Herbal Connections

This page is devoted to all Medicinal Plants and Herbs. Historically, medicinal plants and herbs were the only source of medicinal medicine that aided manÕs innate ability to heal. Today, people are again finding that without plants we can not have true healing and that without plants we cannot live Ð they feed us, cloth us, heal us and bring us joy. Yet despite their growing popularity, we are again facing opposition, from within the herbal community and from without.

"These days there is an increasing pressure in modern professional herbalism to justify ourselves again, but itÕs an old battle we can win only by not buying into the whole war. This war takes the form now as an increasing pressure among gentle natural healers to publish or perish, competing against each other to be seen as the most scientific or authoritative, or as the most natural Ð whoÕs more organic than the next herbalist, whoÕs commanding more at the box office, whoÕs the best."

"We all know that not all herbs are safe because they are natural, but herbalist Ð unlike doctors Ð rely on observation of whole plant/whole human interactions recorded over centuries of similar use. Good herbalists know how and why to gauge a safe and effective dose. Even BritainÕs 1964 Medicines Act agreed to accept as proof of safety and efficacy the fact that an herb had been in use for a long period without giving any ill effects. This wise judgment from the Ministry of Health was only due to a professional body of herbalists who finally organized the massive resource of their loyal, satisfied patients to help make their legal voice heard. So we in the West have sometimes had tenuous fragile claims to legitimacy, but we are not out of the woods yet. The FDA and other government and private organizations, all smolder with group memory of official hostility and misunderstandings common to us herbalists who are human as well as authorities. Even the American Herbalist Association (AHA) of respectable gardeners disavows any medical use for herbs in case they are tarred and feathered with the same brush as our AHA and the rest of us mountebanks and dangerous eccentrics. The real danger to public health is not from herbalists getting somewhere with a valid therapy, but from knee-jerk closed-mindedness of nervous bureaucrats who find it more comfortable to uphold the expert researchers who can be notoriously haphazard, even dishonest, when paid to prove what they want to believe anyway."
Amanda McQuade-Crawford, B.S.C.

"While there has always been a lively folk or rural herbal tradition on this continent, official recognition for the practice of herbal medicine has been suppressed by a Western Medical, drug-based monopoly. This is not surprising in a country that served as the leading bastion of the industrial-technological age."
Michael Tierra, O.M.D.

The current western medical model is known as allopathic medicine, which sees evil forces, in form of germs and other nasty things, invading our bodies that must be destroyed by synthetic non-living chemicals called drugs, which has caused an increasing number of people to feel dissatisfied. As people are faced with the rising cost of allopathic medicine and find themselves dissatisfaction with the types of treatments offered. People are finding their way back to their medical heritage, Herbalism Ð the plants. Medicine began with plants and itÕs only in recent history that medicine has moved away from herbals to a manufactured non-living drug. As people move back to herbalism they frequently find incredible results for conditions like AIDS & HIV, arthritis, asthma, cancer, cold and flu, depression, digestive complaints, headaches that are chronic, heart disease, insomnia, menstrual disorders, nutritional issues and more. This brings with it one very large problem Ð Big Business and Marketing. All sorts of companies have found great profits in selling herbals without allot of integrity or full knowledge of the harm they cause to humans or the environment. Plant based medicines, as a whole, when provided by a well-trained individual, like an Herbalist, are safe. In comparison, every allopathic drug, even the over the counter type, come with finely printed instructions listing a number of dangers and/or side effects that may cause even further harm or additional expense of buying yet more drug(s) to counter the ill effects. In the plant kingdom, there are few plants that could cause that type of harm or death and far fewer people suffer ill effects from ingesting plant materials than they do from allopathic drugs.

Am I biased? Yes, for the one reason, I have seen what both systems offer and their differences and I found plants are better. That is why I chose to be an Herbalist.

A Short History of Herbalism

Individual Herbs

Aromatherapy

Hoxsey

Herbal Dyes

Herbal Uses and Remedies

[This page is not intended to prescribe or make recommendations. Please take the advice of a qualified Herbalist.]
This page is by no means a complete list of remedies. It's good information for anyone interested.

Not During Pregnancy

Herbal Glossary

Herbal Bibliography