SNHS Logo

Diploma in Herbalism

Rosemary

overview of this course Subjects included in this Course Qualifications and Fee Structure About the school and course operation Contacts and Frequently asked questions enrolment information

[So you already practice Herbalism ?] [Worldwide Links]


Herbalism Diploma

Distance Learning course of 10 modules

All animal life depends upon the existence of plants. They are necessary to produce oxygen, to supply food and to provide shelter.

When early man started to look for means to cure his aches and pains, it was toward the plant kingdom that he turned.

An overview of medicinal plants;

Primitive humans experimentally sampled many kinds of plants in their search for nourishment. Plants that were palatable were used for food; those with toxic or unpleasant effects were avoided or used against enemies; others that produced physiological effects such as perspiration, defecation, healing, or hallucination were saved for medicinal purposes and divination. Over a period of thousands of years, people learned to use a variety of plants as medicines for different ailments.

Use in History

Over 4,000 years ago, according to tradition, the Chinese emperor Chi'en Nung put together a book (herbal) of medicinal plants called Pen Tsao. It contained descriptions of more than 300 plants, several of which are still used in medicine. During the same era and later, the Sumerians recorded prescriptions on clay tablets, while the Egyptians recorded exotic plant ingredients in Ebers Papyrus. The Greeks and the Romans derived some of their herbal knowledge from these early civilizations. Their contributions are recorded in De Materia Medica by Dioscorides and the 37-volume natural history written by Pliny the Elder. Some of these earlier works are known to us through translations into Arabic by Rhazes and Avicenna. The knowledge of medicinal plants was further nurtured by monks in Europe who studied and grew medicinal plants and translated the Arabic works.

The first "licensed" apothecary shops opened in Baghdad (now in Iraq) in the 9th century. By the 13th century, London became a major trading center in herbs and spices. Much adulteration occurred in this trade, because proper standards and quality controls had not been established. Poorly identified plants and substitutes for true medicinal herbs were sold everywhere. In 1753, Carolus Linnaeus introduced the binomial system of plant nomenclature, which helped in the identification of plants. With the subsequent publication of pharmacopoeias, the method of identification and the standard of quality for each drug was clearly defined.

The present trend to replace crude plant drugs with their pure active principles started with the pioneering work in the 18th century of Karl Scheele, who isolated organic acids from plants. This achievement was followed by the isolation of morphine from opium by Friedrich Serturner and quinine from cinchona bark by Pierre Pelletier and Joseph Caventou. These and similar discoveries opened the door to the field of phytochemistry. Today a vast number of modern drugs are still derived from natural sources; approximately 25% of all prescriptions contain one or more active ingredients from plants.

Active Ingredients

Numerous familiar examples can be given. The active ingredient in the toxic plants used in South America to poison arrow tips is curare, now used as a skeletal muscle relaxant in surgery. The opium poppy, praised by the Babylonians for its medicinal value, produces morphine, an indispensable analgesic. Coca, the divine plant of the Incas, yields cocaine, a useful local anaesthetic. The drug LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) is chemically related to compounds obtained from the fungus ergot, which yields useful substances, some of which stop bleeding in childbirth or relieve migraine headaches. The plant meadowsweet, is the herbal equivalent of aspirin, because it contains salicylic acid, which in isolation, can cause internal bleeding in people with sensitive stomach linings. Meadowsweet however, also contains tannin and mucilage, natural protectors and healers of the stomach lining, and is actually used for a whole range of digestive disorders..

Some plants of the nightshade family, Solanaceae, such as the species of Datura and Atropa, contain fairly large amounts of the poisonous alkaloids atropine and scopolamine (the latter sometimes called hyoscine). These plants are toxic when consumed in large quantity but are invaluable medicinal agents when administered in proper amounts. The Chibcha Indians of Colombia, South America, used a variety of Datura species to sedate their human sacrifices; several tribes in Africa continue to use it in initiation rites. In Jamestown, Va., in 1676, British troops sent to quell Bacon's Rebellion ate Datura plants for greens, with massively intoxicating effects. The plant, Datura stramonium, was then named Jamestown weed, which was later shortened to the familiar jimsonweed. The juice of the belladonna plant, Atropa belladonna, whose name in Italian means beautiful lady, was used by women in centuries past to dilate, or widen, the pupils of the eyes, a sign of beauty in those days. The active principle atropine is employed in modern medicine as a mydriatic (pupil dilator); scopolamine is used as a hypnotic and as an antispasmodic to reduce gastrointestinal contractions.

Foxglove, Digitalis purpurea, a common garden plant, was first described by Dioscorides but did not become popular as a drug until an 18th-century English physician, William Withering, brought to light its usefulness in treating dropsy. Dropsy often occurs in patients with congestive heart failure, and in modern medicine digitalis is the drug of choice for treating patients with this ailment.

The snakeroot, Rauvolfia serpentina, belonging to the dogbane family, Apocynaceae, has been used in India for centuries in folk medicine for the treatment of mental disease and insomnia, as a sedative in snakebites, and for many other purposes. Its potential as a drug was not taken seriously by modern medicine until 1949, when R. Vakil published his results on the use of Rauvolfia in hypertension (high blood pressure). The active ingredient was found to be an alkaloid, named reserpine, now used in treating a variety of psychiatric disorders and hypertension. In a way Rauvolfia heralded the era of tranquillisers. The Madagascar periwinkle, Catharanthus roseus, which belongs to the same family as Rauvolfia, was investigated for its supposed ability to cure diabetes. Research revealed that plant extracts had little hypoglycaemic, or blood-sugar-reducing, activity but did produce leucopoenia, or an abnormally low number of white blood cells, in laboratory animals. Further studies led to the isolation of vinblastine and vincristine, which are alkaloids now used in treating Hodgkin's disease and childhood leukemia, respectively.

When cortisone and other steroids, such as the sex hormones, were first isolated in the 1930s in minute amounts from glands of cattle, their usefulness as medicinal agents was apparent, but the cost of isolating them was prohibitive. Because the supply from animal sources was inadequate, a worldwide search for plant substitutes was undertaken. This search led to a variety of yams, Dioscorea, which now provide the starting material, diosgenin, for the production of several steroids.

Herbal Medicine

Rather than treating symptoms in isolation, herbal medicine seeks to restore the "vital force", the body's own capacity to protect, regulate, renew and heal itself, physically, mentally and emotionally. The essence of herbalism is illustrated by the following example;

Eczema is a manifestation of the body's attempt to restore balance (homeostasis), a herbalist would not merely administer a cream for the rash, rather would try to find the source of the problem, be it poor diet, and unhealthy lifestyle, stress or whatever is affecting the body's delicate natural balance. The herbalist will, given the cause of the symptoms, provide a natural remedy which will treat that cause, not necessarily the effect (symptom) in order to restore the body's homeostatic balance, be it a remedy or change in diet or indeed a change in behaviour.


Subjects Covered in the Diploma in Herbalism


Qualification and advancement

Students obtaining 75% or more marks in the final examination receive the S.N.H.S Diploma entitling them to use the letters S.N.H.S (Herb.)

The full course fee is £ 415.00 - ($ 700.00)

Contacts and Frequently asked questions enrolment information

Trinity (SNHS) - PO Box 222, Batley, West Yorkshire, WF17 8XD, UK.

[So you already practice Alternative Medicine ?]