for at least 5000 years, and still provide frameworks for the healthcare of millions of people today. I think we can greatly benefit from the great wisdom and insight of these systems, which provide a background and context for understanding how herbs are used, and for this reason I have included a chapter on Global Herbal Traditions.
Practical Guidance
The hedgerows, our gardens and the shelves of health food shops and pharmacies alike are lined with dazzling arrays of herbs which can be overwhelming to many who feel they lack the necessary knowledge to choose those appropriate to their needs with confidence. The media presentation of herbs has shifted from extolling the virtue of herbs and their “miraculous cures”, declaring that everything natural had to be safe and free from the side effects of modern drugs, to the opposite view, which perhaps makes more exciting reading, alarming the public that herbs have potential side effects and may even be dangerous. Without sufficient real evidence it is easy for lay persons and professionals alike to be susceptible to such hype, but with more information it is possible to have a more realistic understanding. I hope that this book will serve those using herbs for themselves, their friends and family, or their patients, and who wish to learn more about the safe and effective use of herbal medicines in order to navigate themselves through questions regarding dosage, interactions and contraindications, so that they can use herbs with the confidence they deserve.
Plants and herbs profiled in Nicholas Culpeper's Complete Herbal (1652) are still in use today.
Global Herbal Traditions
Today's herbalists draw on a variety of healing traditions, from shamanic ritual to remedies proven by scientific trials. Many of the world's traditional systems of healing share a common thesis: that everything in the universe, including plants and human beings, is composed of energy and matter and manifested as five elements, and that keeping them in balance is the key to ensuring health and wellbeing. This is the basis of the humoral system of the ancient Greek physicians, as well as Indian Ayurveda, traditional Chinese medicine, Tibetan medicine and Islamic Unani Tibb. Herbs play a central role in all these systems, preventing and treating a wide range of health problems in mind and body.
The use of herbs as medicines on physical, as well as subtler, levels is common to all cultures, and has been for as far back as we know. We can trace the link between human life and healing herbs to the Neanderthal era. In 1963, archeologists opened the grave of a man in a cave in Iraq, who had been placed there 60,000 years ago. He had been buried with many herbs, including horsetail, hollyhock, St Barnaby's thistle, yarrow, grape hyacinth and ephedra. The herbs appeared to have been chosen for their symbolic and healing virtues, for amongst them were diuretics, emetics, astringents, stimulants, and pain relievers.
Ancient and Modern Medicine
With the vast network of communication that has developed in recent decades has come a wealth of information and wisdom concerning healing. This has engendered a considerable amount of integration of herbal traditions so that herbalists today can draw on the knowledge of a number of medicinal systems and philosophies, both ancient and modern, and can access herbs from most corners of the world.
Some therapeutic traditions, such as Chinese, Ayurvedic, Unani and Tibetan medicine, are based on systems of healing that have remained almost intact through thousands of years and still form the primary healthcare system for a significant proportion of the population in those countries today. Many students and practitioners of Western herbal medicine study these traditions, and incorporate their ancient wisdom and practices into their own diagnostic methods and treatments.
Other age-old systems of herbal healing, particularly in the Western world, have largely been broken and replaced by modern drugs and allopathy (conventional medicine). The current popularity of herbal medicine has inspired a re-evaluation of our global medical roots, with their rich source of effective medicines that certainly have their place in modern medical practice. Herbs such as garlic, ginkgo, ginseng, echinacea and St John's wort have proved themselves to the world, becoming household names in the process, and many are recommended by some doctors.
In recent decades, the scientific world has identified specific constituents of herbs, as well as their properties and interactions. Modern studies into their efficacy using double-blind, clinically controlled trials have proven that herbs can be effective medicines, vindicating the ancient use of such plants that goes back thousands of years.
Traditional Chinese herbal treatment has been shown to be effective in treating eczema.
Shamanic Healing
The earliest known herbalists of every culture were shamans – important men or women whose instincts were raised to a highly intuitive level through years of training to develop their inner eye. This deeper perception enabled them to communicate directly with the plant and spirit world, and to visit other realities through their own spirit allies.
Origins
Shamanistic practices are said to predate all organised religions, dating back to the Paleolithic and Neolithic periods. Many shamanic traditions, including European, Tibetan, Mongolian, Korean, Japanese, and Native American from both North and South America, originally came from Siberia and metamorphosed as they traveled to other parts of the world. African slaves took their shamanic traditions to America, where they merged divination and other rituals with Christian practices to produce, for example, Haitian voodoo (vodou), Cuban santería, and Brazilian candomblé. Elsewhere, shamanism became absorbed into religion, clearly shown in, for example, Tibetan Buddhism. In some cultures, the early shamans were known as priest physicians. They were also sorcerers, magicians, diviners; intermediaries between the mortal and the spirit worlds.
Contemporary Shamanism
Today, shamanism is still alive and well especially in Siberia. It exists in a variety of different forms, mainly among indigenous peoples in rural areas, often as the main form of treatment available. It is also found in cities and shantytowns, particularly in Africa, Central America and South America, where it is an important part of the culture and used alongside, or as an alternative to, any available modern medicine. Belief in witchcraft and sorcery, known as brujeria in South America, is still prevalent in many shamanic societies. Some cultures, including several from Africa, distinguish shamans who cure from sorcerers who harm, while others believe that all shamans have the power to both cure and kill. Shamanism is also still practiced in South Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Inuit and Eskimo cultures, Papua New Guinea, Australia and Tibet.
The Shaman's Journey
In some cultures the shaman's powers are believed to be inherited, while in others a shaman follows a “calling”, sometimes from their dreams, and endures rigorous training. Initiation occurs often through a transformational experience, which could be a serious illness, or being struck by lightning. In North America, Native Americans may seek communion with the spirit world through a “vision quest”, while an aspiring shaman in South America might apprentice themselves to a respected shaman.
Shamans enter altered states of consciousness, often ecstatic trance states, journeying to the beat of a drum or rattle, or using singing, music, sweat lodges, vision quests, or fasting to communicate with other realms of reality and the entities that guide them (a teacher, a spirit guide from the animal or plant world or a totem), asking for wisdom and guidance. In this way they gain their knowledge and power. The shaman's journey is intended to help the patient or community to rediscover their connection to nature and spirit. In the Ecuadorian and Peruvian rainforests, shamans are known as curanderos. Some base their healing work on the use of ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic plant that can induce divine revelation and healing, mental and emotional as well as physical. Visiting an Ayahuasquero has