| Stuart, 1911) and Chinese medicinal plants from the Pen Ts'ao Kang Mu...A.D. 1596 (Bernard E. Read), first published in 1936 from smaller earlier editions. Smith and Stuart cover about 700 species and include some information on their historical uses. Read's work contains 867 herbal drugs but includes mainly bibliographic references from Europe and Japan (plus a few from China), as well as constituent lists for some herbs. |
Kathi Keville
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 When you want to take herbs over a long period of time—either to treat a chronic problem or to fend off disease— incorporating medicinal plants into your meals makes a lot of sense.
The next time you add a pinch of this or that, consider that you are doing far more than flavoring your meal. Throughout this book, you have seen many familiar kitchen herbs and spices mentioned as medicines. For example, ginger relieves pain, garlic is "nature's antibiotic" and ginger and turmeric, two of the main ingredients in curry powder, improve liver function. |
| As an herbalist, I spend a lot of time outdoors foraging for medicinal plants, so I've certainly come to appreciate the importance of an effective repellent—a nontoxic, herbal one, of course. Natural, essential oil-based repellents have become so popular that you can find them not only at natural food stores, but also at most drugstores and sporting goods stores. Or you can make your own, using my recipe. |
| We do not know exactly why combining vitamin E with herbs is so effective, but it probably has to do with this vitamin's ability to detoxify and to
The tall and drama lie I lowering stalk of evening primrose makes this herb one of nature's most easily identified medicinal plants. increase circulation. Vitamin E encourages the cysts to drain and helps the blood and lymph systems to carry excess fluids away from the cysts. |
| Herbalist Michael Moore, author of medicinal plants of the Pacific Northwest, sums it up well: "I have known perfectly intelligent physicians whose sole regularly used reference manuals were the Physician's Desk Reference and Goodman and Gillman, both of which are drug manuals. Their patients have come to expect, and receive, prescriptions as their only therapy."
Obviously, doctors are not the only ones who consider drugs their first option for treatment. The pharmaceutical companies are also not likely to change the way they do business. |
Margarita Artschwager Kay
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 For most of the next twenty years, it was very difficult to interest foundations, government agencies, private industries, or the general public in medicinal plants, especially those of other cultures. All that has changed in the past few years. Ethnobotany and ethnopharmacology have become fashionable, and consumers are tremendously interested in natural medicine. Health food stores in Tucson are stocked with herbal products, some of which are native to the American and Mexican West. The claims made for these products are sometimes quite at variance with the facts turned up by scholars. |
Alan Keith Tillotson, Ph.D., A.H.G., D.Ay.
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 Alcohol extracts of 82 Indian medicinal plants were tested in vitro against several pathogenic and opportunistic microorganisms. Only five plants had a broad spectum as well as potent action, three of which were the fruits of triphala. Subsequent animal testing showed no cellular toxicity (Ahmad et al., 1998).
• Pharmacological studies show vibhitaki fruit lowers cholesterol in rabbits fed a high-cholesterol diet (Shaila et al., 1995).
• Vibhitaki Iignans have demonstrated activity against malaria and fungal strains (Valsaraj etal., 1997). |
| Many of our long-term patients have benefited from detoxification, fasting, food allergy control, and improvement of liver function with herbs like milk thistle seeds, burdock root, dandelion root, and turmeric root,
• In 1974, an Indian Central Drug Research Institute screening of Indian medicinal plants identified a plant chemical called forskolin found in Coleus forskohlii. Coleus extract (available in pills standardized for forskolin content) has the ability to help activate the cell-regulating chemical cAMP, beneficial for psoriasis patients. |
| In the Himalayan Mountains, sages, wealthy merchants, and kings coveted medicinal plants believed to bestow happiness, intelligence, and even enlightenment. They were called "Soma" plants, but they reportedly died out thanks to greed, secretiveness, and hoarding.
Today we do not have any plants that possess this level of power, but we do have some excellent herbal nerve tonics. Of course, any of these herbs can be used in combination.
• My favorite calming nerve tonics from our nervine group are ashwagandha root (both forms), milky oat seed, skullcap, kava root, and American ginseng root. |
Linda B. White, M.D.
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 HOW herbs and drugs are alike
While medicinal plants and pharmaceutical drugs are often viewed as opposites, they actually have a good deal in common.
"Alternative" medicine: What Is It Really? |
| The first herbal drugstore, then, encompassed all of nature, with its amazing array of medicinal plants. By comparison, the modern drugstore seems far removed from its natural roots. You can take herbs as capsules or liquids or sprays that bear little resemblance to living plants. You can use products that contain combinations of herbs or compounds that have been chemically isolated from herbs and highly concentrated. And you can buy these products just about anywhere— in health food stores and conventional pharmacies as well as in supermarkets, from mail-order catalogs, and over the Internet. |
| That said, here are five medicinal plants that are easily recognized, fairly widespread, plentiful in the wild, and good to use fresh.
Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale)
This familiar weed, the bane of lawns, yields more than dandelion wine. The young spring leaves are often eaten in salads as an herbal diuretic. Interestingly, the compounds in the leaves act differently on the body than pharmaceutical diuretics: They restore the potassium lost through increased urination. The root can be roasted and used as a coffee substitute. |
| Another similarity is that both medicinal plants and synthetic drugs contain compounds that alter body processes. That's the whole point of using them to treat illness—to change things from bad to better. When you have an infection, you might take a pharmaceutical antibiotic or the natural antibiotics contained in garlic or goldenseal. In either case, compounds from the drug or the herb enter the bloodstream and help the immune system eliminate the micro-organism that's causing the problem. |
Dr. Michael Heinrich, Joanne Barnes, Simon Gibbons and Elizabeth M. Williamson
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 Hypericum perforatum L. (St John's wort) has clinically well-established effects in mild forms of depression. It has also been employed topically for inflammatory conditions of the skin.
Morphological characteristics of the family
The leaves are opposite, often dotted with glands. A characteristic feature of this family is a secondary increase in the number of stamens (polyandrous flowers). The fruit are usually capsules, but berries may occur in some species.
Distribution
This family, with about 900 species, has its main area of distribution in the tropics and in temperate regions. |
Henry Pasternak, D.V.M., C.V.A.
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 This herb is one of the classical and most important in the arsenal of Oriental tonic and health promoting medicinal plants. Astragalus has been in the limelight in recent years as a possible answer for a range of human diseases. It is probably the most hopeful new natural remedy for human AIDS, viral hepatitis, other viral diseases, myasthenia gravis, and, especially, immune restoration of cancer patients. In cancer patients, it is proposed as a treatment to strengthen the cellular immunity, which has been seriously compromised by the disease and/or by chemotherapy or radiotherapy. |
Margarita Artschwager Kay
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| More orientation to ethnobotany came when I took the parts of medicinal plants to botanists at the University of Arizona Herbarium, under the direction of Charles T. Mason, for comparison with voucher specimens. I also learned from Robert Bye and Edelmira Linares, Gary Paul Nabhan, Willard Van Asdall, and Joseph Laferriere. Through Andrew Weil I was introduced to members of the American Botanical Council and the Herb Research Foundation and their publication, HerbalGram. |
The Complete Book of Alternative NutritionSelene Y. Craig, Jennifer Haigh, Sari Harrar and the Editors of PREVENTION Magazine Health Books
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| Way back when, our ancestors picked up medicinal plants at nature's pharmacy.
Colds are easier to prevent than they are to cure, so the time to start taking herbals is before you get symptoms, says Dr. Mowrey. Face the sneezing season with herbs that fortify the immune system, and you just might beat that bug before it has a chance to do its dirty work.
Upping Immunity with Echinacea
When it comes to warding off colds, no herb has better word-of-mouth endorsements than echinacea. |
Margarita Artschwager Kay
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| Otherwise, data on medicinal plants in the American and Mexican West are mostly scattered, hidden in erudite journals or ethnographies.
In this book I have attempted to fill the gap by collating information from the many ethnographies and articles with data from hundreds of interviews that I conducted with people who use or dispense remedies made from plants. As a nurse, I want to know how people treat themselves when they are sick. As an anthropologist, I am interested in what people have used through time, universal materials with which to treat illness. |
Alan Keith Tillotson, Ph.D., A.H.G., D.Ay.
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| Alcohol extracts of 82 Indian medicinal plants were tested in vitro against several pathogenic and opportunistic microorganisms. Only five plants had a broad-spectrum as well as potent action, one of which was haritaki fruit. The others were amla fruit, vibhitaki fruit, chitrakam (Plumbago zeylanica), and kutaja (Holarrhena antidysen-terica). Subsequent animal testing showed no cellular toxicity (Ahmad et al., 1998). |
Linda B. White, M.D.
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| One of the worst mistakes people can make is to assume that because medicinal plants are natural, they're completely harmless.
Cascara sagrada, for example, is a potent laxative that can help relieve constipation. But in large doses, it causes abdominal distress, intestinal cramping, and diarrhea. Licorice root is a scientifically proven treatment for ulcers. But if you take unusually large amounts or take it for extended periods, you may experience water retention that raises your blood pressure to possibly hazardous levels. |
Sharol Tilgner, N.D.
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 Michael Moore.
10. medicinal plants of the Pacific West. Michael Moore.
CAPSULES
Items needed:
1. Powdered herb
2. Capsules
3. Smooth, flat working surface
It is easy but time consuming to make herbal capsules on a small scale. The herbs should be in powder form. An extremely coarse herb cannot be encapsulated.
The most common type of capsule is the geladn capsule but alternatives made from vegetable bases are available. Although capsules come in 3 sizes, two sizes are generally available. The -00- or "double ought" size is most commonly used. |
The Garlic CureJames F. Scheer, Lynn Allison and Charlie Fox
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| Duke, PhD, one of the world's foremost authorities on medicinal plants and herbs, writes that about one percent of new TB cases in New York City are caused by bacteria resistant to one antibiotic. Up to seven percent of recurrent cases are resistant to two or more antibiotics. TB patients resistant to multiple antibiotics have only a 50 percent chance of surviving. 4
"The Chinese use garlic to treat TB with decent results," writes Dr. Duke. |
Francois Couplan, Ph.D.
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 G 3)
3reek name of several medicinal plants "kentaurie," "kentaurion": dedi-:ated to the Centaur Chiron.
Throughout. Both native and mostly species introduced from Eurasia. Two European species, C. cyanus, cornflower, and montana, are planted for >rnament; they occasionally escape from cultivation.
The young shoots of C. calcitrapa, caltrops, star thistle - naturalized from Eu asia & N. Africa - have reportedly been eaten raw in Egypt. Local species are used as food in Europe, in Africa and in Asia.
The flowers of C. cyanus and montana (both m.a.) contain a bitter substance (ce itaurin). |
| Many well-known food plants belong to this family, such as artichoke, chicory, endive, dandelion, Jerusalem artichoke, sunflower, safflower, salsify as well as aromatic and medicinal plants. Very few Asteraceae are toxic.
Species with wind-blown pollen - especially ragweed (Ambrosia spp.) and allies - are among the most important causes of hay fever.
Many Asteraceae contain a latex which is rich in rubber.
The seeds are contained in dry fruits called "achenes."
Achillea (D 1) Yarrow
From the Greek and Latin name of the plant, possibly after Achilles, the hero of Homer's Iliad.
Throughout. |
| I hope that publication of this book will inspire others to learn more about nature and become more intimately acquainted with edible and medicinal plants. And I hope it will also encourage Americans to take a new interest in the utilization and preservation of the myriad of useful plants around us. It's helpful to have a book that assembles so much useful information under one cover. In promoting an appreciation and awareness of our marvelous living environment, this volume can possibly help make the world an even better place in which to live. |
the Editors of PREVENTION
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 Not surprisingly, some of the better-known medicinal plants are some of the most thoroughly studied. Examples include ginkgo, saw palmetto, garlic, black cohosh, and ginger. One 1997 ginkgo study on Alzheimer's patients, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, provides some good insight into both the promise and the problem of still nascent scientific herbal research.
"Going by the standard cognitive measures, the patients taking the ginkgo extract seemed to do a little better compared to the placebo group," says Linda Hershey, M.D., Ph.D. |
| Herbs have always been part of human culture," says Mark Blumenthal, executive director of the American Botanical Council in Austin, Texas, and editor of Herbal-Gram, a peer-reviewed quarterly journal on medicinal plants. "We are reawakening basic human wisdom. We are re-understanding and re-accessing our heritage, which is the use of plants for medicine."
The phrase "plants for medicine" is pretty good shorthand for what herbal remedies are all about. |
| The Greek botanist Dioscorides compiled a materia medica (a compendium of medicinal plants) in the first century a.d. that was considered authoritative in some circles until the middle of the nineteenth century.
Such herbals dominated European popular medicine throughout the Middle Ages, giving way to more learned pharmacopoeia when science started taking off in the seventeenth century. Meanwhile, in the Western Hemisphere, Native Americans on both continents developed a rich tradition of herbal medicine. |
| Later, in classical times, when Greeks and Romans were laying the foundation for Western medicine, medicinal plants remained key. Hippocrates listed some 400 of them, many of which, such as garlic, hawthorn, and thyme, are still important today. Galen, often hailed as the father of modern medicine, connected plant healing process. Hence, an antibiotic will kill off bacteria, but an herbal treatment such as echinacea will support your immune system in resisting the infection.
Isn't an antibiotic faster? |
Margarita Artschwager Kay
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| The health-care provider has very practical interests in these plants. Do medicinal plants effectively treat illness? The answer depends in part on definitions of the terms illness and effective. A treatment may be considered effective if it results in the diminution of symptoms, resolution of discomfort, or restoration of health (Etkin 1988:25)—or if it acts on the body as expected by the people using it. |
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