The Herbal Bookworm
HERBAL BOOK REVIEWS
by
Jonathan Treasure
"I never read the
books I review - it prejudices a man so" Rev. Sydney
Smith
"The book of my enemy has been remaindered. And I
rejoice..."
Clive James
CONTENTS
- Introduction to The Herbal Bookworm ................................................

-
Herbs For Kids x 3
by Aviva Romm, Mary Bove, Heinz Schilcher
- Constitutional Physiology for
Herbalists by Michael
Moore .............
- Information Sourcebook for Herbal
Medicine by David
Hoffmann
- IBIS - Interactive Body-Mind
Information System by AMR'TA
........
- The Constituents of Medicinal
Plants by Andrew Pengelly
................
- The Herbal Menopause Book by Amanda McQuade Crawford.......
- Readers Page - Top Ten charts and
Herballs.........................................

-
Books Received
..................................................................................

INTRODUCTION
Book reviewers can be divided into
batchers
(who review several books at a time ),
betchers ('Betcher I could have written it better'),
bitchers, botchers and butchers.
Welcome to The Herbal Bookworm. This is
simply a few pages of reviews of books (and some software) about
medicinal herbs. These are written
primarily for herb folk and all written by me, if not for me. You can
decide for yourself whether I am a batcher, betcher, bitcher, botcher or
butcher. I suspect a tad of all may be involved. Some of the reviews
have been published elsewhere, new ones will be added from time to
time.
Reviews on Herbal Bookworm tend to be Long Rambles, which will
certainly be tedious for many readers - they are mainly an excuse for me
to sound off at greater length than most publishers allow in a journal
with the notable exception of Medical
Herbalism. Most of the reviews
here will probably be of interest only to students or practitioners of
some variety of herbalism or natural medicine rather than to the general
reader who may prefer to skip straight to the Readers page. For those
seeking coverage of more titles in less depth, there is a useful site
of short reviews compiled by herbalist Robyn Klein, also published as Robyn's
Recommended Reading.
The Readers Page has some Top Ten charts of books that herbalists
themselves consider their favourites, as well as a "stinkers" list,
and a visitors poll for popular herb books to which all visitors to this
site are invited to submit entries of their own favourite herb book.
What else can I say, other than that this is probably one of the more
opinionated, lop sided, cranky and downright slanderous herb sites of
minimal import.... but
it keeps me
out of trouble when its too cold, wet and dark to go play in the woods.
All opinions, errors, omissions and libels are obviously mine. There is
no list of my favourite links since several herb pages contain excellent
jump lists, but wherever appropriate external links have been
included at the end of the reviews.
Notes on spelling: Winston Churchill once said that England
and America
are divided by a common language. Well, after a few years as a Brit
living on the West Coast all I can say is that I have a full blown case
of linguo-schizophrenia. Americans pronounce herbs as "urbs", or even
"urrebs" - the point being that the "h" is silent. Hence one is AN
urbalist here rather than A herbalist from England. The English however
tend not to pronounce the letter "r" , so that "herbs" is pronounced
more as "hayubs". All this is compounded by the fact that I lived in East and
North London for twenty years, where the "aitch" is commonly dropped not
only by pure Cockneys, but by many folk in the area (whether in the
interests of enhancing communication or to pretend that they are
more proletarian than is truly the case). Without wanting to bore the
reader, I am saying that spelling on this site will be variable. Please
do not complain. Generally I still use Anglo rather than American forms
if only because my spell-checker grew that way. To be honest, I prefer
much American spelling, especially where dipthongs are avoided as in
o/estrogen, ha/emorrhoids etcetera, if only because dipthongs should be
written with a ligature between the two letters, an elementary
typographical feat notably beyond modern word processors and most
postscript fonts. If you can't do it properly, don't bother is a
useful principle.
Publishers and authors are invited to send material for review.
I cannot guarantee that books sent will be reviewed but they will be
listed under Books Received. For details, and any feedback or
comment, email jonathan treasure
Thanks to BBEdit 4.02 for solving HTML headaches, to artist Jack
Ochoa for the main images on contents and readers pages courtesy of the
Virtual Cafe, to Apple Mac
(still crazy after all these years), to Owen and Tom for the reasons to
go on, and above all to the plants themselves - source of wisdom and
healing.
Browser Note - This site is best viewed with Netscape 3.x, set to
full screen width with a sans serif face. For some reason (sic) it does
not look great in the AOL browser, and it will not work well in Lynx -
sorry. Microsoft Explorer - well how would I know ? And er, use the
icons to navigate. Right pointing arrows
are always to external
links.
BOOKS
RECEIVED
Bookworm is updating at last. Thankyou for your patience, herbal
book lovers.
Winter is back and the Bookworm is getting busy again. See the new three
part
review of Herbs for Kids. Also in progress are reviews of the following
- Matthew Wood The Book of Herbal Wisdom North
Atlantic
- Graeme Tobyn Culpeper's Medicine Element
The following have been received with thanks from the publishers and/or
authors:
- Varro Tyler The Honest Herbal & Herbs of Choice
Haworth Press
- James Duke The Green Pharmacy Rodale
- Thomas Bartram Encyclopedia of Herbal Medicine
Grace
- Maggie Davis Glory to the Flowers Heartsong
Books
- Christopher Hedley & Non Shaw Herbal Remedies
Parragon
- Paul Bergner The Healing Power of Ginseng/Minerals etc
(Series) Prima
- Amanda McQuade Crawford Herbal Remedies for Women
Prima
- Aviva Jill Romm The Natural Pregnancy Book
Crossing Press
Last Updated Jan 1st 1998, Visit number 8374