Genusys CD-ROM for PC
by Genusys Laboratories |
Reviewed by Douglas Eisenstark, L.Ac.
A friend of mine, Yuno, tried to put together a CD-ROM of alternative medicine as a school project. She's a talented woman but she told me that the potential of a CD-ROM basically requires the collective skills of a team of people.
This said, when you see a program such as Genusys (a database of Herbal Remedies, Aromatherapy, essential Oils, Vitamins, Amino Acids and more!) you can't help but wish that someone along the line had tried a little harder. Unfortunately, the information in this CD-ROM hardly lives up to its title. Each of the sections including diseases, herbs, vitamins and medications are anemic in their depth. For example, click on MS and you get simply "multiple sclerosis". Well, DUH! I searched vainly for a listing for MD to compare MS to Muscular Dystrophy. But then again, in this program, MD would have come up as "doctor".
The program has potential that is not fully realized. One hopes that future versions will have some of the bugs worked out. By clicking on the compound adreno one finds the Sage family. By following the sage links one reads that sage is good as a preservative and little else. Adreno itself has no available literature. I had better luck with Milk Thistle which gave a good description of its effects on the liver. However this information is confined to a small box within the screen. One realizes that if this program is correct, there is precious little research that has been done on most of the common compounds and herbs in the natural world. Other herbs fare not much better. Fu Zi came up as having no contraindications nor precautions. Herbs can be accessed as "common English" or genus (Latin pharmaceutical). There is no access to an index of Chinese pinyin names.
In the Windows disk I had half the program came up as a "Greek" font that wouldn't translate. Whatever amazing information is in sections was simply unusable by this computer user. Given a few more years of development this may evolve into an amazing program. Unfortunately, it is not there yet.
Genusys Laboratories
PO Box 287
Solebury PA 18963
1-800-246-6334
Acupuncture.com |