as preventive herbal therapy, one
would want to look at one's individual migraine triggers or pattern
and add herbs whose actions complement Feverfew's anti-inflammatory,
bitter and vasodilator actions to  support the affected body systems.

-----
Please also check the 'Herbs for migraine' entry (2.2.2) below.

----- on alt.folklore.herbs June 1995:

I looked up feverfew in Medline and would like to report what I found
there. If you aren't interested in medical experimentation as it
applies to herbs, you will probably not be interested in what follows.

The good news (for migraine sufferers):  I found two double blind
experiments looking at the effectiveness of feverfew on migraines:
The first one used 72 migraine sufferers.  Half got a capsule per day
of feverfew, the other half got a placebo.  There was a significant
reduction in the mean number and severity of migraine attacks.
The other experiment looked at 17 migraine sufferers who normally ate
feverfew to control headaches.  They gave placebos to some and
continued the feverfew with others.  The placebos increased frequency
and severity of migraines.

The bad news:  Feverfew affects the smooth muscles of the body.  These
are muscles that control much of your involuntary muscular processes,
such as the vascular system (blood vessels), digestive system,
internal organs, aorta, etc. From what I can gather from some of the
abstracts in Medline, feverfew PERMANENTLY affects the ability of
these smooth muscles to contract and relax.
Here are some snippets from the abstracts which looked at this:

"(Feverfew)...inhibits smooth muscle contractibility in a time-
dependent, non-specific, and irreversable manner."

"(Feverfew)...affects smooth muscles...may represent a toxic
modification of post-receptor contractile function in the smooth
muscle...effects are potentially toxic"

"...inhibition of eicosanoid generation is irreversable"

"...irreversable loss of tone of precontracted aortic rings...
inhibited ability of acetylcholine to enduce endothelium dependent
relaxation of tissue."

What does this all mean for the long term health of those who take
feverfew? That does not seem to have been looked at yet; these
articles were very recent. However, I think that people who take
feverfew should know that they may be permanently affecting the smooth
muscles in their bodies and may want to take this into account when
deciding whether or not to continue taking it.

----- And, in reply to above:

I sent a copy of Julia Moravcsik's Medline findings about feverfew to
Reader's Digest (who published an article in their Feb 1995 issue
advising that feverfew can help prevent migraines.)

I've had a letter back from Elizabeth Craig, a RD researcher. She
confirms that none of their sources when they researched the article
(late 1994) showed any side-effects from feverfew. She also said that
after she got my letter (dated 21 June 95) she contacted a migraine
research scientist who is studying the effects of feverfew.  The
researcher is familiar with Medline and says that "research has shown
the dosage taken by migraine sufferers has no side effects at all."

Whew -- that's good.  (Or maybe, feverwhew.)

Jim Heath

==========
2.1.10 Ginkgo biloba
-----
From Penny ([e-mail]):

HARVESTING THE LEAVES

Best time to harvest leaves for high flavonoid content is in the fall,
after they begin to turn color.  Flavonoids, which may be the most
active anti-oxidants in ginkgo and exhibit a vessel-toning effect,
reach their highest levels in the leaves at this time.

However, the most important active constituents in ginkgo leaves (the
ginkgolides and bilobalide) reach their highest levels around Aug. or
Sept., in late summer or early fall, before the leaves start to turn
color.  If you are interested in getting max. levels of these
constituents, you should harvest the leaves when they are a dark, rich
green, because these constituents drop the their lowest levels after
the leaves have turned yellow and begin to fall off the tree.

Considering all of the above, the optimum time for harvesting ginkgo
leaves may be harvested just about the time they begin to turn color,
or a little before in Sept.

After picking the leaves, shade-dry them on a screen, allowing good air
circulation from the bottom and the top.  Best condition is one that
will dry the leaves quickly (in 2 to 3 days) but not overheat them.
Never dry leaves in the sun.  To test that the leaves are thoroughly
dried, "snap" a leaf stem to make sure.  When the leaves are dried, put
them in a paper bag inside a plastic bag, and store them in a cool,

·


dark place - in a tinted glass jar is best.

Tea is a traditional way to take ginkgo and when used over a longer
period of time (up to 9 mos), it may provide good benefits, especially
as a preventative supplement to the diet.  A tea of the leaves can be a
good way of taking ginkgo because most of the important active
compounds in the live plant are water-soluble.  Because of changes in
the levels of active constituents during the growing season and
variations in levels of these compounds between different populations
of ginkgo, the use of the leaves is best as long-term therapy, mostly a
prevention.  One drawback of the tea, it has a bitter, astringent and
slightly sour flavor - this formula is quite palatable:

Brain and Circulation Tea

  ginkgo       1 part
  lavender     1/2 part
  wood betony  1 part
  lemon balm   1 part
  stevia herb  1/8 to 14 part

Adjust the amount of stevia according to how sweet you want your tea.
Stevia is VERY Sweet, you might start on the low side.

SAFETY AND TOXICITY

Ginkgo leaves and cooked nuts have a safe history of use that goes back
several thousand yrs.  When using a preparation of the whole leaves or
seeds, you can safely assume that within a normal dose range there will
be no dangerof negative side effects.

In one study involving 2,855 patients who took ginkgo extract, about
3.7% experienced minor gastric upset which had no lasting effects when
the ginkgo was discontinued.  Another test with 8,505 patients who took
ginkgo for 6 mos revealed that only 0.4% (33 people) experienced minor
side effects, most commonly mild stomach upset.  It is noteworthy that
tests show that even high doses of ginkgo extract do not change the
hormonal balance in men, and that neither does ginkgo affect the sugar
metabolism of the body - which means it is safe for diabetics, who
often suffer from poor circulation and therefore might benefit from
ginkgo treatment.  Finally, no disturbances in the formation of new
blood cells or the functioning of the liver and kidneys were observed,
even after longterm use.

Highly purified extract (24%) is so concentrated, it has a stronger
activity per amount of extract than the ginkgo preparations used for
thousands of yrs. in Chinese medicine.  Not only has the internal
balance changed in the purified extract, but so has the potential
toxicity, both short-term and long-term.  Fortunately, Schwabe has done
an enormous amount to testing which demonstrates that the purified and
concentrated extract is safe.  Thousands of people have taken high
doses of the extract and have been rigorously examined for any
undesirable bodily changes.

THE FRUITS

Ginkgo fruits have been the object of much bad press - due to their
potentially foul odor, which smells something like rancid butter.
Aside from its unaesthetic odor, the pulp of ginkgo can actually be
irritating to the skin and cause rashes in some people, for it contains
similar irritating chemical substances to those found in poison oak and
ivy.  Many cases of contact dermatitis have been reported from handling
the fruit when its skin is cut or broken, though rashes have not been
reported from contact with the leaves or any other part of the tree.
In China, traditional processing methods are used to remove the pulp
cleanly from the nuts.

Christopher Hobbs has done a book on Ginkgo. See 4.1 below.

-----
Ginkgo leaves and standardized extracts:

> Can you eat ginkgo leaves whole, or is that not advisable?  Can the
leaves be made into a tea?  What part of the ginkgo is used to make
ginkgo biloba extract?

[e-mail] (Jonathan Treasure)
Eating the leaves, or even infusing them is not common practice. There
is nothing to *STOP* you from doing it I suppose, but it would not be
an effective way of ingesting medicinal amounts of the herb. You need a
lot for results - which is why some companies have produced concentrated
extracts which are the equivalent of about 80:1 strength of what they
consider to be the active ingredients. In other words one gram of
standardised extract is like eating 80 grams of dried leaf. It is the
leaf that is used in herbal medicine.

Moses David Goldberg <[e-mail]> wrote:
>We should not forget that Ginkgo has been used for thousands of years
in practice before reductionistic capitalistic herbal companies came
out with standardized extracts.  The healing efficacy and synergy of
the ginkgo leaves in tea or tinctures should not be underscored.  It may
not have 24% of Ginkgolodes per batch but I would rather take the
tincture then all the packaging and evironmental waste that comes along
in your $20 box of Standard Extract Pills.

[e-mail] (Jonathan Treasure)
I agree with your predilection - it is the case that all the original
European Ginkgo research was done with standard 1:3 tinctures. My own
opposition to standardisation is not so much packaging although that is
loathsome, but that it runs counter to the fundamental idea that the
whole plant is the basis of its medicinal properties. Today's active
ingredient is tomorrow's redundant constituent...who makes these
decisions anyway? It is the scientific phytomedicine companies
marketing departments... However - in the case of Ginkgo (and one or
two other herbs) there IS an argument for taking a *concentrated*
format because a large amount of regular tincture is needed to achieve
results in eg senile memory performance. It does not have to be
standardised - a regular reconstitued solid extract would do the job.

-----
From [e-mail] (Roy Collins):

Culinary use of Ginkgo Nuts
I made a few inquiries to some of my Oriental friends and found that the
*nuts* are used as an ingredient in stir fried veggies, and are added to
soups and stuffing. The fresh nuts must first be prepared before use by:
1) lightly tapping the nut with the blunt edge of a heavy cleaver to
   crack the shell,
2) Pull the hard shell apart and remove the nut,
3) Drop nuts into boiling water and simmer on low flame for 10 minutes,
4) Skins should then peel right off.

==========
2.1.11 Kava kava
-----  by Dennis McClain-Furmanski ([e-mail])

Kava-kava (Piper methysticum) is a plant native to the Pacific
Islands, originally from the island of Vanuatu. Following the influx
of missionaries over the last century, its cultivation and use has
decreased but not disappeared. Several botanical houses in the US and
elsewhere have begun regular cultivation. The supply remains low, as
the harvest rotation period is from 1.5 to 5 years. Restrictions on
import have been considered and may be imminent, meaning only locally
grown supplies will be available. Indigenous growths are now being
protected as endangered in some areas, but this does not preclude
cultivation.

Kava is more of a social and ceremonial preparation than it is
medicinal. Its primary action is as a relaxant, and at high levels an
intoxicant and divinitory preparation. In normal use, the kava drinker
becomes relaxed and sociable, and may later drift off into revery.
Large doses, as used by village chieftains and seers, induces a
trance-like state with vivid dreaming. It is still used in some areas
as a medicinal liniment, being prepared there as a tintcure. Modern
use of kava has included a preparation given to electroshock therapy
patients as a muscle relaxant.

The active constituents of the plant, such as the lactone resins
yangonine and kawaine, are found primarily in the root rhizomes,
although some preparations such as the Hawaiian liniment make use of
the fresh stem. Most preparations use chopped root material. There are
some commercial products in the form of tablets made from a powder,
but these tend to suffer in strength, apparently due to excessive
drying.

Use of kava requires bringing the insoluble resins into emulsion.
Traditional preparation is done by chewing the stems and spitting them
with copious saliva into a bowl, to which water and coconut juice is
added. The mixture is then kneaded and strained through fiber and
drunk immediately.

A more palatable preparation is to wrap about an ounce in a single
layer of plain cotton cloth or a few layers of cheese cloth, and tied
off to form a ball. This is dunked in a quart or so of water, lifted
and squeezed out, repeating this until the bubbles forming from the
dripping water tend to remain on the surface of the water -- about 10
to 15 minutes. As with the traditional preparation, this tastes
strongly musty and not particularly pleasant. It is drunk immediately
in gulps. A tablespoon of sugar helps, and my favorite additive is a
tablespoon of Ovaltine or other malted mixture. Most non-traditional
preparations such as herb teas and other mixtures are either too low a
dosage or improperly prepared and so are ineffective, most probably
due to the bad taste of effective dosages.

A tincture is made by soaking the chopped root material in 3 times its
volume of alcoholic liquor such as brandy or gin. This is shaken daily
over 2 or 3 weeks and then strained. Internal use is 1 to 2 ounces,
and external use is an ounce rubbed into sore muscles or soaked into a
cloth which is laid over the affected area.

Some reports have been made regarding chewing and swallowing fresh
root. All the same effects are noted, with the addition of a
decongestant-like opening of breathing passages. This is only in
healthy individuals; there is no true decongestant effect in congested
individuals.

Heavy daily use of kava for years has been reported to cause dry,
flaking skin, yellowing of the eyes and persistent lethargy. The doses
involved are those used by local chiefs and visionaries, and normal
recreational or medicinal use will not cause this. When this syndrome
does appear, 2 to 3 weeks of abstinence cures it. Reports of lowered
peripheral blood flow seem to be anecdotal only.

The plant itself is availabel from some ethnobotanical houses, and
seems to thrive even in non-tropical conditions, though it still
requires indoor cultivation.

==========
2.1.12  Pau D'Arco
-----  by Dennis McClain-Furmanski ([e-mail])

Pau D'Arco (Tabebuia impetiginosa), also known as Taheebo and Lapacho
colorado, is a tree native to the Andes and nearby rain forests. The
bark, and in particular the inner bark lining, is scraped and turned
into a tea. It has been used for centuries by the indigenous peoples
as an immunofortifier.

Recent pharmacologic studies have uncovered the anti-tumor agent
lapachol, as well as the anti-candidas agent xylidione, and the
consistent effects of both have gathered the interest of the global
pharmacological community. Claims that the tea contains a large
proportion of oxygen in solution have peaked the interest of the
oxygen-therapy movement, and it is being considered for anti-AIDS/HIV
testing.

The normal preparation is a small amount of scraped bark prepared as a
normal tea. The taste is reported to be heady and pleasant.

==========
2.1.13  Wild yams and contraception
-----

>...I recently read an article about the use of wild yam in gel caps
as a form of birth control.  The article warned that it is only
effective if taken in regular doses (3 size 00 capsules twice a day)
and then you have to wait 2 months before it works.  I would be
willing to try it--I've had a horrible time with conventional birth
control, but the article had no references or explanation of how
the wild yams work.  Has anyone else heard of this?  I'd appreciate
any info.

From [e-mail] (Peggy Wilbur):

... I feel that it is important to nip this one in the bud. The
following is based on my own extensive research on phytoestrogens.
While my research has led me deep into the chemistry of phytoestrogens
and the physiology of the endocrine system, I keep it very basic
here:

Wild Yam, (Dioscorea villosa), contains a number of substances known as
phytoestrogens. Phytoestrogens are those plant chemicals that bind to
our cells' estrogen receptor sites and, theoretically, trigger the
components of estrogenic activity (activity does not necessarily mean
production).
This binding is possible due to striking similarities, in shape and
structure, to the body's own steroids. By binding to these estrogen
receptor sites when blood estrogen levels are high, phytoestrogens are,
again theoretically, able to reduce overall estrogen activity (Key to
the estrogen-induced breast cancer debate). Conversely, when estrogen
levels are low, they are able to promote estrogenic action.

Well over 250 plant species contain phytoestrogens, including, for
example, Dong quai (Angelica sinensis), Red clover (Trifolium
praetens), Alfalfa (Medicago sativum), Licorice root (Glycyrrhiza
glabra), Fennel (Foeniculum vulgare), Black Cohosh (Cimicifuga
racemosa), and Soybean (Glycine max).
There is much controvery surrounding the uses of such plants both
medicinally and nutritionally.

Some herbalists (and others) believe that the phytoestrogens found in
the Wild Yam, including steroidal saponins (mainly diosgenin), are
hormone "precursors", especially of progesterone.  However, while
diosgenin from D. villosa was once widely used, through an industrial
five-step chemical degradation (e.g. the Marker degredation), in the
industry manufacturing of progesterone-containing birth control pills,
the human body is not capable of such a synthesis using phytoestrogens
as a starting point.  Our bodies simply do not have the enzymes
necessary for such a "building block" conversion.  The estrogenic
effects that have been noted (i.e. in relation to relief of various
menopausal discomforts) may very well be due to the previously
mentioned binding of phytoestrogens to estrogen receptor sites, which
occurs when phytosterols cross the cell membrane and bind to a specific
cytoplasmic receptor molecule.  The receptor-hormone combination then
enters the nucleus, where it binds to a particular DNA sequence by
attaching itself to a specific site on a chromosome.  This attachment
activates those genes responsible for hormone-induced changes. (It gets
a bit more complicated than this, but I'll spare you!)

So again, while some steroids are bioconverted or biosynthesized
through the metabolic action of the liver to produce sex hormones (i.e.
cholesterol > estradiol), the liver does not produce estrogen or
progesterone by "building" upon the diosgenin in D. villosa.

Very brief, but hope this is of some use to you.  Wild Yam does not act
as a birth control pill just because birth control pills were once
synthesized from its constituents. While some women may write back and
say that the Yam has been effective for them, I might ask what other
factors may be at play in their lives that may be responsible for a
lack of pregnancy.

==========
2.1.14  Red raspberry and pregnancy
-----
You use an infusion of the leaf of Rubus idaeus to ease pregnancy and/or
childbirth. The controversy is when to use it - throughout the pregnancy
or just the last trimester. One piece of advice on the paracelsus list:

Almost all popular texts state that red raspberry is good to use
throughout pregnancy. On several occasions I have seen first trimester
women experience spotting each time they drank moderate amounts of the
tea. When they discontinued the tea, spotting stopped. Four tried the
tea again and spotting began again. I asked a few midwives about their
experience and found that they too had experienced the same thing, so
did not generally recommend it in the first trimester. I do not feel
that red raspberry is inherently problematic, but also feel that is is
not necessarily inherently benign.

==========
2.1.15 Green tea (and caffeine)
-----
The usual question is: does green tea contain caffeine? The answer is
yes, if it hasn't been decaffeinated. So does black tea, and oolong.
A good post on teas in general and green tea in particular:

From [e-mail] (Al Czap):
It is thought that the traditional use of tea (Camellia sinensis) began
in China about 4700 years ago. Europeans were introduced to the
beverage in the 1500's, and by the second half of the 17th century it
was being widely consumed throughout Europe. Today, tea is the second
most consumed beverage in the world (water is #1) with 2.5 million tons
of tea leaves produced annually.

The Chinese produce over 300 varieties of tea, which can be separated
into three basic categories; black tea, oolong tea, and green tea.
These three types of tea can actually be derived from the exact same
plant. The difference between them is how the leaves are handled after
harvesting. Black tea is allowed to ferment, and is then dried. Oolong
tea is partially fermented. Green tea is dried without fermenting.
Allowing the tea to ferment oxidizes naturally-occurring catechins,
transforming them into theaflavins and thearubigin, chemicals
responsible for the color and flavor of black tea. An increase in
theaflavins increases the commercial value of black tea, but decreases
the catechin content.

Green tea infusion contains intact catechin polyphenols, which give
rise to its bitterness and astringency. Six catechin polyphenols have
been isolated from green tea; (-)-epigallocatechin, (-)-epicatechin, (-
)-epigallocatechin-3-O-gallate (EGCG), gallocatechin-3-O-gallate (GCG),
methyl-epigallocatechin-3-O-gallate, and (-)-epicatechin-3-O-gallate
(ECG). These substances were tested for their antioxidant activity, and
the gallic acid esters EGCG and EGC were found to be the strongest
antioxidants, with EGCG being over 200 times more active than Vitamin E
in an in vitro model. In another test, EGCG was more active against fat
rancidity (lipid peroxidation) than Vitamin C or Vitamin E, and also
exhibited synergistic action with those vitamins.

Many nutritive and protective qualities have been associated with green
tea, both in infusion and extract form. A Japanese epidemiological
study of 9500 non-drinkers/non-smokers age 40 and above showed a
decreased incidence of stroke (CVA) in those consuming green tea, with
a direct correlation between increased consumption and decreased
incidence, so that at 3-4 cups a day the overall incidence of CVA was
17 percent that of people drinking no tea. Other epidemiological
studies show a decreased risk of esophageal, gastric, and colon
neoplasms with tea consumption.

Numerous studies have shown that standardized green tea extracts or
components of the extract exhibit antioxidant activity, stimulation of
glutathione peroxidase and catalase, induction of phase II enzymes, and
inhibition of cyclooxygenase, lipoxygenase, and angiotensin converting
enzyme. Green tea extract also has anti-platelet-aggregation activity,
and inhibits delta-amylase and sucrase, in addition to the known effects
of catechin: collagen stabilization, histidine decarboxylase inhibition,
and hepatic support.

Green tea extracts can contain a substantial amount of caffeine, and
may be standardized to low levels of polyphenols. HPLC isolation and
identification reveals that the main constituent of our extract is EGCG
(epigallocatechin gallate), the most active compound in the extract.

==========
2.1.16  Comfrey carcinogenity
-----


Comfrey is the victim of a bad press, inaccurate reports, and four true
cases of toxicity which in themselves are not straightforward, but
suggest overdosing on comfrey. Governments in the UK & Australia have
restricted the uses of comfrey root or banned the plant respectively.

The problem is two-fold: firstly there are two "comfreys" and reference
to them is often casual.  Regular, common, medicinal comfrey is
Symphytum officinale.  Russian comfrey, the great compost heap maker,
is Symphytum x uplandicum. Medical herbalists in the UK, from whose
written reports I am extrapolating, point out that Russian comfrey was
probably the herb used in the toxicity trials yet regular comfrey is
also restricted or banned.

Secondly,when the toxicity tests were done in the late 70s, a chemical

·


constituent called pyrrolizidine alkaloid was isolated, extracted from
<comfrey> leaves & injected into baby rats at what many medical
herbalists consider an "unrealistic level". In other words far more
comfrey than a human would eat to get such a toxic level of <PAs>. Also
baby rats are smaller than humans; they do not have the same metabolism
as humans; and an isolated chemical injected outside the rat's stomach
wall is not the same as a human eating leaves with many chemical
constituents and digesting them normally. A chemical in isolation will
cause different reactions from a group of chemical constituents
containing that one as well.

acetylsalicylic acid, based on a real life plant constituent found in
meadowsweet & willow.  Aspirin can cause ulcerations of the stomach
lining; meadowsweet has a soothing, gummy constituent called mucilage
which lines the stomach, preventing erosion of the stomach wall but
allowing the anti inflammatory properties of the salicylates of the
herb to be utilized.  OK?

So -- the bad guys in <comfrey>, the <PAs> were isolated & did bad
things. But that too must be qualified.

The early research, late 70s, concluded that these <PAs> do indeed
cause liver damage in humans. Medical herbalists would point out that
Pyrrolizidine alkaloids can cause obstructions of the veins in the
human liver, known as hepatic veno-occlusion, but <were not shown to
cause liver cell adnormalities> and that the level of alkaloids in
comfrey was too low to <cause specific damage to liver ciruclation> in
any case.

And finally, is comfrey carcinogenic?  The carcinogenic alkaloid has
been identified as symphytine which apparently is about 5% of the total
alkaloids in comfrey.

The original, often cited report was written by Culver et al in 1980.
There have been many criticisms since of the research itself; how the
scientific testing was conducted, which comfrey was really used, etc.
What I found most interesting was the tumors in all but three of the
rats were benign -- out of three groups of 19-28 rats and 3 groups of
15-24 rats. <And the three malignant tumors were of low malignancy>.
There were clear cut cases of liver damage.  That's in rats.

There are four cases involving humans which due implicate comfrey. One
involved a woman who was finally diagnosed as having veno-occlusive
disease & did consume a quart of herbal tea/per day that contained
comfrey. A second case involved a boy with Crohns disease who was
treated with conventional medicine for some time before going over to
comfrey root & acupuncture. The long running malnutrition may have
weaken the liver predisposing it to the venal obstruction problem.
Comfrey root was blamed.  The drugs were not considered as
possibilities. The third case involves a woman who overdosed: 10 cups
of comfrey tea a day & handsful of comfrey pills. After 9 years, she
had serious liver problems. The fourth case became a fatality.  A
vegetarian, given to specific food binges for weeks, took an unknown
amount of comfrey for flu like symptoms possibly over a period of four
months. The particulars of his case are blurred. All cases involve
comfrey; in at least three, there are suggestions of overdosage or
abuse of the plant.  WHICH plant, I don't know.

There are also disagreements about the efficacy & safety of leaves vs
root. Some studies show the leaf to be almost alkaloid free -- thus
safe. The UK finally restricted the internal use of comfrey root...
saying that there are still too many unanswered questions.  Most
medical herbalists I know will politely to vigorously disagree, but the
law restricts the root. At least externally the root's OK here & the
leaves can still be used as tea or poultice.

I'm sorry this is so long, but bear with me one more paragraph, please.
I must credit Penelope Ode, MNIMH, former Editor, writing in Herbs, the
British Herb Society magazine & Margaret Whitelegg, MNIMH, whose paper
for the National Institute of Medical herbalists to the UK government
in <Defence of Comfrey> was later published in the European Journal of
Herbal Medicine. Both were published in 1993. I cannot do justice to
their articles so briefly, but I do hope I have fairly summarized their
writings. Any misstatements, confusion of explanations here are mine.

Rene Burrough

==========
2.1.17  Cat's claw
-----
Construction site. Watch out for falling boul.....

==========

2.2 Herbs for specific things

==========
2.2.1  Herbs for mosquitoes and other bothersome bugs
-----
Actually this isn't medicinal - if you don't count doing something for
the bites.  But it's asked every year come bug time, so I'm including
it anyway.

-----
REPELLING THEM
-----
>i'd heard rumors of vitamins and herbs that naturally repel insects,
>though i'm not sure which ones.. any help is greatly appreciated

courtesy Aine Maclir ([e-mail]):
There are a couple of things that I know of.
1. Wear Citronella essential oil (which isn't the greatest smelling
   stuff around, but I guess it beats Off).
2. Take the equivalent of 1500 mg of fresh garlic clove (a 15 mg
   capsule of garlic powder or 3 x 5 mg capsules) orally every day.
   Taking garlic will cause your skin to secrete a natural insect
   repellent.
For best results, do both.  Don't wear perfumes or scented deodorants
  and wear light-coloured clothing as darker colours attract
  bugs...this is particularly true of blue denim jeans.  To make
  sleeping more comfortable, burn either an insect coil or a couple of
  sticks of citronella incence in your cabin before going to bed,
  making sure that all the doors and unscreened windows are closed, so
  no more of them get in.
If you do get bitten, applying a small dab of ammonia to the bite
  immediately after being bitten can help ease the itching.  And
  there's always the old favorite...calamine lotion...if you're not
  going to be anywhere that being coated in pink polka dots will be
  unfashionable (g).  Aloe vera and witch hazel will also soothe
  insect bites.
If you are going to be in an area that's also known for tics, just be
  on the lookout for them whenever you've been in a wooded area and if
  you find one stuck to you, use rubbing alcohol to make it let go and
  carefully remove it with a pair of tweezers.  Salt applied to a
  leech will get rid of it (in case you're around water that has any
  of those  "suckers" (g)).
I think that should about cover every blood-thirsty creature you're
  likely to run into at a summer camp, recalling my own experiences.
  I've been on canoe trips through Algonquin Park, Ontario (known for
  having some of the biggest and thirstiest mosquitos, blackflies and
  leeches in Canada) and I live in Saskatchewan, where we could make
  mosquitos our provincial bird!

courtesy [e-mail] (amethyst):
I've had good results taking B-complex supplements daily. Seems the
bugs like the odor of B-1 about as much as I like the taste of it. ;P

courtesy starla lacy ([e-mail]):
Here in Canada, we struggle with flies the size of horses!  This
  essential oil mix has always worked great for me:
    3 parts lemongrass (or citronella)
    1 part thyme
    2 parts lavender
    1 part peppermint (or eucalyptus)
Mix together in a new plant sprayer (you may dilute with springwater if
  desired). This mix also has the advantage of smelling pleasant and is
  safe for use around kids and pets.
Shake the mixture well before using if you decide to dilute it with
water.

-----
I have used tobacco tea to kill lice and knits (spelling?).  It is easy
to prepare.  Buy a cigar or some rolling tobacco and boil the hell out
of it in a liter or so of water.  When cool shlop it on your hair and
cover your hair with a plastic shower cap or something like that for 20
minutes then shampoo.  One application should be enough, but I would
often so a follow up about three or four days after the first
application.

However, keep in mind that nicotine that is extracted from the tobacco
is
also toxic to humans (people don't get too much of it when the smoke it
because it burns up). It should be used with care if there are cuts on
the
scalp which may increase the rate that it is absorbed into the
bloodstream

> I was wondering if there are any herbals that can be taken to
  reduce  the attack of mosquitos.  I happen to live in an area where
  they are  abundant.
I do well know what you mean! Here's what I've gathered on that subject,
  and keep (all) on hand as needed:
1. You can join the rest of America and buy a caseload of Avon's Skin
  So Soft. I have about a dozen friends who worship it religiously.
2. You can stock up on anything containing Citronella, although I fear
  it may still be too new to really know if there is Life for it after
  the Candles. I'm seeing alot of oils and lotions saying it's in there,
  though.
3. Continue to use the old standby's with DEET in them, like Off's
  Offtastic, or whatever, or Cutter's. Have heard personal testimonials
  on Cutter's.
4. Investigate local ancient customs; as I discovered when I read the
  area's native Indians, the Karankawas, employed an effective remedy to
  a problem which was (unbelievably) much more horrid than it presently
  is; that is, they killed them an alligator, skinned him, liquified the
  fat and slathered it on! Kept quite a few things away, one of which
WAS
  mosquitoes!
Seriously, though, there is probably something in that we could
replicate
  today with something similar but more sweet-smelling. So, if anyone
has
  any ideas, as well as things to ingest that might make your "scent"
  less attractive to mosquitoes, please post!

-----
AND NOW YOU'RE BITTEN...
-----
Use lavender oil (small drop) applied directly on mosquito bites.

Lush Stellaria media does the trick, too - just roll into a ball and
let the juice drop onto your bite(s).

-----
From Noel Gilmore ([e-mail]):
Allow me to pass on my husband's rather simplistic (and annoying)
  remedy to keep mosquito bites from itching and swelling...DON'T
SCRATCH
  'EM.  For years I suffered all summer while he did not and he would
  always tell me it was because he disciplined himself not to scratch.
  Last year we went to the Yucatan jungle for vacation and I couldn't
  bear to cover myself from head to toe each day with repellant, so I
  asked him to help me remember not to scratch, and I have to admit it
  worked!

From Tim Keenan ([e-mail]) to above :
As someone who has lived and worked on the arctic tundra and in the
  boreal forest for decades, I have to agree...I never use DEET or any
  other repellant.  If the bugs are so thick I can't breath without
  inhaling them, I use a "SkeeterGuard" fine-mesh net jacket, with a net
  hood that zips across the throat.  Otherwise, I hit 'em if I feel 'em.
  If I don't feel 'em, I hardly ever develop any reaction. If I have a
  reaction, usually if I get bit somewhere where the skin is thin (over
a
  wrist bone, etc.) I generally ignore it and it goes away.  I never get
  a bump _unless_ I scratch.
This goes for black flies, too.  I think the best answer is to get bit
  early and often, and you will become aclimatized to it.
Rubbing and scratching causes all sorts of local histamine response,
  which really aggravates the situation.

From [e-mail] (Janis Lane) to above:
I have been getting TERRIBLE spider bites.  The doctor told me that I
  was having a chemical reaction (arm was burning hot and swollen).  He
  told me the SAME thing..."do NOT scratch".  I stopped scratching and
it
  seems that the bites are not swelling but are just turning to bruises.
  Any suggestions for THIS?

From Sharon Rust ([e-mail]) to above:
For spider bites I have used fresh papaya and when I haven't had the
  fresh stuff papaya - pineapple enzymes, these work for bee and wasp
and
  scorpion stings as well. I chew up the enzyme tablet to make a paste
  and stick it on the bite , the papaya I just stick a chunk on . When I
  use to live where plantain (Plantago rotundifolia, or lancolata) grew
I
  used it for bites, it seemed to work on bee , spider and mosquito
  bites.
To use plantain I would get a fresh leaf and chew it up with my front
  teeth, taking care not to swallow the juices and then stick this wad
of
  chewed up plant on the bite(s). When my daughter and niece stepped
into
  a swarm of yellow jackets luckly it was in a field filled with
  plantain, I started chewing up and applying the plantain to my
daughter
  and my sister-in-law did the same for her daughter, the bites on my
  daughter were dissapearing but my niece was getting no relief, so when
  I was finished with my daughter's bites, I started applying plantain
to
  my nieces, the ones that I worked on were also dissapearing , the key
  was that my sister-in-law was swallowing the juices released from the
  plant and I was not. I suppose you could use a blender or something
but
  most of the time I feel that this is the fastest and simplest way to
  treat a bite.

==========
2.2.2  Herbs for migraines
-----  by Eugenia Provence

What are migraines?  A whole variety of headaches associated with
vascular constriction and dilation make up the unpleasant world of
migraines.  The two most common are classic migraine and common
migraine.  They may first appear in childhood, but usually in the late
teens or early twenties.  More women than men are subject to them, and
they frequently end after menopause.

Classic migraines start with warning signs (called the aura by medical
folks).  Before the headache begins, you may temporarily lose some of
your vision, see flashing lights and feel very strange altogether,
maybe even feeling a burning sensation or muscle weakness.

The pain usually begins on one side of the head, but can spread.  The
headache may take hours to develop and several days before it goes,
leaving a desire to sleep (replacing the desire to die!).  You may
experience nausea and sensitivity to light and noise.

I've had only one of this kind and never want another.  I thought I
was losing my vision (along with my wits and my lunch).  Other
symptoms may include muscle numbness, tingling, scalp tenderness,
dizziness, dry mouth, tremors, sweating and chilliness.

Common migraines don't begin so dramatically, but a few hours or days
before onset, you may feel tired, depressed (or paradoxically) have a
burst of energy, be anxious or feel hyper.  The common migraine may
begin more slowly and last longer than the classic type.  Except for
the aura, the symptoms are the same.

What causes migraines?  The exact range of mechanisms producing
migraines isn't well understood, but is believed to be an upset in
serotonin metabolism that causes dilation of cerebral arteries,
followed by vascular spasm in extra-cranial blood vessels.

Migraine triggers are as varied as the individuals afflicted by them.
About 70% of sufferers have family histories of migraine.

Food triggers are common, and can be nearly anything.  Some of the
most frequent food triggers are anything aged, canned, cured, pickled
or processed or that contain tyramine or nitrites.  Aged cheese,
bananas, caffeine, chicken livers, MSG, alcohol (especially red wine,)
yeast products (including bread), chocolate, red meat, shellfish are
common, but the list is extensive and individual.  Try eliminating
these first.  If that doesn't work, see if you are sensitive to
citrus, lentils, nuts, any kind of green beans or peas, vinegar or
yogurt.

Stress, strong emotional reactions and fatigue may be triggers, in
addition to compounding the symptoms.  Weather or altitude changes may
contribute to them.  There's a hormonal trigger for some women,
causing migraines prior to or during menstruation or when using birth
control pills or estrogen replacement therapy.  There seems to be an
association with sluggish liver function from eating too much fatty
food or heavy drinking.

How can they be prevented or treated?  If you can catagorize your
migraines as being related to physical stress or emotional upheaval,
stress reduction techniques, meditation and biofeedback have been
found to be helpful, as have acupuncture and bodywork.  Chiropractic
or Osteopathic treatment may help if there is a structual problem in
the neck.  Again, it's very individual and complex issue, and you may
need the assistance of a professional conventional or complementary
practioner.

HERBAL THERAPIES:

--To ease pain, David Hoffmann suggests that at the first sign of
attack equal parts of Black Willow, Meadowsweet, Passion Flower,
Valerian and Wood Betony may be helpful.

--For migraine associated with stress, use equal parts of Hawthorne
berries, Lime Flowers, Wood Betony, Skullcap and Crampbark.

--Nervine tonics, such as Oats and Skullcap are appropriate long-term
therapy, accompanied by Siberian Ginseng as an adaptogen.

--Massage Lavender oil into the temples at first sign of an attack.

--If the migraine is accompanied by nausea or vomiting, Chamomile,
Meadowsweet or Peppermint may help.

--If migraine is associated with hormonal problems, long-term
treatment should include herbs to try to balance the hormonal system.
Vitex, Black Cohosh, or Wild Yam may be useful.

--European herbalists emphasize the importance of liver support in
migraine treatment.  Herbs like Burdock, Dandelion root or Milk
Thistle would be ideal.

The following delicious Migraine Tea from Ana Nez Heatherly of
Gatesville, Texas, appears in the July 1995 Mother Earth News.  She
prepares a cold infusion of:
    6 parts Rosemary leaves     4 parts Peppermint leaves
    4 parts Lemon Balm leaves   4 parts Sweet Violet
    3 parts Feverfew          1/2 part sweet Violet Flowers

-----
Please also check the 'Feverfew and migraine' -entry (2.1.9) above.

==========
End of part 2 of 4
==========



news.eunet.fi!newsmaster
 introduction to and a resource list for medicinal herbs.


Archive-name: medicinal-herbs/part4

==========
3.3.1  Traditions in Western Herbal Medicine - continued from part 3 of
4
-----
It is very fortunate therefore, that Canadian and American herbalists
have preserved some of this knowledge in their own practices.

Folk medicine traditions are virtually impossible to legislate against
directly, and even in the recent Ontario government recommendations,
treatment of oneself and one's family had been specifically exempted
from prosecution under the proposed legislation (HPLR, 1989). Direct
legislation however, was not the only factor contributing to the
decimation of native culture and the virtual loss of their traditional
healing knowledge.

The proposals tabled in the Ontario legislature will almost certainly
impose or support severe restrictions on the cultivation and/or sale
of medicinal plants, should they be passed into law. Furthermore, such
legislation will definitely prevent or seriously delay the free
development and re-emergence of a professionally oriented system of
herbal medicine in Ontario.

Consequently, those who choose to make use of this 'valuable medical
resource' (W.H.O., 1975a), will be forced to rely on their own
experience and to gather and use only wild plants. This assumes
however, that environmental policies in Ontario and the rest of North
America will not poison even this source in the very near future.

References
Bensky, D., Gamble, A. (Compl. & Ed.) Chinese Herbal Medicine
Materia Medica; Eastland Press; Seattle, 1986.

Cody, G. 'History of Naturopathic Medicine', in A Textbook of
Naturopathic Medicine, Pizzorno, J.E.; Murray, M.J.; John Bastyr
College Pulos, Seattle, 1985.

Cook, W.H. The Science and Practice of Medicine; 1879 - quoted in
Priest & Priest, ibid.

Coulter, H. Divided Legacy: a history of the schism in medical
thought Vol. 111. McGrath Pub. Co., Washington, D.C., 1973.

Dominion Herbal College, Home Study Notes, 1969.

Felter, H.W. The Eclectic Materia Medica, Pharmacology and
Therapeutics, Scudder, Cincinnati, 1922.

Gort, E.H. A Social History of Naturopathy in Ontario: the
formation of an occupation; M.Sc. Thesis; Univ. Toronto, 1986.

Griggs, B. Green Pharmacy, a history of herbal medicine; J.
Norman & Hobhouse Ltd.; London, 1981.

Hahnemann, S. Organon of Medicine. 1810; 6th Ed. Trans. Hahnemann
Foundation; Victor Gollancz Ltd.; London, 1983.

HPLR, Striking a New Balance: a Blueprint for the Regulation of
Ontario's Health Professions', Government of Ontario. 1989.

Hsu, H.; Peacher W.G.(D) (Trans. & Ed.) Shang Han Lun; Oriental
Healing Arts Institute; Los Angeles, 1981.

Kent, J.T. Lectures on Homoeopathic Philosophy: 4th Indian
Reprint, B. Jain Publishers; New Delhi, 1977.

Kings's American Dispensatory; Felter & Lloyd, 1900; Reprinted by
National College of Naturopathic Medicine; Portland (undated).

Lloyd, J.U. Fragments from an Autobiography, a paper read at the
63rd meeting of the Ohio Eclectic Medical Assoc., Arkon, May,
1927; Eclectic Medical Journal, 1927.

The Eclectic Alkoloids. LLB no. 12, Pharmacy Series 2, P41; 1910.

Mills, S. The Dictionary of Modern Herbalism; Thorsons Pub. Gp.;
Wellingbourgh, New York, 1985.

Personal Communication, Art Solomon and other Ojibwa Elders;
Native Elders Conference, Trent Univ., Peterborough, 1988.

Priest, A.W.; Priest, L.R. Herbal Medication, a clinical and
dispensary handbook; Fowler & Co. Ltd.; London, 1982.

Rohde, A.C. The Old English Herbals, 1922; 3rd Ed. Rohde, E.S.;
Minerva Press Ltd; London, 1974.

World Health Organization The Promotion of Traditional
Medicine; Technical Report Series No. 622; Geneva, 1978.

W.H.O. Document EB/57/21, Training and Utilization of Traditional
Healers and Their Collaboration with Health Care Delivery
Systems; Nov. 1975.

==========
3.3.2  East Asian traditional Healing - an introduction
-----  by Paul Iannone ([e-mail])

I. The Difference between Healing and Medicine:

ETH is the crown jewel of traditional healing. It is not a form of
medicine, as that term is understood in the West. What is the
difference?

Healing is an all-encompassing process of restoring balance in living
beings. Unlike medicine, which focuses on specific biochemical
complaints that can be demonstrated to be currently present by linear
tests, healing is broadly observant, and does not disdain indications
in any field of the being: subjective or objective, or subtle signs of
disorders that are not strong enough yet to produce overt complaints.

As such, healing is inherently an empiric study. It is frankly
impossible to apply the tools of medical validation (such as 'double-
blind trials') to the great majority of healing processes. Far from
being a limitation, this inability to isolate health phenomena is the
greatest strength of healing--it can act almost anywhere on the person,
and still affect the total being. It is, in a word, holistic. It
upholds the unity of the being--which is the primary method of healing
in any case.

II. The Difference between Traditional and Conventional:

'Traditional' is a term that should not be applied to --conventional--
modern medicine, which is for the most part a new, technological
approach to emergency battle with infection, repair of physical injury,
and crude maintenance of damaged living systems. 'Conventional' refers
to commonly-accepted protocols--and this consensus derives in modern
times by the isolation of statistical benefits from therapy. That
consensus, as noted above, cannot be extended with ease to traditional
healing.

Modern culture does not represent a traditional culture. It --utilizes
-- traditional culture as a raw material, to be transformed to whatever
purpose is at hand, just as modern medicine treats herbs as the crude
source of drugs. Traditional culture and its artifacts are a great
compost in the modern era, a storehouse of images and ideas to be
'parted out' as needed to repair the modern consumer machine.
Traditional healing, also, is expected to pony up its valuable
techniques for separation from the matrix of superstition in which they
are condescendingly imagined to be ensnared.

III. The Difference between Traditional and Folk Healing:

Both traditional healing and folk healing are empiric in their method,
but folk healing is --more-- empiric, and less systematically
rationalized. Folk healing methods develop over ages, but they are
almost never subjected to broad scrutiny of their efficacy. As above
noted, such scrutiny is difficult or even impossible in various fields
of healing effort--but sufficient rationalizing did occur at points in
history, forming the foundation for the development of the traditional
healing systems we have inherited.

In order to be called traditional, a healing system must have an
extensive history, and especially an extensive literature. Folk
medicine and folk healing are not represented by a literature. A
traditional literature is a controversy of ideas--leading to the
eventual codification of a range of healing ideas in a generally
concrete whole.

The ancient cultures of East-Asia developed one of the handful of major
healing traditions, and the largest one in terms of literature:
approximately 10,000 texts.

III. Naming Traditional Healing Systems:

The form I propose for terming the various systems takes into account
an essential unity--the long development of forms of folk healing, by
codification and rationalization, into classical traditions that
themselves enjoyed long practice in that developed form. The form is
'Geographic entity or discrete culture_Traditional Healing.' Thus,
reference can be made to East-Indian Traditional Healing (which may or
may not be equivalent to Ayurveda) or to Fijian Traditional Healing, or
Navajo TH, and one can refer to Navajo TH and Amerindian TH in the same
breath (well, maybe not in one breath). The terminology is specific,
and makes note of commonality. It becomes possible to refer to a
specific healing tradition as part of a whole or traditional healing
effort. I believe this has considerable conceptual value.

IV. How this applies to East-Asian Traditional Healing:

Many names have been used for ETH over the last 400 years of Western
contact with that part of the world ("Oriental Medicine," "Chinese
Medicine," etc.). As well as being nonstandard, they tend to separate
ETH artificially from the entire domain of traditional healing
worldwide, uphold ethnic stereotypes, or falsely construe its
historical boundaries and fail to honor important developmental
contributions from its outskirts.

East-Asia is a specific, discrete, recognizable geographical entity. It
includes Korea, China, Japan, Taiwan, and perhaps coastal Northern
Vietnam (it does not include Tibet). Since the healing tradition
developed throughout that range, and since the country we now call
China has not had its current boundaries for very long, it is
preferable to refer to this healing system by the term East-Asian,
instead of 'Chinese.' The alternate term, 'Oriental', has acquired an
ethnic connotation, and is actually derogatory. I have already noted
the reason why it should not be characterized as 'medicine.'

V. The Difference between TCM and ETH:

The concepts of East-Asian Traditional Healing are not the same as
those of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), which is the system of
healing studied by American acupuncturists--ETH is the broader
tradition from which TCM was intentionally and unintentionally
selected.

TCM derives from a move to resurrect ETH by Mao Ze Dong in 1949. For a
hundred years prior to that date, the impact of European culture and
medical development on China and Japan had resulted in ETH being
disdained--and even made 'illegal' (it remained in practice outside the
coastal areas for the most part). But Mao and his Communists were (and
for the most part still are) materialists, scientific materialists--
much like the AMA-style doctors of the West. They desired to
'modernize' ETH, and thus was hatched TCM--a culling from the
traditional healing system, focused on medicine and approval by the
West, and antagonistic to the vagueness of healing, and the
'superstition' of Spirit.

The most notable difference between TCM and ETH is the absence of a
usable Spirit philosophy in TCM, and the marginal place given to Wu
Xing Xue Shuo, or Five Natural-Phase Theory (Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal,
Water).

East-Asian Traditional Healing is diverse in its method. It takes many
forms. It does not necessarily --require-- pulse or tongue diagnosis,
acupuncture, lifestyle regimes, or herbs--the most well-known methods.
It makes use of any and all those techniques as needed. It also
potentially includes seasonal wisdom, physico-energetic practices like
Tai Ji Quan or Qi Gong, massage, building siting (Feng Shui),
meditative practices, I Jing, contemplation of philosophic literature
(especially Daoist) and other methods.

It does NOT, generally, require absurdly strict lifestyle regimes, or
huge dosages of herbs. It is also NOT equivalent to Macrobiotics, which
is an offshoot of ETH that contains a range of Japanese folk traditions
that in some cases directly contradict the main shoot of ETH (there is
no prohibition of nightshade family plants in ETH, for instance, nor
specific embrace of brown rice chewed 100 times, or the idea that
certain foods are Yin, and that people can be 'Too Yin.' These and
other Macrobiotic views are NOT supported by ETH).

Almost all conditions of health imbalance can be benefited by the
advice and help provided by ETH.

--Paul  ||  [e-mail]

==========
3.3.3  Ayurvedic Medicine - an introduction
-----
by Dr. Duane Weed, D.C. ([e-mail])

The Ayurvedic system traces its roots to the Himalayan Mountains of
India over five thousand years ago. According to legend, a conference
was held in a Himalayan cave in which the greatest sages of India--some
after having traveled thousands of miles--met to discuss their
knowledge of their healing arts.  These scholars and teachers possessed
traditional knowledge about the medicinal plants of India that had been
handed down orally by the tribes of the Indian forests since the
beginning of history. At this conference, these sages compared and
combined their knowledge into one body which they called the Ayurveda,
from two Sanskrit words; Ayus, or "life", and Veda, or "knowledge".
"Ayurveda" has been translated as "the knowledge of life", and as "the
science of life".  It has been suggested that a more appropriate
translation would be "the knowledge of life span".

After this historic conference, the Ayurvedic knowledge was passed
orally from teacher to student for over a thousand years, continuously
growing as each Ayurvedic physician added his insights and experiences.
It was finally written down in the first century A.D. by the Ayurvedic
physician, Charaka.
By that time--and hundreds of years before the birth of European
medicine--Ayurveda had specialists in psychiatry, pediatrics,
gynecology, ear nose and throat, ophthalmology, surgery, toxicology,
virility, and fertility.

Ayurvedic medicine probably predates any other healing tradition in
existence today--even Chinese medicine. Even before the Ayurvedic
conference, knowledge of the medicinal plants of India had spread to
other continents.  Seeds from plants indigenous to India have been
found in the tombs of the Egyptian pharaohs. Travelers had carried
information about Indian plants through Tibet into China, and Arabs had
traded for Indian herbs before the birth of Islam.
At the time of King Solomon, the Queen of Sheba traded herbs and spices
of India to the Israelites.  Ayurvedic medicine began to be studied by
Arab physicians and knowledge of the plants of India was passed on to
the Greeks and Romans.  By the first century A.D., when Charaka was
writing Ayurveda's first written records, Pliny was already describing
the plants of india to the Roman Empire in his NATURAL HISTORY. And
much more recently, as any American school child can tell you, a
Portuguese sailor by the name of Christopher Columbus discovered
America in 1492, while searching for a trade route to India to acquire
her herbs and spices.

According to Ayurvedic philosophy, health is dependent upon one's
ability to live in harmony with one's self and with the external
universe.  As much attention was given to illnesses of the mind as to
illnesses of the body.
The Ayurvedic  physician  taught  that in order to avoid illness and
pain, the patient must control the destructive (and self-destructive)
nature. Living in harmony with the environment was recognized as
essential to one's mental, physical, and spiritual well-being.

Ayurvedic physicians taught that prevention was more desirable than a
cure. Their ideal was to develop an individual's natural resistance to
disease to the point where one's immune system could function as one's
best medicine.
Their goal was to maintain an individual in his or her optimal health
throughout life, so that the ultimate goal of life--the awareness of
his or her connection with the life principle--could be pursued.

Today's Ayurvedic physicians, like their predecessors, recognize three
major body (or physiology) types which they refer to as the three
DOSHAS: VATA, PITTA, and KAPHA. One's body type is also referred to as
one's PRAKRITI, and is determined by heredity. Most people are actually
a combination of types; a VATA/PITTA type for example.  Ayurvedic
physicians evaluate their patients using such techniques as
observation, interview, and pulse diagnosis to determine the patient's
body (or physiology) type.  They then determine the imbalances that are
present in the body and make recommendations according to the patient's
body type.  Dietary and herbal recommendations make up a large part of
their treatments; but many other techniques such as meditation, hatha
yoga, aroma therapy, and music therapy are also employed.

Thanks to the Ayurvedic tradition, many herbal combinations based on
centuries of accumulated knowledge are available to today's eclectic
herbalists and natural health enthusiasts.  Ayurvedic herbal
formulations, like Chinese herbal formulations, are combinations of
many  different herbs that work synergistically.  Single herbs are
rarely if ever employed. Even though there are competent Ayurvedic
physicians in practice today, one does not have to see an Ayurvedic
physician to use an Ayurvedic herbal combination, as long as the recipe
of an Ayurvedic master is carefully followed.

Some of the most common herbs currently used in Ayurvedic formulations
are:

Acacia catechu                     Adhatoda vasica (Vasaka)
Andrographis paniculata            Aegle marmelos (Bel)
Alpina galanga                     Alstonia scholaris
Apium graveolens                   Ashwagandha root
Azadirachta indica (Margosa)       Boerhaavia diffusa (Hogweed)
Boswellia serrata                  Caesaipinia crista
Clerodendrum indicum               Commiphora mukul (Indian Bedellium)
Curcuma longa (Turmeric)           Cyperus rotundus
Enicostemma littorale              Fumaria parviflora
Glycyrrhiza glabra (Liquorice)     Gymnema sylvestre
Hedychium spicatum               Hemidesmus indicus (Ind. Sarsaparilla)
Holarrbena antidysenterica         Inula racemosa
Momordica charantia (Bitter Gourd) Myrica nagi
Ocimum sanctum (Holy Basil)        Paederia foetida
Phylianthus emblica                Picrorhiza kurroa
Pimpinella anisum                  Pistacia integerrima
Pterocarpus marsupium              Rubia cordifolia (Indian Madder)
Sida cordifolia                    Smilax china
Swertia chirata                    Syzygium cumini (Jamun)
Terminalia belerica             Terminalia chebula (Chebulic Myrobalan)
Tinospora cordifolia               Trachyspermum ammi
Tribulus terrestris                Trigonella foenum-graeceum
Vitex negundo                      Withania somnifera (Winter Cherry)
Zingiber officinale (Ginger)

REFERENCES AND ADDITIONAL READINGS:

THE GARDEN OF LIFE,  AN INTRODUCTION TO THE HEALING PLANTS OF INDIA by
Naveen Patnaik, Doubleday, New York, 1993.

PERFECT HEALTH,  THE COMPLETE MIND/BODY GUIDE by Deepak Chopra, M.D.,
Harmony Books, New York, 1991.

PERFECT WEIGHT,  THE COMPLETE MIND/BODY PROGRAM FOR ACHIEVING AND
MAINTAINING YOUR IDEAL WEIGHT by Deepak Chopra, M.D., Harmony Books,
New York, 1994.

RESTFUL  SLEEP,   THE COMPLETE MIND/BODY PROGRAM FOR OVERCOMING
INSOMNIA by Deepak Chopra, M.D., Harmony Books, New York, 1991.

RETURN OF THE RISHI by Deepak Chopra, M.D., Houghton Mifflin Company,

·


Boston, 1988.

==========
3.3.4  Pointers to homeopathy sites and stuff
-----

Check these sites:
FAQ Homeopathic Therapy page by Neil Sandow, Pharm.D.
http://community.net/~neils/faqhom.html

The Homeopathy Homepage:
http://www.dungeon.com/~cam/homeo.html

ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/academic/medicine/alternative-healthcare/
  faqs/homeopathy (an olde document from the stoneage - 1993 or so...)

Drop me a note if you notice a changed address - thanks.

==========

3.4 Commercial posts and how to get rid of them

-----
Instead of fretting over commercial posts, we all should take a cool
approach to the problem.  Whenever I see a message like "Make quick
cash!", "Great Anti-Cellulite Cream!", "Don't be Lonely!", "Earn
$50,000 a week!" or something along those lines, I forward the message
to the postmaster where the message originated from, explaining why I
find the post inappropriate or offensive.  Chances are that the
postmaster will look into the issue and have a talk with the abuser,
if not go ahead and cancel his/her account altogether (has been known
to happen).

If the offensive message originated at an academic institution, then I
know I am going to get the sucker in a lot of trouble.  Universities
have strong policies about the misuse of their computer resources.  It
is likely that after receiving complaints, the offenders will lose
their accounts, and in addition experience the wrath of some
disciplinary committee.

So, for the good sake of the net, if you see a commercial message
posted by [e-mail], forward the message with a piece of
your mind to [e-mail].  You will be doing everyone a
favor.

Gloria Mercado-Martin
[e-mail]

==========

3.5 The Ames Test

-----
>Does anyone know more about this Ames test?

The Ames test cultures mutations of bugs (usually Salmonella spp) that
are unable to grow without the amino acid histidine and adds suspected
mutagens to the culture medium (after incubating them with liver
extract to expose them to lysosymal activity).  If the bugs then grow,
the mutation is deemed to have reversed (ie they now synthesise
histidine) and the test substance is regarded as (ultimately)
mutagenic. It is the case that the majority of known chemical
carcinogens are also mutagens according to the Ames Test.

The problem is that also according to the Ames Test the prevalence of
environmental mutagens is so high that the human population should
long ago have been wiped out by cancer if the extrapolations were
correct. (The extraplations being histidine gene mutagenicity equals
ultimate carcinogenic action, and salmonella bugs equals people.) This
is of course acknowleged by pathologists - but seems not to be
understood understood by the rank and file scare mongerors who like to
appear to be *scientific* in their attacks on herbalism.

[e-mail] (Jonathan Treasure)

==========

3.6 Trying out the placebo effect

-----
> It's really hard to judge whether the effects were the result of the
..herb.., or whether I just thought these effects were occuring because
I was seeking for them to happen (constantly checking myself to see if
I notice any change - a bit like the placebo effect I guess).

It's nice to see someone wondering whether they were subject to the
placebo effect!  Too many people seem to be a bit too convinced by
their own personal experiences.

If you are concerned about a placebo effect you might want to try your
own little experiment.  Get some large empty gelatin capsules from a
health food store.  Put sugar in half of them and your ginkgo capsule
(which should be small enough to fit) in the other (with sugar to fill
up the rest of the space. Have a friend label some bottles with numbers
(the more bottles your use, the more likely it will be that you aren't
just guessing right).  The numbers will correspond with whether the
bottle contains the sugar or the ginkgo but only your friend will know
which is which.  Then have your friend put the capsules in the bottles.
Complete one bottle and then go on to the next.  Don't look at the
capsules as you take them and be aware of any subtle ways that you
might be discerning the difference (e.g. weight, aftertaste etc.)  You
might want to use a rating scale of your alertness. Be aware that if
you choose the ginkgo, it might simply be a coincidence, so make sure
that the difference in ratings is big.

[e-mail] (Julia Moravcsik)

==========

4 Good Printed Sources

-----
Additions, opinions and missing details are welcome.

==========

4.1 Good Books on Herbs and Herbal Medicine

-----
The list so far:

Michael Moore: Medicinal Plants of the Pacific West.
  1993, Red Crane Books, 826 Camino de Monte Rey, Santa Fe,
  New Mexico 87501, USA.
  ISBN 1-878610-31-7 (paperbound); listprice USD 19.95.

Michael Moore: Medicinal Plants of the Desert and Canyon West.
  1989, The Museum of New Mexico Press, P.O.Box 2087, Santa Fe,
  New Mexico 87503, USA.  They do not accept VISA.
  ISBN 0-89013-182-1 (paperback); listprice USD 11.95.

Michael Moore: Medicinal Plants of the Mountain West.
  1979, The Museum of New Mexico Press (address as above).
  ISBN 0-89013-104-X (paperback); listprice USD 11.95.

Michael Moore's books on herbal medicine are the best I've seen to
date, and they're fun to read, too.  Go get his on-line books from
sunSITE, too; see 6.1 and 7.1 for details.

Maude Grieve: A Modern Herbal, in two volumes.  (You need them both.)
  1931, reprinted in 1971, Dover Publications, Inc.,
  180 Varick Street, New York, N.Y.  10014, USA.
  ISBN 0-486-22798-7 (I), 0-486-22799-5 (II), listprice USD 9.95 each.
A good all-round book as a reference; it has so much information on
so many plants that it's not really outdated yet. 866 pages + index...

Steven Foster + James A. Duke: A Field Guide to Medicinal Plants,
  Eastern/Central North America (Peterson Field Guide Series)
  1990, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston.
  ISBN 0-395-35309-2 (hardcover); listprice USD 24.95.
  ISBN 0-395-46722-5 (paperback); listprice USD 16.95.

Steven Foster + Yue Chongxi: Herbal Emissaries - bringing Chinese
  Herbs to the West.
  1992, Healing Arts Press, One Park Street, Rochester, Vermont 05767.
  ISBN 0-89281-349-0.  USD 16.95.
Very thourough description of Chinese plants (with growing
instructions) for us Westerners.

Susun S. Weed: the Wise Woman Herbal series (Healing Wise, Menopause,
  Childbearing Year, and maybe more)
  Healing Wise: 1989, Ash Tree Publishing, PO Box 64, Woodstock, NY
  12498, USA.  ISBN 0-9614620-2-7.
  Childbearing Year: 1986, Ash Tree Publishing.
  Menopausal Years: 1992, Ash Tree Publishing.
Interesting approach to Herbal Healing.

Lesley Bremness: The Complete Book of Herbs - a practical guide to
  growing and using herbs.
  1988, Viking Studio Books, Penguin Books Ltd., 27 Wrights Lane,
  London W8 5TZ, England.  ISBN 0-670-81894-1.
Basic book for the beginner; nice pictures. Also cultivation.

-----
These I don't have (and thus all is hearsay); they are listed by author:

James A. Duke: CRC Handbook of Medicinal Herbs.
  1985, CRC Press, Boca-Raton, FL.

Rosemary Gladstar: Herbal Healing for Women.
  1993, Fireside Books, Simon & Schuster, New York
  ISBN 0-671-76767-4 (softcover); list price USD 12.00

James Green: The Male Herbal:  Herbal Health Care for Men and Boys
  1991, Crossing Press, Freedom, CA. ISBN 0-895-94459-6 (hard cover).

James Green: The Herbal Medicine Maker's Handbook
  1990, Simplers Botanical Co., Box 39, Forestville, CA  95436
  listprice (paperback) USD 5.00.

Christopher Hobbs: booklets on various topics (Valerian, Echinacea,
  Milk Thistle, Usnea, Medicinal Mushrooms, Natural Liver Therapy,
  Vitex, Immune Therapy).
  Botanica Press, Box 742, Capitola, CA 95010.  (Most are USD 5-10).
Accurate and balanced articles.

David Hoffmann: The New Holistic Herbal
  1990 (3rd edition), Element Books Ltd, Longmead, Shaftesbury,
  Dorset, England. ISBN 1-85230-193-7 (softcover); list price USD ?

David Hoffman: An Elders' Herbal (don't let the title throw you)
  1993, Healing Arts Press, Vermont. ISBN 0-89281-396-2 (softcover);
  list price USD 14.95.

David Hoffmann: The Herbal Handbook: A User's Guide to Medical
  Herbalism.
  1988, Healing Arts Press.  USD 10.95.
All texts by Hoffmann are reliable.

Marie-Louise Kreuter: Natural Herb Gardening
  Macmillan Publishing Company, 866 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10022.
This is a translation from German. (I know because she has other books
in German.)

Claire Loewenfeld: Herb Gardening
  Faber and Faber Limited, 3 Queen Square, London, WCIN 3AU

John Lust: The Herb Book.
  1974.  USD 6.95.

S. Mills: Out of the Earth: The Essential Book of Herbalism.
  1992, Viking Press.

Michael Murray + Joseph Pizzorno: Encyclopedia of Natural Medicine.
  Prima Publishing, P.O.  Box 1260MP, Rocklin, California 95677.
  Listprice USD 18.95.

Penelope Ody: The Complete Medicinal Herbal.
  Dorling Kindersly, USD 29.95.
Has most everything the beginner needs and then some.

Jeanne Rose: Jeanne Rose's Modern Herbal.
  USD 9.95

Jeanne Rose: Herbs and Things.
A good beginner's book.

Debra St.Claire: Herbal Preparations and Natural Therapies: Creating
  and Using a Home Herbal Medicine Chest. Video + book package.
  1989, Morningstar Publications, Boulder, Colorado 80302, USA.
  ISBN 0-9623812-0-9, listprice USD 140.
It is 142 pages of pure gold... and the videos show you how to do it
in your own kitchen. (Rusty Taylor ([e-mail]))

Michael Tierra: Planetary Herbology: an integration of Western herbs
  into the traditional Chinese and Ayurvedic systems.
  Lotus Press, P. O. Box 6265, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87502-6265, USA.

Michael Tierra: The Way of Herbs.
1990, Pocket Books, New York.  ISBN 0-671-72403-7 (paperback).

R.F. Weiss: Herbal Medicine.
  1988. Listprice USD 55.
Translation from the German original.

-----
East-Asian traditional healing (ETH) (also called TCM, Traditional
Chinese Medicine, somewhat inaccurately):

Dan Bensky, Andrew Amble, Ted Kaptchuk: Chinese Herbal Medicine
  Materia Medica, 2nd. edition.
  Eastland Press, Inc., Seattle, Washington, 1993.
The standard ETH Materia Medica.

Dan Bensky, Andall Barolet: Chinese Herbal Medicine Formulas &
  Strategies, 1st. edition.
  Eastland Press, Inc., Seattle, Washington, 1990.
The companion Formulary.

For more good books on ETH ask Paul Iannone ([e-mail]).

-----
Aromatheraphy starter kit:

Patricia Davis: Aromatherapy, An A-Z.
  1988, The C.W. Daniel Company LTD, Saffron Walden, England.
  ISBN 0-85207-185-x (softcover); list price USD 19.95.

==========

4.2 Good Books for further studies

-----
So now you feel you've read enough books, but you're still glassy-eyed
from reading the 'constituents' -part of the books - time to go
shopping for some heavier stuff:

-----

Rudolf Fritz Weiss, MD: Herbal Medicine.
  Translation of the 6th edition of Lehrbuch der Phytotherapie.
  Beaconsfield Publishers LTD, Beaconsfield, England.
This book is organized by system and subdivided by diseases and is
written from an MD's perspective.  Contains a lot of useful
information.  ([e-mail])

Norman Grainger Bisset (Ed.): Herbal Drugs and Phytopharmaceuticals,
  A Handbook for Practice on a Scientific Basis.
  Translation of Max Wichtl (Ed.): Teedrogen, below.
  1994, CRC Press.
This book has 181 monographs on European herbs with a description and
photographs of the herbs, constituents, indications, side-effects,
delivery system, method for authenticating the herb (usually a TLC
method), and the quantitative standards of the European pharmacaopeias
where it is listed as official.  Although it does not explain mode of
action, this is a technical, and scientific book of excellent quality
and a must for serious herbal students.  It is also expensive as are
all CRC books.  ([e-mail])

Max Wichtl (Hrsg.): Teedrogen, Ein Handbuch fuer die Praxis auf
  wissenschaftlicher Grundlage.  2., erweiterte, ueberarbeitete Aufl.
  1989, Wissenschaftliche Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, Birkenwaldstr. 44,
  D-7000 Stuttgart 1, Germany. ISBN 3-8047-1009-3, listprice DEM 178.
(It's expensive in the original, too)

Harvey Wickes Felter, John Uri Lloyd: King's American Dispensatory,
  in two volumes.
  1898, 18th edition, 3rd revision. Reprinted 1993, Eclectic
  Institute, 14385 SE Lusted Rd., Sandy, OR 97055. 1-800-332-4372.
  No ISBN number. Listprice USD 225.
This one lists everything they knew about plants (and chemicals used
in medicine) back then, and does it exhaustively. Like Maud Grieve but
without the history/lore part and with much more uses parts.

Trease + Evans: Pharmacognosy, 13th edition.
  1989, Bailliere Tindall, London.
There is a great deal of chemistry involved in this book but again it
is an excellent reference if this is the type of information you want.
([e-mail])

- A basic chemistry textbook.
- A good biochemistry textbook.  I have Stryer, 3.ed., so now even I
  understand something about enzymes.
- A good anatomy/physiology textbook
- The Anatomy Coloring Book
- The Physiology Coloring Book
- The latest Merck Manual, which lists main illnesses plaguing mankind
  - not for us hypochondriacs.  You might need a medicinese - english
  dictionary to understand it.
- The latest Merck Index, which lists medicines by their constituents;
  meaning you can check which extracted part of which plant is used in
  which over-the-counter medicine for what illness.
- The latest 'Rote Liste' for anyone speaking German. Germans can ask
  their local pharmacy for an old copy. It lists medicines by uses,
  and it does list plant extracts (single constituents or whole
  herbs), herbal teas, homeopatica, and whatnot.
  (Got my copy from German friends who own a pharmacy in Berlin. They
  get me lots of other great stuff, too.)  ;)

==========

4.3 Good Magazines

-----

The Herb Companion.
  Interweave Press, 201 E. 4th St., Dept. I-WC, Loveland, CO 80537.
  [phone], FAX [phone].
  Bimonthly, ISSN 1040-581X, USD 24/yr. (Foreign USD 31/year).
Mainly Culinary and gardening of herbs, but lately the American
  Botanical Council and the Herb Research Foundation have had
  supplements on Herbs for Health (which is planned to continue).

Herbalgram (Journal of the American Botanical Council and the Herb
  Research Foundation)
  American Botanical Council, P.O. Box 201660, Austin, TX  78720.
  [phone], FAX [phone].
  Quarterly, ISSN 0899-5648, USD 25/yr. (Foreign USD 35/year).
Excellent technical and scientific, ethnobotany, latest medical
research.

The Herb Quarterly
  Long Mountain Press, 223 San Anselmo Ave, Suite 7, San Anselmo,
  CA  94960. [phone], FAX [phone].
  Quarterly, ISSN 0163-9900, USD 24/yr. (Foreign USD 29/year).

American Herb Association Quarterly Newsletter
  P. O. Box 1673, Nevada City, CA 95959

Medical Herbalism
  A free copy of Medical Herbalism is available on the Internet:
  try http://www.crl.com/~robbee/berg1.html.

Planta Medica
  Should be in any pharmacy/pharmacognosy university library.

Journal of Ethnopharmacology
  Should be in any pharmacy/pharmacognosy university library.

-----
Also check sunsite.unc.edu /pub/academic/medicine/alternative-
healthcare/herbal-references/literature/herb-journals.

==========

5 Other sources

==========

5.1 Napralert - online commercial database


·


-----
I asked Mary Lou Quinn about Napralert, and was surprised when she
signed, Managing Director, NAPRALERT...  She states the difference
between Medline and Napralert as follows:

NAPRALERT is and always has been restricted to world literature
regarding natural products.  Medline is not restricted.  Just as
one example, if you query NAPRALERT on the key word AMYGDALIN, you
will get only that literature pertaining to the compound AMYGDALIN
(otherwise known as LAETRILE).
If you query Medline, not only will you get the above, but you will
also get lots of articles dealing with the Amygdala of the brain,
anatomy, physiology, etc.  It has never been NAPRALERT'S goal to be
all inclusive regarding medical science.  However, if you want the
most comprehensive database on Medicinal plants and Natural products,
then NAPRALERT is the way to go.

She also snailed me an information package.  Quoting from that:

Napralert (NAtural PRoducts ALERT) is a relational database of world
literature on the chemical constituents and pharmacology of plant,
microbial and animal (primarily marine) extracts.

It's housed and maintained by the Program for Collaborative Research
in the Pharmaceutical Sciences, within the Department of Medicinal
Chemistry and Pharmacognosy, in the College of Pharmacy of the
University of Illinois at Chicago, 833 South Wood Street (M/C 877),
Chicago, IL 60612, U.S.A.
Phone [phone], Fax [phone].

And here is what it'll cost you:

You can access Napralert by paying bulk rate (subscribing) or by
paying per question.  Annual subscription fee for individual user
with no ties to government agencies, small or large businesses,
research institutes or libraries: USD 100, of which half gets you
manuals, a user ID/password, and limited disk storage space, and
the other half gets you answers (at USD 0.75 per reference obtained).

Per question rate: USD 25 + USD 0.75 per reference obtained.
Off-line (snailmail rate): USD 25 + USD 0.75 per reference obtained.

NAPRALERT is also available on-line through STN in the US, Europe
and Asia.

For more info and user ID application email [e-mail]
(Mary Lou Quinn).

==========

5.2 Medline - online commercial database

-----
Comment by Mark D. Gold ([e-mail]):
"I find it (Medline) a very useful tool.  But it important to realize
that there are several articles which warn about the "dangers" of
herbs (particularly in JAMA) which are little more than inaccurate
hatchet jobs."

-----
This entry is based on the Medline FAQ by Gregory W. Froehlich, M.D.,
edited by [e-mail].

> I've been hearing a lot about "med-line".  What exactly is it, what
> is it used for, and can you access it via internet?

I'll quote from the National Library of Medicine:

"Thousands of new books and articles in biomedicine are published
every month.  How can a health professional or investigator easily
locate literature relevant to a particular area of patient care or
research?

Since the early 1970's, the National Library of Medicine (NLM) has
made searching the biomedical literature faster and easier by
providing online information retrieval on the MEDLARS, (MEDical
Literature Analysis and Retrieval System) family of databases.
MEDLINE - NLM's premier database - has over 7 million citations to
biomedical articles and is searched more than eighteen thousand times
a day.

The cheapest way to access Medline is to attend a school or
university with a medical library.  Many schools give free medline
access to students.  Some university medical libraries will provide
free Medline access to the public: this varies with the school and
the state in which it's located.  It's worth checking out.  A few
municipal public libraries also offer free access.

It's also possible to get a direct account and search Medline from
your home.  However, there is no free way to do this.

In order to make searching even easier and provide a user-friendly way
to use the MEDLARS system, NLM, in 1986, developed a software package
called Grateful Med.  The simplicity and efficiency of searching with
Grateful Med have made it immensely popular -more than 50,000 copies
of the software have been sold since its introduction." (You can also
access Medline through commerical services like PaperChase, etc - more
costly).

Step 1: Get a user ID/password.  You can call the National Technical
Information Service at 1-800-423-9255 for info, or write to them at:

              NTIS
              5285 Port Royal Road
              Springfield, VA 22161

Or, you can be a cyberstud and get the application form 'userid.txt'
by anonymous ftp from nlmpubs.nlm.nih.gov in the directory /online/
medlars.

Step 2: Decide whether to use a front end (Grateful Med) or to learn
how to communicate directly with MEDLINE (HINT: pick door #1).
Download it from the same server above (check through the /grateful
directory for the files you need) or order it from NTIS (see Step 1,
or get the order form 'gmorder.txt' in the directory /online/medlars).
It's USD 30 or so the latter way.

Step 3: If you decide against using Grateful Med, you can access
MEDLINE through programs like Telnet at medlars.nlm.nih.gov.  You'll
need an ID/password.  You can also access MEDLINE through commercial
services such as PaperChase (Telnet to pch.bih.harvard.edu, enter
pch, signup when it asks for password)

$$$: NTIS charges for access; I seem to pay about a dollar a search.
Hourly charges work out to about USD 20/hour, but some searches, where
abstracts are retrieved can be more expensive.  Commercial services
like PaperChase (available on CompuServe) are also more expensive.

==========

5.3 Good Herbprograms for the PC

-----
Go get these and choose for yourself. They're all on sunsite, too:
ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/academic/medicine/alternative-healthcare/
  herbal-medicine/programs/

"Healing Powers of Herbs" by Klaus Hoferichter, found by ftp at
oak.oakland.edu (or mirrors) in /SimTel/msdos/food:
891879 Mar 15 18:00 herbp21.zip
Graphical DOS interface - mouse essential.

"Herb Power v. 2.0", by Klaus Hoferichter, found by ftp at
oak.oakland.edu (or mirrors) in /SimTel/msdos/food:
795135 Mar 10 18:19 hph2.zip.
Graphical DOS interface - mouse essential.

Demo of the "Herbal Browser", by Marvel C.  Stalcup, found at
aol and compuserve:
demoherb.exe (self-extracting file, size 248436).
DOS - interface, mouse recommended but not essential.
Really jiffy jumping function, easy to browse.

"Herbage for DOS v.1.0", by Tim Johnson, found by ftp at
oak.oakland.edu (or mirrors) in SimTel/msdos/biology:
205081 Feb 25 02:15 herbage1.zip.
DOS - interface, no mouse needed.
Nice 'export text' -function.

"Illustrated Medical Herbal Encyclopedia" - demo version, found by
ftp at oak.oakland.edu (or mirrors) in /SimTel/msdos/food
226983 Apr 22 03:05 medherb1.zip
DOS - interface, no mouse needed.

-----
"IBIS" - "Interactive BodyMind Information System", by GAIA Multimedia.
Demoversion found at http://www.teleport.com:80/~ibis.
DOS-interface, mouse required.  Needs 24 MB hard disk space.
Cost (full version) USD 895.

==========

5.4 Good Herbprograms for the Macintosh

-----
"IBIS" - "Interactive BodyMind Information System", by GAIA Multimedia.
Demoversion found at http://www.teleport.com:80/~ibis.
Needs System 6.0.7 or later.  21 MB hard disk space needed for
installation; 2.5 MB RAM on System 6.0.7, 4 MB RAM on System 7.
Cost (full version) USD 895.

==========

5.5 Herbal CD-Rom

-----
"The Herbalist", ver.2.0, by David L.  Hoffmann, CD-Rom database, list
price USD 54.95 (USD 45 now?), just under 50 MB, DOS, Windows, Mac.
Available from Hopkins Technology, 421 Hazel Lane, Hopkins,
MN 55343-7116.  Phone [phone] or 800-397-9211.
(All gathered from the archives, I don't have this one)

More info found at
http://www.hoptechno.com/herbmm.htm.
-----
"Traditional Chinese Medicine & Pharmacology"
Hopkins Technology (as above). USD 29.95.

The insert reads "Complete with illustrations, photography, full text
search functionality".

==========

6 Teachings and stuff

-----
This chapter has changed a bit - if you know of any good additions
please let me know.

==========

6.1 Apprenticeships offered lately

-----
Howie Brounstein, Columbines and Wizardry Herbs, Inc.
([e-mail])
You'll find his offer by ftp at sunSITE.unc.edu, as outlined in (7.1)
below, under /pub/academic/medicine/alternative-healthcare/herbs/
general, as Herbal-Apprenticeships.1995 and/or Herbalists-
Apprenticeship.
It's also found at the Herbal Hall WWW page (see 7.2 below); there
you'll find notes on the current apprenticeship program.

-----
Michael Moore, Southwest School of Botanical Medicine.
His offer is found by ftp at sunSITE.unc.edu, as outlined in
(7.1) below, under Southwest-School-of-Botanical-Medicine (surprised?)
Look for SWSBM.School_Catalogue_ASCII.

While you're there, get the .jpg -pictures.  And have a good look
around the other goodies that are offered on site.

If you are not a beginner, get the big textfiles - Herbal Materia
Medica, Herbal Repertory, Herbal/Medical Dictionary, Herbal-Medical
Contraindications, Specific Indications,  Herbal Tinctures, and
anything else that might have been added.

These are summaries of how to prepare and use plants you already
know in ways you already know (even though you didn't necessarily
know that you can use THAT plant in THIS way before reading the
stuff).

-----
From Roy Collins, [e-mail]:
I offer an annual apprenticeship program (non-certificate) with is
held once per month for twelve months (on Sundays--beginning Oct 17,
1995).
I'm 3-1/2 hours from NYC and 1 hour from Boston. If interested E-mail
me privately or snail mail to Tidewater Institute of Herbal Studies,
101 Van Zandt Ave., Warwick, RI 02889.

==========

6.2 Pointers to schools

-----
Try the Herbal Hall. They've a LOT of schools on their www page:
  http://www.crl.com/~robbee/herbal.html

-----
From [e-mail] (Eugenia Provence):
Both the American Herb Association (AHA), PO Box 1673, Nevada City,
CA  95959 and the American Herbalist Guild (AHG), PO Box 1127,
Forestville, CA  95436 publish directories of schools and classes
in the US.

You will be sure to find one that appeals to your approach to
herbalism, whether that's a folk or a scientific approach.

==========

6.3 Other stuff

-----
On alt.folklore.herbs June 95:

OCTOBER 16-27, 1995
CLINICAL STRATEGIES AND HERBAL THERAPEUTICS
  AN ADVANCED SEMINAR IN THE PRACTICE OF
  WESTERN CONSTITUTIONAL HERBAL MEDICINE

The seminar is to be held in Albuquerque, NM, at the Southwest School
of Botanical Medicine, 122 Tulane SE, Albuquerque, NM, 87106.

The seminar will offer well-defined systems of constitutional
evaluation, based on organ system energetics, patterns of
hypothalamic/pituitary stress, and fluid transport energetics, with
appropriate herb tonics.
The multi-systemic effects of major medicinal plants are discussed, in
order to avoid inadvertant iatrogenesis, and patient intake forms,
questionaires, treatment records and evaluation and formulating work-
sheets are dealt with.

Counseling strategies will be discussed, with evaluation and treatment
strategies for chronic disease, reproductive imbalances, and the
immuno-compromised disorders emphasized...the central strengths of
herbal therapy.

Patients will be seen in a group setting, with subsequent disussion
of possible strategies, and a number of case histories will be
reviewed with student evaluations supplied...and reviewed.

The hours are Monday through Friday both weeks, 1:00 P.M. to 7:00 P.M.
(with an hour for dinner).  For practitioners with little hands-on
experience in making tinctures, fluidextracts, and dispensing formulas,
there will be an optional lab session 1:00 to 5:00 P.M. Saturday and
Sunday as well (no additional charge).  There are 68 hours of classes.

The cost of the seminar is USD 350.  This includes manuals, forms and
any lab supplies, but does not include housing or meals. The class is
limited to 22 students.  We will be spending our time teaching and
explaining stuff, have no interest in setting up hotel accommadations
or group prices or any of the assorted gimrackery that makes most
seminars both too expensive and filled with the same class, gender and
color of folks. We expect to be working with Country Wimmin, O.M.D.s,
disillusioned R.N.s (cardiology), Naturopaths and anarchist
wildcrafters.

Those attending need to be either active practitioners in other health
care disciplines, practicing herbalists, or former students of Michael
or Adam...or all the above.  Knowledge of anatomy and physiology is
more critical than knowledge of herbs...both are best.  The seminar
will be a lot of work, a lot of input and output, but the structure
will be loose, informal, and non-didactic.

Michael Moore [e-mail]

-----
On the herblist July 1995:

From Roy Collins, [e-mail]:
On Sept. 21-Oct 1 in Phoenicia, NY there will be a gathering of some
the foremost Western Herbalists (David Hoffmann, Susan Weed, Doug
Elliott, Christopher Hobbs, Dr. Patch Adams, Keewaydinoquay, and Gail
Ulrich) who you can talk with to find out in which direction you want
to go with herbalism. Contact Pam Montgomery at 914-795-5238 for more
info on these workshops.

Although I've heard a lot good things about Dominion Herbal College
(in Burnaby, BC) it is basically a correspondence school. Nothing beats
hands on field work and direct interaction with a flesh and blood
teacher. There are numerous schools that offer *certificates* of
graduation from herb schools, but the herbal profession is not a
licensed practiced in the U.S. and legal repercussions can occur, as
it is defined as a form of medical practice.

This is not true in England and the European countries, however, and
licensing is commonplace. One way of getting around this is to find a
good Naturpathic School (which incorporates the use of herbs) and to
become a licensed Dr. Of Naturopathy (N.D.) and set up practice. I
believe many states (including Connecticut) *allow* this alternative
medical art to be practiced. The names and addresses for both herbal
schools and schools of Naturopathy are regulary published in the
advertising sections of health, herb, and vegetarian magazines.

==========

7 Check these sites:

-----
Among the goodies you'll find the AFH archives, Michael Moore's files,
and some nice WWW pages.

==========

7.1 Medicinal Herb Archives at sunSITE.unc.edu

-----
If you find sunSITE.unc.edu is too busy to give you anonymous access
you can try the mirror site in Japan, SunSITE.sut.ac.jp, path:
/.mirrors/SunSITE.unc.edu/academic/medicine/alternative-healthcare/
  herbal-references/... or herbal-medicine/...
This DOESN'T mirror all of the directories, but there's still lots
and lots to see.

For Europeans there is a mirror site in the UK (sunsite.doc.ic.ac.uk),
but I haven't been able to find the herbfiles there.

----- by Lawrence London ([e-mail]):

This document (Herb_Archives) is the 8-6-1995 update of:
ftp://sunSITE.unc.edu/pub/academic/medicine/alternative-healthcare/
      herbal-references/Herb_Archives
http://sunSITE.unc.edu/london/Herb_Archives
For more information contact:
[e-mail], [e-mail] or
[e-mail]

-----
ACCESSING HERB ARCHIVES AT SUNSITE
-----
World Wide Web (lynx available via telnet for vt100 users)
  URL Info:
http://sunSITE.unc.edu/london/Herb_Archives.html
http://sunSITE.unc.edu/london/Information_By_Topic.html
http://sunSITE.unc.edu/herbmed/ Henriette Kress' archives
http://sunSITE.unc.edu/herbs/ Herb Research Foundation

  ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/academic/medicine/alternative-healthcare/
herbal-references/ and Herb-Research-Foundation/ and
herbal-medicine/ and Southwest-School-of-Botanical-Medicine/

·


  gopher://sunsite.unc.edu/11/.pub/academic/medicine/
        alternative-healthcare/herbal-references/ and herbal-medicine/
        and Herb-Research-Foundation/
        and Southwest-School-of-Botanical-Medicine/

ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/academic/agriculture/sustainable_agriculture/
gardening/ or gardening-faqs/
  gopher://sunsite.unc.edu/11/.pub/academic/agriculture/
        sustainable_agriculture/gardening/ or gardening-faqs/

Gopher: gopher sunSITE.unc.edu or use URL, then go to these menus:
The Worlds of sunSITE
  browse sunSITE archives
    academic
      medicine
        alternative healthcare
          herbal-references
          herbal-medicine
          Herb-Research-Foundation
The Worlds of sunSITE
  Sustainable Agriculture Information
    gardening
    gardening-faqs
  -or-
  browse sunSITE archives
    academic
      agriculture
        sustainable_agriculture
          gardening
          gardening-faqs

Anonymous FTP:
  ftp sunSITE.unc.edu
  Login: anonymous
  Password: (enter your Internet E-Mail ID)
  cd pub/academic/medicine/alternative-healthcare/
     herbal-references/faqs/ and herbal-medicine/ and
     Herb-Research-Foundation/
  cd pub/academic/agriculture/sustainable_agriculture/
     gardening or gardening-faqs/

Ftpmail (Send e-mail to [e-mail] for helpfile on
  ftpmail usage)
WAIS (also available by telnet; follow login instructions)

-----
In herbal-references:
Under /discussion-groups/ you'll find the archives for AFH.
There's lots of other stuff to see - just browse once you're there.

In Southwest-School-of-Botanical-Medicine/ you'll find all of
  Michael Moore's goodies - see 6.1 above.
The *.jpg:s by Mimi Kamp, Michael Moore and others are found in a
  subdirectory, Medicinal-Plant-Images.
(There's more pics in Herbal Hall, see below).

Under herbal-medicine:
in /faqs/ you'll find the culinary and medicinal herbfaqs,
in /archives/herblist/ the herblist (see 8.1 below) archives from
 1994,
in /pictures/ some *.jpg:s by me, and some by Marco Bleeker, and
in /programs/ some good herbal shareware programs (see 5.3 above).

==========

7.2 Interesting WWW pages

-----
If you notice a changed URL drop me a note - thanks!

-----
Herbal Hall, Rob Bidleman:
http://www.crl.com/~robbee/herbal.html
You can also get there by ftp:
ftp://ftp.crl.com/users/ro/robbee/HERB.
More *jpg:s by Mimi Kamp, Michael Moore and friends are found in
  the ftp archive in /incoming/ (or there they were last I looked).

Natural Medicine, Complementary Health Care and Alternative Therapies,
hosted by AMR'TA:
http://www.teleport.com:80/~amrta

Peter J. Bower's www page on Complementary Practices:
http://galen.med.virginia.edu/~pjb3s/Complementary_Practices.html

Algy Krebbs' www page on herbs and gardening:
http://frank.mtsu.edu/~sward/herb/herbpic.html

Agricultural Genome Information Server with WWW page; the address is
right but the site is busy:
http://probe.nalusda.gov/
Start with the How-to and then check the Ethnobotanical and
Phytochemical databases...
http://probe.nalusda.gov:8300/cgi-bin/browse/phytochemdb
[Phytochemical database]
http://www.ars-grin.gov/~ngrlsb/
[Phytochemical and Ethnobotanical Databases]

Soaring Bear's Web page has lots of science links:
http://copsg2.pharm.arizona.edu/~bear
follow the the herbs or botany links.

Life Extension Foundation page with health related text and pointers:
http://www.webcom.com/~lef/

The Acupuncture Page has lots of information on acupuncture, chinese
herbs etc.:
http://www.Acupuncture.com/Acupuncture/

This is THE WWW page for the botanically inclined:
http://meena.cc.uregina.ca/~liushus/bio/botany.html
Have a good supply of snacks by your computer - this one will last a
while.

Pennsylvania State University's PENPages have searchable files;
try (Search using keywords) with 'Herb' and start browsing:
gopher://penpages.psu.edu/

A WWW page on skin diseases (Dermatology):
http://biomed.nus.sg/nsc/nsc.html
Go to Educational Information on Common Skin Diseases.
Not for us hypochondriacs! Photos included.

Australian National Botanical Gardens:
http://155.187.10.12/anbg.html
much info, not many pics.

-----
Pictures found here:
-----
The Medicinal Herb Garden at the University of Washington in Seattle:
http://www.nnlm.nlm.nih.gov/pnr/uwmhg/

Flora of Europe - a photographic herbarium:
http://www.knoware.nl/flora/
The ones I sampled were *.jpg:s; you have to know your latin names
to find your way - but that's a feature...    ;)

More *.jpg:s found at Marco Bleeker's homepage in the Netherlands:
http://www.euronet.nl/users/mbleeker/
These you can also download by ftp; server address included on the
WWW -page (they're also on sunSITE, see above).

And LOTS of picture links from this site:
http://130.17.2.215/images.html

-----
Missing: some links to botanical or herbal pages or pictures in
Asia, Africa, and South America - please email if you know a good
site.

==========

8 Mailing lists

==========

8.1 The Herblist, the Medicinal and Aromatic Plants discussion list

-----
To post to the list: write an article and send it to:
  [e-mail]
To subscribe: write to [e-mail] with the following
text:
  SUBscribe HERB (your full name)
If you only wish the digest (to get all posts for the previous day in
one email message) you can add another line
  SET HERB DIGEST

==========

8.2 The Aromatherapy list

----
To post to the list: write an article and send it to:
  [e-mail]
To subscribe: write to [e-mail] with the following text:
  subscribe aromatherapy-l
or, if you want it to another address than the one you're at when
subscribing:
  subscribe aromatherapy-l other-address@your_site.your_net

==========

8.3 The Holistic list: Holistic Discussion Group

----
To post an article: write an article and send it to:
  [e-mail]
To subscribe: write to [e-mail] with the following text:
  SUBscribe HOLISTIC (your full name)
(report on the herblist: this address works if above doesn't:
  [e-mail])
If you only wish the digest you can add another line:
  SET HOLISTIC DIGEST

==========

8.4 The Kombucha list

-----
To subscribe: write to [e-mail] with the following
text:
  SUBSCRIBE
(If this doesn't work try HELP to the same address.)

==========

8.5 The Paracelsus Mailing list

-----
Subscription is limited to practitioners, educators, researchers and
students in alternative and conventional medical fields.

To subscribe: write to [e-mail] with the following text:
  SUBSCRIBE PARACELSUS
and, as part of the subscription approval process, send a biographical
note indicating training, practice and interests to
[e-mail].

==========

8.6 The OrMed Mailing List - Oriental Medicine Mailing List

-----
To post to the list: write an article and send it to:
  [e-mail]
To subscribe: write to [e-mail] with the following
text:
  SUBSCRIBE emailaddress OrMed
(like SUBSCRIBE [e-mail] OrMed)

==========

8.7 The Homeopathy List

-----
To subscribe: write to [e-mail] with the
following text:
  SUBSCRIBE Homeopathy

==========

8.8 The Phytopharmacognosy List

-----
They really don't want to be bogged down with questions like 'what do
you use garlic for', preferring to discuss plant chemicals. If you
can't either do that or lurk without disturbing them don't subscribe.

To subscribe:
write a message with only the text
  JOIN Phytopharmacognosy first name(s) Last name
to: [e-mail]
Leave the subject box blank.

==========

9 Related newsgroups

-----
You might want too check
  misc.health.alternative
  rec.gardens
  rec.food.preserving
  bionet.plants
  sci.med.*
  alt.support.cancer.prostate
  alt.support.sinusitis
  alt.support.prostate.prostatitis
  alt.aromatherapy (comes complete with the usual complaint: 'my site
    doesn't carry this one' - well mine doesn't so I can't say what
    they talk about over there)

==========
THE END
==========



news.eunet.fi!newsmaster
 introduction to and a resource list for medicinal herbs.


Archive-name: medicinal-herbs/part3

==========
2.2.3  Herbs for vivid dreams
-----
Please also see 2.1.11  Kava kava.

-----
Calea zacatechichi (Dream Herb) is a shrub from the Chiapas region of
Mexico, related to the mint family. It has been used by the Chontal
people as a divinitory for many years. Traditional use as a tea brings
about a drowsy dream state, in which answers to questions are revealed
and lost objects are located.

Clinical testing in double blind studies have been shown to induce
sleep and vivid dreaming, with the subjects reporting profound meaning
in the dreams.

Preparation is almost invariably as a tea. However, zacatechichi is
intensely bitter and soapy tasting and little can be done to mask the
taste (though mixture with the sweetener herb Stevia or preparation by
taking Miracle Berry which makes everything taste sweet sound like
reasonable suggestions). My experience has been to mix a rounded
teaspoon of zacatechichi with an ounce of kava kava and preparing it
as normal kava. The berries/seeds seem to have more effect, though the
leaf material itself is potent.

Little empirical or pharmacologic data exists so far, one notable
study being Lilian Mayagoitia's (1986)  "Calea Zacatechichi:
Psychopharmocologic Analysis of an Alleged Oneirogenic Plant" in vol.
18 of the Journal of Ethnopharmocology.

==========
2.2.4  Herbs for colds and flu
-----
From [e-mail] (Mary Decker)

There are many herbs to use for fighting colds and flu.  The first
category, the immune system boosters, are best taken at the first signs
of a cold.  When you're tired, or have been under a lot of stress,
you're more susceptible to illness.  The key is learning to recognize
the signs of an oncoming cold and handle it then.  It is much easier to
get rid of a cold before you get it.  The following are some of my
favorites.

-----
Herbs to fight back a cold:
  Echinacea (purpurea or angustifolia) -
  Goldenseal (Hydrastis canadensis)
  Pau d'arco
  St.John's Wort (Hypericum perforatum)
  Horseradish
St. Johnswort is included because of its antiviral properties.

Several combinations of Echinacea and Goldenseal are available
commercially. These combinations usually include Cayenne as an
accelerator and work very well.

I've found that for myself taking a combination of Echinacea, Golden
Seal and Cayenne and getting plenty of rest will usually help me get
rid of a cold before it really starts.  If I can't find the herbs, or a
pre mixed version, I'll use the Pau d'arco

These herbs can be taken in 2-3 00 gel caps, or you can make a tea
(which is always nice when you're fighting a cold).  Tinctures are
available and do work, but they taste nasty!

Tonic Herbs, helping your health in general:
  Ginseng (Panax ginseng or quinquefolius); considered a male tonic
  Dong quai, considered a female tonic

Tea Mixture to stop a cold before it starts:
  Take equal parts Lavender, Rosemary and White willow bark and steep
  them in hot water.  Sip the tea slowly and go to bed.
Or take 2 parts each of Lavender and Rosemary and make an infusion
  (as above) and take 1 part of Willow bark and make a decoction. Add
  one tablespoonful decoction to the infusion and sip slowly.

-----
Once you've come down with a cold rest is still one of the best
things you can do for yourself.  Herb-wise you'll want to take some
things that will ease the symptoms of your cold.

For sinus congestion you may want to use horseradish or mustard.
Although not an herb, steam is one of the best things for easing sinus
congestion.  Using a camomile tea for the steam has also been
recommended, but I haven't had to try it yet.

Horseradish and mustard (hot, chinese style mustard works best) are
irritants and help clear your sinus cavities.  Take teaspoon to a
tablespoon of either ground horseradish or mustard and eat it. (This
method is fine, if you like the taste of either) If not, here are some
other options:

For the mustard, you can also make an infusion of mustard plant. This
will not have the burning sensation you get from eating the mustard and
takes a little longer, but as I've said earlier, it is more palatable.

Horseradish is always best used fresh. According to the books I've
read, adding sugar or honey will make the horseradish more tolerable.
(I have no experience with this, since I, for one, like horseradish
straight, or as prepared commercially.)  Horseradish is also a favorite
of mine because it has antibacterial properties that have been proven
effective against graham-positive and graham-negative bacteria.

-----
For general cold complaints I've found these herbs to be a great help:
  Peppermint
  Spearmint
  Lemon
  Cayenne
A tea of the mints or in the case of lemons, a hot lemonade is soothing
to the throat and the steam is always helpful for the sinuses.

Herbs that induce sweating:
  Sage
  Ginger
For fever and aches
  White Willow - (Salix alba) (same cautions as aspirin)
  Meadowsweet- (Filipendula ulmaria) (same cautions as aspirin)
  Dogwood bark (Cornus florida) (used as a substitute for Peruvian bark
  (quinine))
For using any of the above, the best option is to make a decoction and
drink no more than a tablespoon at a time.

Sore throat (demulcent):
  Licorice (Glycyrrhiza glabra)
  Slippery Elm (Ulmis fulva)
  Horehound (Marrubium vulgare)

Licorice and Elm are best taken as a decoction.  Use about 1 tsp/1 cup
of water.  Doses are as follows:
  Licorice - 1 cup per day
  Slippery Elm - 1 tsp. every 30 minutes

Horehound on the other hand can be taken as an infusion (1 tsp / 1/2
cup of water), or as a syrup or candy (1 lbs. sugar / pint of infusion)

Another demulcent, marshmallow (Malva sylvestris or rotundifolia) can
be used to make an infusion (using only the fresh herb).  Add 1-2 tsp.
to 1/2 cup of cold water, let stand for 8 hours. Then warm the water,
don't boil. Take only about one teaspoon at a time.

Relaxants (drink as a tea):
  Lemon Balm
  Chamomile
  Catnip
Chamomile and Catnip are usually dried and stored that way.  Lemon
Balm, on the other hand, is best used fresh.  If it is not available
fresh, use a tincture prepared from the fresh leaves.

For cleaning up sickrooms I've found something called 'Vinegar of the 4
thieves', that helps cleaning up sickrooms and their odor:

Vinegar of the 4 thieves is made by mixing 2 tablespoons each of
lavender, mint, rosemary, rue, sage and wormwood. Steep this mix in 2
quarts of applecider-vinegar in sunlight for 2 weeks.  After two weeks
strain and add clove buds to the cider and steep for a few more days.
When you're ready to use it, dilute with 10 parts water per part
vinegar.  Use it to wipe down walls, and clean the bathroom.

Unfortunately just about all of the above are counterindicated during
pregnancy, especially the following:
  Dong Quai
  Cayenne
  Horseradish
  Golden seal
  Ginseng

Always check and crosscheck your references.

==========
2.2.5  Herbs to make you sleep
-----
Also see Valeriana (2.1.1).

-----
From [e-mail]
>I REALLY need some herbs to take for insomnia. My doctor says I am in
excellent health, and I am not depressed, but insomnia has been a
terrible problem for me since I was a child. Can anyone recommend some
herbs to me that either taste good-ok (not valarian--it smells so bad
to me :( ) OR tell me how to make a herbal sleep pillow?

From [e-mail] (The Literate Tomboy)
Rub a little lavender oil under your nose and breathe deep as you lie
in bed...

From [e-mail] (darin)
Organic chemistry textbooks. It was a surefile thing in college.

From [e-mail] (sherree moore )
Okay, I've been lurking around reading the herbal newsgroup and I JUST
have to give my remedy for insomnia. When I can't sleep I make a tea
from camomile (of course), valerian, hops, and a smidge of passion
flower. Works every time. Of course, this combination might become a
bit too much every single night! Therefore, a hops pillow might help.
Make a small pillow and fill it with hops. Really doesn't smell bad at
all. Oh yes, the tea is an aquired taste, but honey helps.

From [e-mail] (Carl Mork)
The various mints are good in tea for making you relax. I make a nice
mix of peppermint, cat mint and apple mint to brew up the tea. A pillow
is simple to make. Use the same mints plus lavender. There are other
herbs that are used for sleep, but those are the ones I know from
practical experience.
The mix for tea and pillows should be to your taste. Oh and I suggest
honey in the tea.

==========
2.2.6  Aphrodisiacs
-----

Try this:
 2 parts safflower (or 1 part saffron)
 2 parts hibiscus flower
 2 parts rose flower
in tea (1 tsp per cup) or capsules (1-2 OO caps).
According to Ayurvedic philosophy, the floral structures of plants have
 their medicinal effects on the reproductive system. This formula is
 made of three flowers; the first is an aphrodisiac, the second exerts
 an influence on the sexual chakra and the third exerts and influence
 on the heart chakra and acts to harmonize the blend.

If you find the effect of this mixture too overwhelming (depending on
 your constitution, it might be) you can also add 1 part myrrh to
 soften the effect. Without the myrrh, it has quite a punch, with the
 myrrh, it has a much more diffuse effect, spread throughout the
 entire body rather than being so focused on the lower two chakras (or
 at least, those are the effects it had on me).
Personally, I couldn't stomach this mixture as tea -- capsules are
 preferable -- but it's also not bad in vanilla yogurt, if you don't
 have capsules.

==========

2.3 Processing herbs

-----

==========
2.3.1  Distilling oil
-----

The safest and cleanest method of extraction is with an alembic still.
  It's nice if you can buy one (try Edmund's Scientific) but you can
  also put one together from pieces of lab equipment or even kitchen
  pots. The idea is to simmer the organic matter in water so that the
  oils are released in the steam, then trap the steam so that it
  condenses. Typically this will yield a more dilute product than a
  pure essential oil - what you will usually get are herbal "waters"
  such as rosewater, lavender water, etc. The best quality oils are
  steam distilled but the apparatus and technique may be beyond the
  home hobbyist. (from the old herbfaq)

From Rusty Taylor ([e-mail]):
Quoting  'Herbal Preparations and Natural Therapies' by Debra St.
Claire:
  'Glycerin will extract the following - sugars, enzymes (dilute),
  glucosides, bitter compounds, saponins (dilute), and tannins.
  Absolute alcohol will extract the following - alkaloids (some),
  glycosides, volatile oils, waxes, resins, fats, some tannins, balsam,
  sugars, and vitamins.'
I am very much still a student, but it seems to me that you would use
the solvent that will give you the healing properties that you need out
of the plant.  And for those that don't like the alcohol taste, or
bite, the tincture can be mixed in hot water and left for a few minutes
to evaporate most of the alcohol off.  It has worked well for me, and
my children.

==========

2.4 Pointers to related documents

-----
I appreciate updates on below www / ftp addresses. Drop me a note
if you notice changes.

==========
2.4.1  Tinnitus FAQ pointer
-----
The tinnitus FAQ is found at http://www.cccd.edu/faq/tinnitus.html.

==========
2.4.2  Plants by Mail FAQ pointer
-----
Here you'll find lots and lots of catalogs to get living plants, and
some seeds, too:
http://seidel.ncsa.uiuc.edu/PBM-FAQ/

==========
2.4.3  Carpal Tunnel Syndrome WWW page pointer
-----
Take a look at the Carpal Tunnel Syndrome Home Page at
http://www.netaxs.com/~iris/cts
and specifically, at http://www.netaxs.com/~iris/cts/compfort.html

==========
2.4.4  Hint for Kombucha posters
-----
Please subscribe to the Kombucha list (see 8.4).  Do not post on
alt.folklore.herbs about Kombucha.

==========
2.4.5  Hint for Essiac posters
-----
You can find a wealth of info on Essiac at this web location:
http://lablinks.com/sumeria/health/essiac2.html

==========
2.4.6  Thinking of growing herbs for sale?
-----
Visit this site first:
http://newcrop.hort.purdue.edu/

It's the Gateway to the NewCrop Resource Online Program at the
Indiana Center for New Crops and Plant Products at Purdue University;
It has lots of information about different plants.

Then go get the 'herb-growing.faq' at sunsite (see 7.1 below).

==========
2.4.7  Saw Palmetto and Prostata Problems: Newsgroup/FAQ pointer
-----
Try newsgroup alt.support.prostate.prostatitis, where they also have an
excellent FAQ posted periodically.

==========
2.4.8  Natural High FAQ pointer
-----
Go get it by ftp from the alt.drugs archive at hyperreal.com
 /drugs/faqs/ - and take the other interesting stuff as well while
you're there.

==========
2.4.9  Natural vision FAQ pointer
-----
This interesting document can be found by www
http://www.usyd.edu.au/~vicc/home.html
http://silver.ucs.indiana.edu/~aeulenbe/home.html
or   email [e-mail]

It's posted roughly monthly to sci.med, sci.med.vision and alt.self-
help.

==========
2.4.10 Smoking herbs document pointer
-----
You'll find Howie Brounstein's herbal smoking mixtures -booklet by
ftp in the Herbal Hall:
ftp://ftp.crl.com/users/ro/robbee/HERB/Smoke/smoking.txt
or on sunSITE:
  ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/academic/medicine/alternative-healthcare/
    herbal-references/general/2/Herbal.Smoking.Mixtures

It's size about 47 kB.

==========
2.4.11 Gout FAQ ponter
-----
The Gout FAQ is on the Rheumatology Page:
http://www.crl.com/~fredt/rheum.html

==========

3 General Info

==========

3.1 Introduction to side effects, safety and toxicity of medicinal herbs

-----
by Jonathan Treasure ([e-mail])

This introduction concerns WESTERN medical herbs and their clinical
use.  Some herbal agents are common to different traditions but the
indications and methods of use may vary between eg TCM, Ayurvedic and

·


Western practices.

The purpose of these notes is to provide a general understanding of
the actions of herbal medicines, and hence a background for
understanding questions of safety and toxicity - NOT to provide a list
of problematic herbs.  A brief bibliography gives sources of reliable
information on the safety of herbal medicine and further reading.

-----
Conventional medicine considers that if a drug is to be effective, it
will inevitably have side effects.  The medical establishment
considers herbal medicines as drugs, and as such, they must either
have side effects - or ergo be ineffective.

Paradoxically tens of thousands of people every year turn to herbal
medicine because they regard plant remedies as being free from
undesirable side effects.  Herbal medicines are considered to be
generally safe AND effective agents.

Although there is a spectrum of viewpoints in western herbal medicine,
most herbalists reject the view that plant medicines are naturally
occurring analogues of the pharmaceuticals used in orthodox clinical
medicine i.e. drugs.

This is ultimately a rejection of the dominant paradigm of orthodox
clinical science.  It is necessary to outline the elements of the
alternative paradigm shared by most herbalists, before questions of
toxicity and safety can be discussed in context of clinical herbal
therapeutics, rather than of orthodox medical science.

-----
I.  MEDICINAL PLANT ACTIONS CANNOT BE REDUCED TO THE EFFECTS OF THEIR
    ISOLATED "ACTIVE CONSTITUENTS"

There ARE a few plants that are almost "drug like" and whose action
approaches that of pharmaceuticals.  Digitalis is the classic example.
Herbalists use these plants in near allopathic treatment strategies if
at all, and in some countries e.g. UK, their availability is
restricted by law.  The number of herbs in this category is relatively
few.

The vast majority of medicinal herbs contain dozens of different
compounds, often of great complexity, mucilages, tannins,
polysaccharides etc. that buffer, modulate and modify the effects of
any "active principles".  Study after study has shown that effects
produced by extracts of whole plants cannot be mimicked by
administering isolated purified constituents of the plant.

(It is ironic this proposition even has to be asserted given that
biological sciences have for some time used a systems theory model in
which the whole being greater than the sum of the parts is axiomatic -
this simply reflects the inherent conservatism of the medical
establishment.  However for most herbalists the view of the whole
being greater than the parts is derived from vitalism, not systems
theory!)

-----
II.  MEDICINAL HERBS ACT "MULTI-SYSTEMICALLY"

Pharmaceutical drugs are designed to elicit very specific reactions.
Their associated "side effects" are undesired actions, usually traded
as a "risk" against the "benefit" of the primary effect.  Herbs tend
to have several broad actions on a number of whole physiological
systems at the same time.  These actions are usually oriented in the
same general therapeutic direction, and are usually complementary or
synergistic, often non-specific, and very rarely adverse.  Herb
actions cannot be adequately described using the vocabulary of "drug"
action terms, e.g. diuretic etc. - they are too complex.  The clearest
example of this is the coining of the term "adaptogenic " used to
describe the multiple non-specific effects of herbs such as Ginseng.

-----
III.  HERBS ACT ON THE HEALING PROCESSES IN THE BODY.

A pharmaceutical drug addresses symptoms caused by specific disease
mechanisms as understood by scientific pathology.  Herbal medicines
are directed towards aiding the body's own healing processes.  These
approaches are diametrically opposed.  Herbal medicines act gently,
usually attempting to "nudge" or "support" systems and processes that
have become deficient or help remove excesses that have become
preponderant.  Symptom relief is only a component of herbal
therapeutic strategy.

This is a crucial difference.  For example, serum arthritic conditions
are conventionally treated with steroid anti-inflammatory drugs.
These have widespread and disturbing side effects, which at sustained
high doses become intolerable and potentially dangerous if not lethal.
The herbal approach to these conditions uses dietary modification of
metabolism; facilitation of elimination via kidneys and hepatic/
biliary routes; stimulation of circulation in the affected regions,
moistening of dry synovia, etc. Topical treatments for acute joint
pain or systemic anti-inflammatory herbs that help joint pain are used
as required, but this is not the thrust of the treatment strategy.
Lay persons often make the related mistake of seeking a "natural
alternative" to a pharmaceutical they have been prescribed rather than
challenging the diagnosis and therapeutic strategy.

-----
IV.  HERBS ACT MULTI- DIMENSIONALLY

Herbal medicine is a wholistic therapy, it integrates mental,
emotional and spiritual levels seamlessly into its understanding of
both human function and of the plant remedy, while respecting the
planetary and ecological dimensions of natural medicine provided by
plants.  Although subject to differing interpretations this view is
held in one form or another by most herbalists .

Life style, mental, emotional and spiritual considerations are part of
any naturopathic approach, herbalism included.  Flower essences,
homeopathic preparations and drop doses of standard herb extracts all
demonstrate that herbal agents can produce consistent and powerful
effects at subtle levels in ways quite inexplicable by the
pharmacokinetic model underlying orthodox pharmacology.

Centuries of medicinal plant usage overarch even the Graeco - Roman
heritage of medical thought, itself already forgotten by its amnesiac
infant technological medicine, extending into magical, esoteric and
religious domains of prehistory.  The great Asian systems of medicine
have continued uninterrupted for thousands of years to today,
integrated into profound cosmological and philosophical systems.  From
any serious study of the application of herbs to healing a perspective
emerges that reveals modern doctors to be tragi-comically "like
educated peasants running around pretending to be chiefs"
(Grossinger).

-----
V.  SIDE EFFECTS VS CONTRAINDICATIONS

Many herbalists would tend toward the radical homeopathic view that
the "side effects" of orthodox medicine are in fact iatrogenic
developments of the very disease for which the pharmacological
intervention was intended.  The symptoms simply change, and the real
underlying dysfunction is further obscured - or driven further into
the interior to manifest in deeper and more intractable ways.

Notwithstanding this iatrogenic view of side effects, we have seen
that the use of herbs anyway does not generally involve "drug" actions
or adverse effects.  Of course, if the body processes are nudged in
the wrong direction for long enough, then imbalances can worsen rather
than improve.  Hence the need for informed knowledge of the effects of
herbs as well as a clinical training to understand their appropriate
medical application. Herbalists learn about the CONTRAINDICATIONS as
well as the indications for using a herb.  This term is more useful
and appropriate than "side effects".

CONTRAINDICATIONS are incongruences between the metabolic/systemic
predisposition (constitution) of the individual - and the spectrum of
multi-systemic actions of a given herb agent or class of agents.
Essentially, herbalists use their in depth knowledge to devise a
mix'n'match prescription tailored precisely to fit an individuals
unique profile.  This approach is most sophisticated in the tonic
energetics of the Oriental medical traditions, but is empirically
applied by most herbalists.

Contraindicated remedies can account for apparently idiosyncratic "bad
reactions" to a herb.  Valerian is a classic example, its powerful
autonomic effects can make it "disagree" with stressed adrenergically
hyperactive individuals, who paradoxically are often those seeking
sedative treatment for insomnia.  Anyone experiencing such reactions
to a herb for more than a couple of days should stop taking it and
seek further advice.  However a second and vital aspect of
contraindications especially today is the question of DRUG
INTERACTIONS.

Many people seeking herbal medical treatment are already involved in
pharmaceutical therapies.  Herbal remedies may act either as agonists
or potentiate some drug therapies, and an understanding of
conventional drugs is an essential prerequisite for effective herbal
therapeutics.  In many cases, herbalists would not treat the primary
presenting symptom undergoing drug treatment - be it ulcers treated
with Zantac or cardiac arrythmia treated with Digoxin - but rather
concentrate on supporting other systems and functions stressed by the
primary symptom.  This allows the body to recover its strength and
healing potential so it can then direct these capabilities toward
repairing the presenting condition.  In other cases, it can be a
priority to wean someone off drugs, eg steroids, in which case
supportive therapy to restore adrenal function is vital.

-----
VI.  SAFETY AND TOXICITY OF HERBAL MEDICINES

The definition of *toxic* is a ultimately a matter of viewpoint. Many
ordinary foods contain constituents that could be regarded as
poisonous, such as the alpha gliadin produced by gluten in wheat oats
and rye, the cyanogenic glycosides in many fruit seeds, the
thiocyanates of the brassica vegetables, alkaloids of the Solanaceae
and lectins of many pulses including soya and red kidney beans.
Nonetheless these foods are generally regarded as safe.  Similarly,
both water and oxygen - can kill in excessive amounts, so quantity is
often an important consideration.  In practice however, three groups
of herbs can be identified from a safety point of view.

Firstly there are a handful of herbs that contain near pharmaceutical
concentrations of poisonous constituents which should on no account be
taken internally by unqualified persons except in homeopathic
potencies.  Examples are Atropa belladonna, Arnica spp, Aconitum spp,
Digitalis spp.  In many countries availability of these herbs is
limited by law.  Regulations vary from country to country and the
appropriate regulatory authorities or Herb Organisations can be
consulted for details.  Wildcrafters should be unshakeably confident
in their identification of the local variants of these species, and
children warned to avoid them.  Fortunately this is a numerically tiny
category.

Secondly, are herbs with powerful actions, often causing nausea or
vomiting, (that usually were traditionally prized for this action).
They are perfectly safe used under appropriate conditions.  Some of
these herbs are restricted in some countries but freely available in
others.  Lobelia and Eonymus spp are examples.  There is some
inconsistency here, for example Ephedra is restricted, perhaps with
justification, in the UK, but is freely available in the US.

Finally, there is an idiosyncratic grouping of herbs which have been
alleged, with some scientific support, to exhibit specific kinds of
toxicity.  The best known is the hepatotoxicity of pyrrolizidine-
alkaloid-containing plants such as Comfrey (Symphytum).  Other
examples are Dryopteris (Male Fern), Viscum (Mistletoe) and Corynanthe
(Yohimbe).  Although much of the evidence is contentious (see below),
lay users would be advised to avoid internal consumption of these
herbs.

The vast majority of medical herbs are safe for consumption, but for
those without specialised knowledge, it would be prudent to follow
simple but sensible guidelines in self treatment:

- Use only herbs recommended in respected herb books, especially in
  countries like the US where there are few restrictions on
  availability.

- Avoid new or unproven *wonder remedies*.

- Do not persist with a remedy if no benefit or result obtains after a
  moderate period, and if adverse reactions take place, stop the
  treatment and seek experienced advice.

- Do not persist with a treatment that has brought improvement without
  testing to see if continued further consumption is necessary to
  maintain improvement.

- Do not engage in self treatment for complex conditions without
  experienced advice.  Drug interactions and contraindications must be
  considered on an individual basis and herbal treatment strategies
  are often involved and multifaceted.

Unfortunately,training and licensing of herbalists is not
internationally consistent.  In the US the situation is especially
complex - no recognised herbal licensing exists.  ND's are licensed in
a few states, but their herbal training could theoretically be less
than that of an unlicensed but experienced herbal practitioner.  In
the UK, the NIMH accredits herbalists who have trained at approved
courses: practitioners are recognised by MNIMH or FNIMH
qualifications.

-----
VII.  PREGNANCY

It is axiomatic that pregnancy should be a time of minimal medical
intervention, and herbalists in particular regard pregnancy as a
"contraindication" to taking herbal medicines. Nutritive "food herbs"
such as nettle, and uterine tonics such as raspberry leaf are
encouraged, and perhaps gentle treatments against typical symptoms
such as constipation or morning sickness are in order.  There is NO
evidence of teratogenicity in humans arising from herbal remedies, but
since such evidence would be hard to come by, erring on the side of
caution is regarded as prudent.

-----
VIII.  UNDERSTANDING TOXICITY RESEARCH - POLITICS AND IDEOLOGY

Medical orthodoxy at best does not understand herbal medicine, and at
worst, sees it as a threat which it attempts to rubbish, regulate or
ridicule.  Quackery has a fascinating role in the history of medicine
and its institutions, but much of the hostility towards herbal
medicine comes from its apparently greater proximity to orthodoxy than
say acupuncture or homeopathy.  This is the unfortunate political
context in which toxicity and safety of herbal medicines are debated.

Additionally, both professional herbalists and regulatory authorities
exhibit differing degrees of education, organisation and aptitude in
different countries.  In the United States, the situation is
particularly lamentable, with scare mongering stories regularly aired
in medical, scientific and popular press, whilst the lack of
accredited professional herbalist training means that well intentioned
self-appointed spokespersons for herbalism can cause more harm than
good, and the quixotic federal regulatory stance on herbs as
foodstuffs means that the potential of lay self-iatrogenesis with
freely available OTC herbal products is a serious possibility.

Toxicity of herbal medicines needs to be seen in context however. As
Paul Bergner, Editor of the journal Medical Herbalism and author of
several articles on herbal toxicty recently pointed out:

*Approximately 8% of all hospital admissions in the U.S. are due to
adverse reactions to synthetic drugs.  That's a minimum of 2,000,000.
At least 100,000 people a year die from them.  That's just in the
U.S., and that's a conservative estimate.  That means at least three
times as many people are killed in the U.S. by pharmaceutical drugs as
are killed by drunken drivers.  Thousands die each year from
supposedly "safe" over-the-counter remedies.
Deaths or hospitalizations due to herbs are so rare that they're hard
to find.  The U.S. National Poison Control Centers does not even have
a category in their database for adverse reactions to herbs.*

Similar figures apply in the United Kingdom, and even hepatoxicty,
where perhaps the stongest case against some herbs lies, the
statistics are horrendously clear - over 80% of cases of fulminant
hepatic failure presenting for liver transplant (or death) over ten
years inthe UK were due to poisoning by freely available OTC non-
prescription NSAID's, such as paracetomol and aspirin.  Not one case
was due to ingestion of medicinal herbs.

For the lay person, analysis of so called "scientific evidence" about
toxicity is clearly problematic.  Some of the most useful sources of
information are to be found in review presentations made by
representatives of the herbalist community to regulatory authorities
such as the FDA or MCA.  Informative reviews of the literature in
defence of Comfrey and Mistletoe have been made in this way.

Herbalists justifiably point out that scientific studies with isolated
compounds, on non human or even non mammalian organisms, or in vitro,
with doses tens or even hundreds of times the equivalent medicinal
dose, simply have no arguable extrapolation to the clinical situation
using whole herb at appropriate medicinal doses.

Lack of herbal knowledge knowledge by some scientific investigators
(let alone journalists or self appointed defenders of the public)
leads to often ludicrously misleading results - one of the commonest
mistakes being the failure to verify the actual identity of plant
material used in their experiments, let alone the detection of
contaminants!

These points beg the question of what paradigm can be used for
research into the safety and efficacy of herbal therapies.  That
shibboleth of orthodoxy - the double blind placebo controlled clinical
trial is open to a range of criticsms from the paradigm employed by
herbalists - but that, as they say, is another story.

-----
FURTHER READING

HERBAL /MEDICAL CONTRAINDICATIONS:
Synergistic and Iatrogenic Potentials when some herbs are used
concurrent with Medical Treatment or Medical Health Care by Michael
Moore, 1995, on line at
http://www.crl.com/~robbee/herbal.html

HERB INFORMATION RESOURCE:
The Information Source book of Herbal Medicine: David Hoffmann,
Crossing Press 1994.

TOXICOLOGY:
Brinker F : An Introduction to the Toxicology of Common Botanical
Medicines, NCNM 1983
AMA Handbook of Poisonous and Injurious Plants AMA, Chicago 1985
NAPRALERT database at UIC.

Example REVIEWS OF PROBLEMATIC HERBS:
In Defence of Comfrey:  EJHM1.1.1994 11-17
The Case For Mistletoe: EJHM1.1 1994 17-22
EJHM = European journal of Herbal Medicine

HISTORY:
Planet Medicine - Richard Grossinger, North Atlantic Books 1990
The Magical Staff, Matthew Wood North Atlantic Books, Berkely 1992

GENERAL HERB BOOKS:
(as in 4.1 below):
J.A. Duke, CRC Handbook of Medicinal Herbs.
C. Hobbs, many booklets.
D. Hoffmann, The Herbal Handbook.
S. Mills, Out of the Earth: The Essential Book of Herbalism.
M. Moore, Medicinal Plants of the Mountains West.
M. Moore, Medicinal Plants of the Desert West.
M. Moore, Medicinal Plants of the Pacific West.
R.F. Weiss, Herbal Medicine.

==========

3.2 Wildcrafting Ethics

-----
by Howie Brounstein ([e-mail]) (posted with permission)

This are the guidelines I teach to my students.  It is copywrited
material that took me years to develop.  Please respect this
copywrite.  I ask you not to publish it without permission.  Happy
Herbing.

-----
I.  WILDCRAFTING CHECKLIST

Do you have the permission or the permits for collecting at the site?
Do you have a positive identification?
Are there better stands nearby? Is the stand big enough?
Are you at the proper elevation?
Is the stand away from roads and trails?
Is the stand healthy?
Is there any chemical contamination?
Is there any natural contamination?
Are you in a fragile environment?
Are there rare, threatened, endangered, or sensitive plants growing

·


  nearby at any time of the year?
Is wildlife foraging the stand?
Is the stand growing, shrinking, or staying the same size?
Is the plant an annual or a perennial?
Is tending necessary and what kind?
How much to pick?
Time of day? Time of year?
What effect will your harvest have on the stand?
Do you have the proper emotional state?
Move around during harvesting.
Look around after harvesting.  Any holes or cleanup needed?
Are you picking herbs in the proper order for a long trip?
Are you cleaning herbs in the field? Do you have the proper equipment
  for in-field processing?

*Wildcrafting is stewardship*

c1993hb

-----
II.  HOW DO I FIND OUT ABOUT ENDANGERED PLANTS (IN THE USA)?

Check your local Heritage Program Database, call the Dept. of AG or a
local Native plant society chapter to find its address.  This will
connect you to experts on particular plants and current lists.

The endangered species act has many flaws, I personally believe there
should be an endangered ecosystems act instead but it's all we've got
and better than nothing.

Some listed plants are truly rare, once numerous but destroyed by loss
of of habitat through man or nature.

Many listed plants are endemics, located in a specific area. These may
be geographically isolated islands of flora as are often found in the
intermountain west, or they can be found at the border of major plant
systems.  Many endemics are found in southern Oregon, where the
Northern California system blends with the Pacific Northwest system,
with a spattering of Great Basin plants.  This does not mean these
plants are sensitive, just unique.  The threatened Penstemon peckii
grows only within twenty miles of my house, and nowhere else on earth.
It can withstand trampling, wildlife grazing, and disturbance. In
fact, now that the forest service has realized that this species
thrives with moderate disturbance (partial cuts), it has become a
reason to log, i.e. increased health of the population of this plant.

Plants become listed due to political boundaries.  Gentiana newberryi
grows nearby, and is threatened in Oregon.  It's northernmost sighting
is within a half hours drive.  There you can see people play football
on it, run horses on it, pick its beautiful flowers only to find they
wilt immediately, and then the flowers end up on the ground.
Sometimes hundreds of them.  Elk graze it heavily.  It isn't a
sensitive plant, and it's population is healthy and stable in
California, but the population happens to cross over to Oregon where
there isn't that many stands.  Thus it recieves the same protection as
the truly rare plant. Southern Oregon has many of these kinds of
listed plants.

There has to be a perceivable threat to the plant population in order
for it to be listed.  Sometimes the threat is obvious, and sometimes
the threat is obscure.

What about an introduced plant that has become a pest, or a native out
of control in a system out of balance.  When the St. John's Wort,
Hypericum perforatum, is down to a handful of populations, it will fit
the definition of threatened, even though humans intentionally
irradicated it.!!

-----
III.  WHAT PLANTS SHOULDN'T I PICK

Some plants are not damaged easily.  Blackberry, Rubus sp., and
Dandelion, Taraxacum officinale, are two that are nearly impossible to
eliminate, even if you dig their roots.  If a piece of root stays in
the ground, it will grow back.  Yarrow, Achillea millefolium, can be
cut with a lawnmower and still flourish regularly.  Nettles, Urtica
dioca, when grown for fiber can have 3-4 aboveground harvest in a
growing season.  Plants that fit into this category are generally
perennials. You can pick them and not threaten their survival.

Rare, Threatened and Endangered Plants

Endangered plants are species in danger of becoming extinct in the
foreseeable future.  Threatened plants are likely to become endangered
in the foreseeable future.  A species can be threatened or endangered
throughout its range, which means if it goes extinct we will lose its
hidden secrets forever.
Many of these plants only grow in one special area (endemic).  The
Columbia Gorge on the border of Oregon and Washington hosts many
endemic species.  Peck's Penstemon, Penstemon peckii, grows only in
the Ponderosa Pine Forest in Deschutes and Jefferson Counties.  A
species can also receive protection for part of its range.  Newberry's
Gentian, Gentiana newberryi, has stable populations in California, but
is listed as threatened in Oregon.  Deschutes County is at the end of
its range, and there are less of them.  Rare plants have small,
localized populations.  They may not be listed as threatened or
endangered if the populations are both stable and numerous.
The US. Fish and Wildlife Service determines which plants receive
federal protection.  Unfortunately, they are very slow in reviewing
candidate species.

Many have become extinct while waiting to be listed.  The Department
of Agriculture and the Department of Fish and Wildlife of each state
is responsible for determining state protection.  We also have the
Oregon Natural Heritage Program.  This program has its own list of
plants that deserve protection, but haven't made it into the clogged
federal and state lists.  They also have a list of plants to watch and
monitor.  A copy of Rare, Threatened and Endangered Plants and Animals
of Oregon is available from:
  The Oregon Natural Heritage Program
  1025 NW 25th Avenue
  Portland, Oregon 97210
  (503)-229-5078
Do not pick these plants.  Unfortunately, they are not always easy for
an amateur to identify.  They are not always showy.  There may be
large amounts of them in one spot, so that they appear plentiful.
There are some good picture books available.  All folks who pick
plants from the wild should try to familiarize themselves with the
local protected plants.  When in doubt, don't pick it.

Sensitive Plants

Some plants are sensitive to disturbance.  Please do not pick them
even if they aren't protected.  The Calypso Orchid, Calypso bulbosa,
is a fragile plant that lives partially off leaf mold.  Its little
root is close to the surface, and easy prey to slugs and others.
Minor disturbances can easily dislodge the root from the mold.  If
someone picks its flower, it can ooze fluid and essentially "bleed" to
death. Even disturbing the area around it during flowering could kill
it.  The law does not protect this plant because it is too numerous.
It is our responsibility to help sensitive plants survive.
How can you tell if a plant is sensitive? Most plants that are not
green (contain no chlorophyll) are "no picks." These weird species are
white, brown, red, or purple and just plain eerie.  Botanists call
them parasites or saprophytes.  They are particularly fascinating.
These include Broomrape, Orobanche sp., Coral Roots, Corallorhiza sp.,
and Indian Pipe, Monotropa uniflora.  Other "no picks" include the
Orchid Family (Orchidaceae) and almost all the Lily Family
(Liliaceae).  The Orchid Family includes Calypso Orchid, Calypso
bulbosa, and the Rein Orchids, Habenaria sp.  The Lily Family includes
Trillium, Trillium ovatum, and Mariposa Lilies, Calochortus sp.  These
families are easy to recognize with a little practice.  Not every Lily
and Orchid is sensitive, but it's a good place to start.
Most (but not all) of the unusual or showy plants are no picks.  If
you are not sure, don't harvest it.

Howie B
Columbines and Wizardry Herbs
Eugene, Or USA

==========

3.3 Different schools of Herbal Healing

==========
3.3.1  Traditions in Western Herbal Medicine
-----  Thanks to Jonathan Treasure for sending this one over.

This Article is taken from The Herbalist, newsletter of the
Canadian Herbal Research Society. COPYRIGHT June 1989.

Traditions in Herbal Medicine     Peter Cook  DBTh, FETC

-----
The Development of Theory in North America

Introduction: To one trained as a medical herbalist in Britain, it is
a curious fact that herbal medicine, as it seems to be most widely
known in Canada and the U.S., has been so little influenced by the
great systems of herbal thought which once flourished here. Only
remnants of these systems can now be found in the writings of Kloss,
Christopher, Shook and others whose primary sources appear to be the
European and native North American folk traditions.

These folk traditions are very valuable medical resources in their own
right; a fact which has been recognized and supported by the World
Health Organization (1978). It has also been recognized and
increasingly exploited by the pharmaceutical industry. Folk medicine
however, is also important as a rich source for the periodic
historical development of major systems of traditional medicine.
Examples of the development of two such systems in North America will
be discussed here, together with some of the more important
theoretical and practical contributions to herbal medicine which these
systems generated.

Early American Folk Medicine: Eleanor Sinclair Rohdes (1922) has
written very eloquently of the hardships faced by early American
settlers in their efforts to cultivate the familiar medicinal plants
of England and Europe. In many cases it seems these efforts failed
completely and the pioneers were forced to supplement their folk
medicine traditions with lore relating to indigenous plants obtained
from the native people. To the extent that any special knowledge would
have been likely, then as now, to remain a closely kept secret by the
native medicine societies, it is probable that the native plant-lore
passed onto these settlers was a matter of common knowledge amongst
the native people. In fact, it may be said that a distinguishing
feature of any folk tradition is that the lore contained in that
tradition is, or has once been, common knowledge.

Another distinguishing feature of folk medicine, regardless of its
historical or ethnic origin, is that the indications for the use of
individual remedies are always given in terms which refer to specific
symptoms or illnesses. Thus, comfrey (Symphytum officinale) is said to
be useful in healing fractures, while white horehound (Marrubium
vulgare) is recommended for cough. Typically, such lore has been
handed down from generation to generation, often for hundreds if not
thousands of years. Each new generation learns at first hand the look
and 'feel' of particular symptoms and illnesses. They learn which
plants may be used to treat these illnesses, and the best methods for
collecting, preserving and administering them. Such a tradition is
entirely dependant upon repeated experience and observation; usually
only minor changes can be detected in these traditions over relatively
long periods of time.

Thompsonianism: The popular medicine of all peoples however, has
always given rise to, and been counterbalanced by a more specialized
type of knowledge, acquired by individuals who have devoted their
entire lives to the study and practice of healing. As resource
persons, these individuals have served their communities by providing
access to that specialized knowledge in circumstances where the more
common folklore was insufficient to meet the needs of the moment.

A very popular figure in early American medicine, who managed to
combine native and settler folklore with a more specialized approach,
was Samuel Thompson (1769-1843). Thompson came from a farming family
and evidently learned some of the 'root and herb' practice at an early
age. Later, he seems to have become an avid reader of medical
literature and was particularly impressed with the Hippocratic
writings.

Probably as a consequence of his regard for Hippocrates, Thompson
believed that medicine should be based exclusively upon observation.
The formulation of theories, he felt, prevented ordinary people from
taking responsibility for the care of their own health, and that
theories obscured the simplicity and made a needless mystery of
medicine.

Thompson himself however, after 'long observation and practical
results', borrowed theory from Hippocrates and used it as a basis to
explain the 'why and how' of his own medical system. According to this
theory, disease was the result of a decrease or derangement of the
vital fluids, brought about by a loss of animal heat. The resulting
symptoms were interpreted as efforts of the Vital Force to rid itself
of the toxic encumbrances thus generated. Essentially, treatment was
aimed at restoring vital energy and removing disease-generated
obstructions. In specific terms, Thompson believed that in restoring
vital heat by means of steam baths and cayenne (Capsicum annum),
toxins which obstructed health would be thrown into the stomach where
they could be eliminated by emetics such as Lobelia inflata (Griggs,
1981).

This simple theory constituted a dramatic departure from pure folk
medicine in that it recognized and sought to treat an underlying,
fundamental cause of illness. Moreover, in perceiving symptoms as an
expression of the organism's defensive efforts, this theory implied
that the treatment of symptoms and illnesses, per se, might actually
hinder the healing process. It is interesting to note that Thompson
believed this theory was quite complete and needed no further
refinement or extension. Nevertheless, despite his vehement
opposition, Thompsonianism became a potent influence on the
development to two major streams of thought within American herbalism.

Eclecticism: The earliest of these was 'Eclecticism', founded by a man
who had originally apprenticed to an old German non-Thompsonian
herbalist, and who later qualified as a 'regular' medical doctor.
Although the founder of this system, Wooster Beach (1794-1868), had
been horrified by the 'regular' medicine of his day, and fervently
wished for radical reform, Thompsonianism had impressed him negatively
in two ways. First, Beach was keenly aware of the   bitter antagonism
which Thompson had roused in the regular medical profession. As a
result he decided to attempt reform (unsuccessfully as it turned out)
from within, rather than as another medical 'outsider'. Secondly,
Beach was disgusted by Thompson's evident arrogance in thinking that
no further learning could possibly enhance the practice of herbal
medicine.

Beach was well acquainted with the developments then taking place in
such fields as chemistry, physiology, pathology and even botany. He
was also quick to realize that this new thinking might have a valuable
role to play in botanic practice, and began to move in this direction
with the creation, in 1829, of his own school of 'Reformed Medicine'.

In terms of the study of medicinal plants, Beach's orientation
resulted in the development and proliferation of an entirely new
style. Eclectic monographs on individual herbs became more formal and
typically included notes on the plant's chemistry, toxicology,
physiological and therapeutic actions, as well as appropriate forms of
preparation and dosage (e.g. King, 1900). Later Eclectic physicians
became increasingly interested in obtaining preparations which
represented the entire chemistry of the original plant as closely as
possible. Although this preoccupation had near-disastrous consequences
in at least one instance (Griggs 1981a), in general their research
supported and developed the fundamental position of the value of using
whole plant preparations rather than isolated extracts of a particular
plant constituent (Lloyd, 1910).

Eclecticism was also a major contributor to herbal medicine in other
areas. Beach himself, for instance, realized the fundamental
importance of the blood and circulatory system in maintaining health,
and began to develop herbal methods for 'equalizing the circulation'.
Several valuable techniques used in the modern herbal treatment of
fevers are probable directly attributable to Beach's work.

A later physician by the name of W.H. Cook (1879) expanded on this
work in his correlation of the functions of the nervous and
circulatory systems. Cook also developed a concept which related
illness to deviations in trophic (i.e. structural) and/or functional
tone. According to this view, disease consisted of excessive or
diminished tone in organs, or in the functions of those organs.
Corresponding herbal approaches to the correction of these kinds of
imbalance were also eventually developed (Priest & Priest, 1982).

Another major development fostered by Eclecticism, was the clinical
emphasis placed on treating a group or pattern of symptoms, usually
with small doses of only one so-called 'specific' remedy. As the
pattern of symptoms changed with the progress of disease, a new and
more currently appropriate remedy would be indicated (Fetter, 1922;
Lloyd 1927).

Perhaps significantly, this approach was and is still fundamental to
the practice of homeopathic medicine, which was rapidly becoming the
most popular of all medical systems in the U.S. during the mid-19th
century (Coulter, 1973). In fact Hahnemann (1810), the founder of
homeopathy, had already written at some length concerning the relative
merits of prescribing for what he called the 'Totality of symptoms',
versus the treatment of individual symptoms or named diseases. The use
of small doses of a single remedy was also an established fundamental
tenet of homeopathy (e.g. Kent 1900).

Prescribing for patterns of symptoms had also been typical in
traditional Chinese medicine for many generations. Clear examples of
the fluidity of prescribing in accord with changes in symptom patterns
may be found in the Chinese classic, 'Shang Han Lun' (Hsu & Peacher,
1981). However, although the use of a single remedy is an established
technique within Chinese medicine under certain circumstances, Chinese
herbal prescribing more often involves the use of formulae (e.g.
Bensky & Gamble, 1986).

Physiomedicalism: The second major stream of thought in American
herbal medicine, which arose directly out of the Thompsonian movement,
was 'Physiomedicalism'. Although not so heavily influenced by the
developing sciences as Eclecticism, the originator of this 'neo-
Thompsonian' movement, Alva Curtis, felt, like Beach, that Thompson's
resistance to theoretical development was a mistake.

Above all, Curtis wanted to open a school based upon Thompsonian
principles, but encouraging a freer atmosphere for broader
intellectual enquiry and learning. In 1835, despite Thompson's
opposition, Curtis realized his ambition and opened the 'Botanico-
medical School and Infirmary' at Columbus, Ohio. As evidence that he
was not alone in his thinking, during that same year, a colleague
opened the 'Southern Botanico-Medical School' in Georgia (Griggs
1981b).

Ultimately this new system of herbal medicine retained much of what
had been accepted as fundamental in the Thompsonian theory. Thus,
organic function was thought of as the aggregate expression of Vital
Force, acting through cellular metabolism to maintain the functional
integrity of the entire organism. Illness was seen as a disordered
response at the cellular level, brought about by internally or
externally generated toxic obstructions. Essentially, treatment
remained a matter of supporting the efforts of the Vital Force, and of
eliminating the toxic encumbrances which hindered those efforts.

A significant departure form Thompsonian thinking however, came with
the recognition that some symptoms represented positive, eliminate and
reconstructive efforts of the Vital Force, while others resulted from
physical impediments to those efforts. If treatment was to be directed
to the underlying cause of illness, therefore, symptoms which
expressed a purely functional disorder had to be distinguished
clinically from those produced by organic changes in cells and
tissues.

Eventually it was also realized that the organism was capable of
establishing a compensatory equilibrium in which toxic encumbrance
would be tolerated to a degree, in order to maintain a relative
functional integrity. This was a major step forward in understanding
and had important implications for herbal therapeutics. Certain

·


symptomatic crises which had been observed, particularly in the
context of treatment with herbal alteratives and eliminatives, could
now be explained and avoided.

Another significant development in Physiomedical thinking was
stimulated through the work of W.H. Cook (see above). If health could
be understood as the unimpeded and balanced function of all cells and
tissues, then it was clear that the blood and circulatory system
played a vital role in maintaining health, both in terms of nutrient
delivery, and of waste and toxin transport to eliminative organs.

Cook had shown that, in addition to the quality of the blood itself,
the chronic relative contraction or relaxation of tissues and
particularly arterioles and capillary beds could also have serious
consequences. Cellular function, and eventually cellular structure,
could be strongly influenced by a relative excess or deficiency of
blood and tissue fluid. Further, as understanding of human physiology
increased it became obvious that hyperaemia in one part of the body
would necessarily imply a relative ischaemia elsewhere.

The implications of this thinking for herbal medicine were threefold.
Firstly, herbs which acted to increase or decrease tone in the three
primary divisions of the circulatory system (arterial, capillary and
venous) had to be distinguished. Secondly, the general, portal and
pulmonary aspects of circulation had to be considered in treatment, as
did the distinction between visceral and somatic components. Thirdly,
the circulation to particular organs and tissues had to be taken into
account, not only to support or modify the related functions, but also
to restore normal trophic conditions, where possible.

The achievement of these goals became much more accessible following
the work of J.M. Thurston (1900), which stressed the regulatory
importance of the autonomic nervous system. Thurston made many
important contributions to Physiomedical thought in the areas of
diagnosis, prognosis, treatment and, perhaps especially, in the area
of herbal pharmacy. A number of aspects of his work, and of
Physiomedicalism in general, have been described by Priest & Priest
(1982a).

Even by the close of the 19th century, Physiomedicalism could be
described as a system which emphasized the role of herbal remedies in
supporting Vital Force, balancing the circulation to various tissues,
modifying and enhancing body functions, restoring optimum trophic or
structural conditions, and in eliminating toxic encumbrances (Mills,
1985).

Unfortunately, the publication of the Flexnor report in 1910 and the
subsequent forced closure of the 'irregular' medical schools put an
end to any further developments of the kind described here in American
herbal medicine (Cody, 1985; Gort, 1986).

Conclusion: Curiously, despite the slightly more open attitudes which
prevailed in Canada (e.g. the government regulation of naturopathy on
Ontario, 1925; Govt., 1986), neither the Eclectics nor the
Physiomedicalists seem to have moved north across the border. In fact
both systems, together with a version of Thompsonianism, had been
taken to England where they were eventually integrated into one system
of professional herbal medicine, regulated by law and still taught in
the U.K.

In Canada and the U.S. however, only traces remain of these once
influential and effective systems. The Dominion Herbal College in
British Columbia for instance, has referred in its course notes to the
need for 'equalizing the circulation' (1969). References can also be
found in these notes and elsewhere to 'relaxing' or 'stimulating'
herbs (i.e. plants capable of increasing or decreasing functional
tone). The importance of supporting vital force and of eliminating
accumulated toxins is also still widely recognized and practised.
Nevertheless, there are probably few today however, who can apply
physiomedical principles in distinguishing for instance, those lung,
bowel and kidney conditionsrespectively requiring relaxing or
stimulating expectorants, laxatives and diuretics.

Due principally to repressive legislation, herbalists in North America
must once again rely heavily on folk traditions as their major source
of learning and inspiration. It should be noted here that much of the
valuable herbal lore once utilized widely by native North Americans is
now known by only a small handful of native elders (PC. 1988).

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End of part 3 of 4
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