Introduction To The Art and Science of Herbal Medicine ©

Chanchal Cabrera Msc, MNIMH, AHG

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The oldest and the newest

Herbal medicine is one of the oldest methods of healing on the planet with a history of over 100,000 years of continuous use. Every country has developed its own unique brand of healing according to their particular indigenous plants, and several of these systems have developed into widely regarded medical philosophies. Traditional Chinese medicine has a recorded history of almost 5000 years and the Ayurvedic medicine of India is even older.

Conversely the sales of natural health products in the US topped $12 billion in 1996 and the therapeutic applications of herbs and herbal extracts is one of fastest growing areas of medical research. There are daily more reports of health benefits being attributed to a variety of foods, herbs, vitamins, minerals etc. The WHO recently announced that over 80% of the worlds population still relies on herbs and crude botanicals as their primary medicine. The WHO have also pledged to support and encourage indigenous traditional medicines as a sustainable way to work towards their goal of "health for all by the year 2000"

The Vitalist Philosophy of Herbal Medicine

Many people these days are looking to the Oriental medicine systems for an understanding of the body based on energetic fluctuations and life force processes. While Traditional Chinese, Ayurvedic, Unani and other esoteric philosophies are often effective and valuable, people are forgetting that there is a strong Vitalist tradition which Western trained herbalists draw upon when integrating traditional principles with modern practices. Our intellectual roots go back several thousand years. Claudius Galen in first drew out the "cross of the four humours" - a simplistic but revolutionary pattern by which disease and treatment could be classified and correlated. Over the centuries this system was enlarged and developed, becoming quite sophisticated and lasting as the accepted mode of assessment until only a couple of hundred years ago. 

The Vitalist philosophy considers that the body has an inherent intelligence and that this manifests in humans as a life force or energy that drives us forward and that resonates with that of the planet itself. It is the role of the herbalists to aid the body in rebalancing itself, to bring it into alignment with its natural state. This is done through the application of four basic categories of assessment and treatment - hot, cold, wet and dry according to how far the body has veered from the centre point of balance and fallen into one of these opposing extremes. 

The Gaia Hypothesis was first proposed by James Lovelock of Cambridge University in the 1960s and suggests that the earth can be likened to a single organism. He likened the rivers to the arteries and veins, the trees to the lungs. Every event on one side of the world, he says, impacts people and events on the other side. Nothing is separate from another, we are all inter-connected and inter-related and ultimately dependent on each other for maintaining balance and harmony of the whole. This concept of wholeness and unity is named Gaia after the Greek goddess of the Earth. 

Herbalists have always believed that through the use of herbs for healing it is possible to contribute to the wellbeing of the individual client while also contributing to balance and harmony in the world around us. The practice of herbal medicine is founded on the principle "above all, do no harm". The underlying tenet of holistic herbalism is the treat the person, not the disease. 

Herbalists believe in the Holistic principle that "The whole is greater than the sum of the parts". Thus when we practice herbalism we attempt to treat the whole person, body, mind and spirit as well as operaing within the recognized influence of family, community and society. We address diet, exercise, stress management, lifestyle and relationship issues and other individual concerns as well as the general disease states and particular pathologies that people present with.     >> continue