Before there was any understanding of biochemical constituents, traditional herbal healing systems relied on flavors as indicators of medicinal properties. (Determining the properties and quality of an herb by its taste, color, texture, etc., is called “organoleptic” assessment.) Traditional herbalists have long associated corrective and potent therapeutic value intrinsic to the flavors, as follows:

Sweet – nourishing, tonic
Pungent or spicy --- metabolically stimulating and warming
Salty – affecting body fluids
Sour – Promoting digestion (as with fermented foods)
Bitter – clearing, detoxifying

To these, Ayurveda adds “astringent” as a sixth flavor, while Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) adds “bland” another extra “non-flavor,” so to speak.

Flavors are perceived by taste receptors (taste buds) located on the upper surface of the tongue, soft palate, upper esophagus and epiglottis. The taste receptor cells send information to gustatory areas of the brain that influence our predilection or repugnance to certain foods.

Today, we know that the flavors are generally identified with known biochemical constituents. The bitter taste usually elicits a strong repugnance with the intention to protect us from non-nourishing and possibly poisonous substances. Biochemistry associated with the bitter flavor happens to include a large number of constituents with known therapeutic value such as alkaloids, bitter glycosides and so forth.

However, could it be that the bitter flavor itself, apart from its associated constituents, possesses its own intrinsic therapeutic value?

The well known traditional herbal principle of flavors may have found scientific vindication with this recent paper published in the Journal of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) entitled “Extraoral Bitter Taste Receptors as Mediators of Off-target Drug Effects.” Here, a novel hypothesis offers a possible explanation as to why many drugs seem to affect conditions and diseases other than the ones which they are intended to treat:

“(W)e propose that any drug with a bitter taste could have unintended actions in the body through stimulation of extraoral type 2 taste receptors (T2Rs). T2Rs were first identified in the oral cavity, where they function as bitter taste receptors. However, recent findings indicate that they are also expressed outside the gustatory system, including in the gastrointestinal and respiratory systems. . . Bitter-tasting compounds can have specific physiological effects in T2R-expressing cells. . . . If our hypothesis is confirmed, it would offer a new paradigm for understanding the off-target actions of diverse drugs and could reveal potential new therapeutic targets.”

T2R taste receptors found in the gastrointestinal system may provide a rationale as to why and how bitter flavored herbs (often called “bitters” as they are sold in innumerable alcoholic beverages throughout the world) can be used to treat different physiological diseases. T2Rs found in the respiratory smooth muscle system affect breathing and bronchodilation, which may substantiate at least one aspect of how bitter tasting herbs such as wild cherry bark and elecampane are effective for asthma and other chronic and acute respiratory diseases.

Of course, the authors of this study did not set out to make a statement regarding the efficacy of the flavors associated with herbs, but their research may provide supporting evidence for how the flavor of an herb may direct its effects.

From an herbalist’s perspective, a drug may be viewed in terms of its pharmacological action and its overall metabolically heating or cooling energy. There are many implications with all of this; for example, we may not only understand off-label benefits of certain drugs, but we can also appreciate how certain drugs such as antibiotics, corticosteroids and others, while good for a specific disease, may be especially contraindicated and harmful for some patients more than others.

Now that I'm on to ginseng-like herbs, here's another one that can be taken during the summer. Its real name is Panax notoginseng, known in Chinese pinyin as san qi, but is best known by its commercial name, Tien qi ginseng.

It is definitely in the ginseng family, but has quite different properties from the ones we usually associate with other ginsengs.

Rather than tonifying Qi, this herb moves and builds Blood. But even better, while it moves Blood it also stops bleeding. This makes it a perfect application for any trauma from falls, fractures, contusions, wounds, cuts or sprains (for this reason it is used extensively by martial artists) and to stop bleeding in vomit, urine or stool along with nosebleeds and hemorrhaging.  

In fact, it is used for any internal and external bleeding and should be taken frequently for this, both internally and externally placed on the wound in powder or liniment form. It is called Yunan Bai Yao in its patent form, which is widely used to stop bleeding, specifically from gunshot wounds.  

San qi also reduces swelling, alleviates pain and dissolves blood clots. I have seen it dissolve large blood clots and slow excessive menstrual bleeding and hemorrhage (high doses are needed for both).  It is used for chest, abdominal and joint pain and diabetic retinopathy. As well, it lowers blood pressure and increases coronary artery flow. Because of its tonic circulatory properties, it is one of the most popular of all herbs used by the Chinese. 

Image of San qi tubers from: ITM Online.

San Qi

Latin: Panax notoginseng, P. pseudoginseng

Family: Araliaceae

Part Used: root

Energy, taste and Organs affected: warm; sweet, slightly bitter; Liver, Stomach, Large Intestine

Actions: stops bleeding

Properties: hemostatic, cardiac tonic

Biochemical constituents: arasaponin A, arasaponin B, dencichine

Dose: 1-3 g powder; 3-9 g whole root, decoction; apply topically as needed

Precautions: pregnancy; Deficient Blood or Yin

Other: also known as pseudoginseng, notoginseng, tienchi, tien qi and tian qi

Indications: internal and external bleeding, nosebleed, blood in urine, vomit, mucus or stool, traumatic injury due to falls, fractures, contusions and sprains, chest and abdominal pain, angina, coronary heart diseases, joint pain, hemorrhage, injuries, wounds, excessive menstruation, diabetic retinopathy

Horsetail

Equisetum spp.

Energies and flavors: Cool, astringent

Uses: Hemostatic, astringent, vulnerary

With the advent of Spring comes horsetail, a type of shave-grass that grows in watery places. I've been studying several stands of these interesting plants for a few weeks now, watching them pop through the earth, shoot upward and sprout into feathery and bottlebrush-like 'leaves.' My walks take me past a stream where they love to flourish, offering me some interesting photo ops.

Horsetail's fresh, barren stems have long been used medicinally. Older herbalists used it for consumption, dropsy and dysentery. Horsetail decoction has also been used as a vulnerary, stopping bleeding, healing wounds and reducing eyelid swelling when applied externally. High in silica, they are often included in mineral-rich formulas or herbal combinations for strengthening bones.

Horsetail's main use, however, is as a diuretic to increase the flow of urine. Thus, is used for such urinary issues such as bladder, prostate, urethra and kidney infections. As well, it is used for frequent urination, which may seem contradictory. However, by increasing the flow of urine it empties the bladder so one doesn't need to urinate as much.

Horsetail is also used as a lithotropic, helping to dissolve kidney and bladder stones. As an astringent, it can stop bleeding, internally and externally, and has particularly been used this way for nosebleeds. When calcined to ash, it supposedly helps alleviate acid indigestion.

When taken regularly, however, horsetail may irritate the kidneys and cause some toxic reactions. Thus treatment should last no more than six days. Another precaution to keep in mind is that a strong decoction of horsetail acts as an emmenogogue, which contraindicates it for pregnancy.

For example, Ligusticum porteri (now available as a Planetary Herbals extract), commonly known as "osha," has been found to lower viral count in chronic hepatitis C patients. Traditionally, the herb is considered "big medicine" by southwestern natives who widely utilize this herb in ceremonies and as treatment for a wide variety of conditions including sore throat, and all viral diseases including the flu.

In the marketplace, a typical consumer presented with the choice of capsules of pure lomatium versus capsules of lomatium blended with other herbs would most likely choose the former.

Are formulations better than singles?

Assuming that it is well crafted by an experienced herbalist, a formula consisting of two or more herbs can often more effective than a single herb. The operative word here is 'can' not always.

Strange how often the first things you hear on your learning path often prove to hold the greatest weight in life. My first Chinese herb teacher, a Taoist named Foon Lee Wong who operates a curio shop on the outskirts of San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, once off-handedly said that herbs used together represent more than anything we find in nature -- in other words, herbal formulations are 'unnatural' or perhaps 'supernatural,' as in beyond nature.

In a very real sense an herbalist uses herbs as a musician uses individual notes or an artist uses colors and shapes to create something unique and hopefully therapeutically effective.

Herbs are combined in formulas with particular objectives in mind. For example:

To complement or augment a primary intended therapeutic action: For instance, we might use more than one antiviral herb together to have a wider range of effect in treating viruses. Or we might use several complementary tonics together for a wider range of tonification.

Or, we might add some herbs because we can see the need to support an internal organic function in order to help the body achieve relief of a specific symptom. In other words, extra support for the digestive or urinary systems will help more effectively treat the underlying cause.

We might add in a smaller amount of an herb that slows down the liver's ability to neutralize any strange substance that enters its portals. Usually this would be a small amount of a spicy herb to bypass the liver P450 enzymes. This allows the active principles of an herb to remain in circulation longer than if it were used alone.

Or we might add a small amount of an antispasmodic herb to relieve any physiological resistance to the unique qualities (taste, texture, etc.) of an herb.

However one of the most fascinating phenomena around herbal formulation is how a particular combination, even a ratio of two or more herbs can biochemically optimize the primary ingredients in the herbs themselves.

Traditional Chinese and Ayurvedic medicine includes thousands of preparations, sometimes in exact prescribed rations and amounts that have been passed down over millennia because of some unique experientially proven benefit.

Given today's research capabilities, it is difficult enough to try to understand biochemically why some herbs do what they do. Each herb contains thousands of unique compounds. Compound this with trying to analyze an ancient traditional herbal formula containing two or more herbs, and you can see what a challenge this would be! (And that's assuming that there is a will and funding for such research - which by and large in the West there is scant little of either.)

Over 50% of all pharmaceutical drugs were or are derived from plants. Are there miracle cures in the vast but dwindling Amazon rain forest? Absolutely, but thus far only a handful of drugs have made it to market (including quinine, codeine, morphine, and cocaine). While visiting the Amazon, I spoke with one of the leading Western ethnobotanists whose job it is to discover and send back plants to pharmaceutical companies that may have a value in medicine. He said he's sent them hundreds but because they are unable to isolate, synthesize and therefore patent a single active constituent, all of this traditional knowledge of therapeutic plant usage goes to waste.

In the case of herbal formulas, the challenge to isolate and synthesize is exponentially greater.

Finally, research that supports formula synergy

So given all of the above, you can imagine how excited I get when I find a research paper that substantiates the value of an herbal formula over a single plant, in this case where the herbs work on each other to optimize certain therapeutic properties and effects.

While researching the effects of the Chinese herb dang gui (Angelica sinensis) as a blood tonic especially for women, I accidentally came upon a study of a famous ancient Chinese two-herb formula Dang gui bu xue tang (DBT) which consists of one part dang gui and five parts huang qi (astragalus root). This formula has a wide range of use and is traditionally prescribed alone with other herbs or in soups for anemia, uterine bleeding, post-partum bleeding, fatigue, and symptoms due to hormonal deficiency including osteoporosis.

The odd thing is that the formula is for blood deficiency but dang gui, the herb regarded as the sovereign blood tonic in Traditional Chinese Medicine, is used in a much smaller amount than astragalus root, an herb used as a qi tonic. Why?

The study "Verification of the formulation and efficacy of Danggui Buxue Tang (a decoction of Radix Astragali and Radix Angelicae Sinensis): an exemplifying systematic approach to revealing the complexity of Chinese herbal medicine formulae" demonstrated the higher therapeutic efficacy of the two herbs together with the primary herb being a one fifth the ratio to its secondary counterpart.

The researchers speculated as follows:

"The saponins may liquefy and make the primary properties of ferulic acid and ligustilde in dang gui more bio-available. When boiled it seems that the ferulic acid and ligustilide in dang gui are oxidized and degraded which is far less when astragalus is combined in the 5:1 ratio with dang gui. Finally it's possible that the stability of the active constituents are improved by having the different plant chemicals together."

While none of this is conclusive, it sure supports Foon's notion that an herbal formula is more than the sum of its parts.

This Dec. 1, 2009, article at the BBC website entitled "Prince Charles: 'Herbal medicine must be regulated'" points to a potential crisis for the practice of herbal medicine in the UK. Under threat of new European Union (EU) laws scheduled to take effect in April 2011 that would restrict the prescription of manufactured herbal medicines to "statutorily regulated professionals like doctors," the Prince of Wales is urging his government to regulate herbalists, lest they be banned from practice entirely when the new laws take effect. The new laws also stipulate that the only herbal medicines that will be sold over the counter will be ones used to treat 'mild and self-limiting' conditions - basically meaning nothing worse than a cold.

Apart from the fact that this would undoubtedly cause a large legally disenfranchised body of people to seek natural remedies through illegal venues, it also would overturn a 500 year-old Commonwealth law that prohibits governmental legal restriction enabling anyone to treat patients with herbs.

Since 1542, the Commonwealth Charter of Henry VIII has guaranteed herbalists the right to practice freely throughout the Commonwealth. This law is still applied in the UK as well as its former territories worldwide such as Australia and New Zealand. In fact, many think an argument could be made that the U.S.A., as a former British colony, has a legal basis for unregulated and free practice based on the English Herbalists' Charter.

For over 400 years, this has worked pretty well with very few adverse incidents reported, especially compared to those reported about conventional mainstream medicine. Other European countries such as Germany and France have chosen to impose highly restrictive laws limiting the practice of herbal medicine to medical doctors. As a result, there is economic pressure for the UK to declare the Herbalists' Charter antiquated and to get in step with the same restrictions imposed by other European countries. This has met with stiff opposition from a well established tradition that has allowed for the comparatively unrestricted practice of herbal medicine by both lay and professional herbalists.

Aside from the many differences of language, culture and history between closely adjoining countries, the standards for the practice of herbal medicine is yet another obstacle to true union. With obvious financial advantages to globalization in respect to the EU, many of the differences between these financially interdependent countries must be resolved -- and apparently how herbal medicine is practiced and regulated is just another one of those issues. Countries such as the UK with a long history of distinctive customs and traditions encounter difficulties with conformity. For instance, while most European countries have converted their currency to the Euro, the UK still uses the pound sterling as its distinctive "coin of the realm." So far, under the Herbalists' Charter, the UK is similarly seen as 'not fully participatory.'

The upshot of all of this is an ongoing fundamental conflict as to how herbal medicine is practiced, manufactured and sold between the UK and its European Union partners.

One of my former students, John Smith, is now a professional herbalist in the UK who opposes licensure and restrictions of herbalists in that country. In discussion on this issue he recently wrote me the following:

Unfortunately, what has been happening in UK is that it was felt by the powers that be that herbal medicine either had to be regulated or banned entirely -- so herbal bodies agreed to compromise and go for self regulation (i.e. Herbal Registers). (In other words,) we'd get together to exclude non registered or unqualified practitioners and agree on what herbs could and could not be used, etcetera). This was done even though many of us saw such negotiations as a huge compromise but the lesser of two evils. Ten years of time and energy went into this regulation process internal wrangling for power and influence within the herbal and alternative medical community and discussions with the Department of Health and European Union representatives. What is happening at present is that the government has pulled the plug and left herbal medicine back at square one where herbal medical practice could be banned entirely. Prince Charles, a long time proponent of herbal medicine, homeopathy, and alternative medical practice, has chosen the path of supporting the regulated practice of herbal medicine and fights that corner.

Any decision in the EU and UK to restrict herbal medicine to licensed medical doctors would be a purely financial one with no regard for the needs of the people. At the same time it supports an already established free socialized medicine of a particular state-supported brand, administered only by licensed medical doctors.

Preserving the Tradition of Herbal Medicine

Here are three good reasons why herbal medicine should remain as unregulated as possible:

1. The roots of herbal medicine are empirical and depend on a stream of trial and error to evolve and renew. To do this, it must remain an inalienable right to be able to access and use herbs obtained in the market, from nature and the garden, and should not be subject to highly restrictive governmental regulations.
2. The practice of herbal medicine is its own unique methodology that only experienced herbalists understand. Because most herbs are mild and have myriad non-specific biochemical elements, best results are achieved when an assessment methodology is used that takes into account not only the presenting symptoms but the underlying causes. This is the unique strength of traditional herbal medical use and practice.
3. Further, conventional medicine has a different focus, useful in its own way to attend to the alleviation of symptoms irrespective of wholistic considerations and of course in crisis care. But most medical doctors have, at best, an extremely limited understanding of the practice of herbal medicine.

Because of the above stated reasons, both China and India, which have long standing traditions of herbal medicine, are able to recognize professional herbalists without prohibiting the accessibility to herbs and herbal preparations and the popular practice of herbal medicine by all.

It seems either a poor compromise or simply naive for Prince Charles to promote restrictions on herbal medical practice in the UK similar to those now in effect in other European countries. The compromise, which is the financial advantage, is probably more the reason as I can't imagine that someone has not discussed these other matters with him.

Who else stands to gain from herbal regulation and restriction?

Commingled with EU financial considerations to override the UK Commonwealth law and the 1542 Herbalists' Charter is the protection and practice of healing professions. Of course this includes conventional Western medicine but also the practioners of newer recognized alternative medicine professions, such as acupuncturists, herbalists, naturopaths, and Ayurvedic and Chinese healers who have been struggling over recent years with various degrees of success to gain recognition. Despite their roots as popular unregulated healing modalities, each of these, backed by schools standing to benefit from increased enrollment, at least superficially stand to gain in restricting practice to "licensed professionals."

Historically there is nothing new in any of this motivation of protection. Since medieval times, guilds and other organizations have been established specifically for promoting the professional (i.e. financial) interests of its members. There is something gained and something lost from this. What is gained is a standing organization that can share its experience and knowledge with its members and establish a standard of practice. What is lost, of course, is the wider experience that is the result of non-members who may also practice a particular discipline or practice such as herbal medicine.

In order to safeguard its knowledge, these professional organizations developed their own language and jargon that distinguished them from the populace. We encounter this when we try to decipher the diagnostic assessments and prescriptions of medical doctors as well as the metaphorical jargon used by Traditional Chinese Medicine or Ayurvedic doctors.

For example, Latin, a universal language understood by medical legal and scholarly professions across all European countries, was used this way. While at first intended for more widespread understanding and greater definition and clarity, the use of Latin as a professional language of medicine had the same effect as it did when it was used by the Church for 1,500 years where the Bible was only available to be read and interpreted by clergy: to prevent free thought.

The mid-17^th century English apothecary-herbalist, Nicholas Culpeper, caused a furor when he published his own translations from the Latin to the English vernacular of various herbal and medical texts of the College of Physicians. He did this so that his fellow countrymen who could not afford expensive doctors would have available to them guides for maintenance of their own health. He published his own herbal, The English Physitian (1652), arguing that "no man deserved to starve to pay an insulting, insolent physician," when he could obtain his herbs from the nearby countryside. Culpeper upheld medicine as a "public asset rather than a commercial secret." Since its first publication over 350 years ago, Culpeper's Complete Herbal has been reprinted as many times as the Bible. He remains a revered iconic figure for English people and herbalists worldwide.

Education, not regulation

Many will still argue that the unrestricted use of herbs and self treatment is dangerous, but the fact remains that statistics of adverse events and deaths from herbal treatments are infinitesimal compared to the estimated 400,000 people who die annually from pharmaceuticals alone, or who are otherwise injured or made sick from conventional medicine and drugs.

It is undoubtedly my personal bias that herbal medicine remain as unregulated and unrestricted as reasonable. In fact, this was my personal path of learning. As part of a counterculture seeking independence from the mainstream in all ways possible, I looked to herbal medicine first as a passionate attraction to nature and plants, and secondly for the possibilities of what it might offer as an alternative to more invasive and Western medical drugs and procedures. It was out of this need that acupuncture and herbal medicine has grown in North America since the late 1960s.

There were no official schools to turn to for an education on this continent, and if there were, I certainly did not have the financial means to afford them. So I made do at first with the scant few books that were available by Jethro Klos and a few others and tried different herbal potions on myself and members of the commune to which I belonged. Despite the limitations of this approach I learned that plants do work and found common weeds such as plantain, comfrey, mullein, goldenseal, and later echinacea to be amazingly effective.

So my career arose out of years of personal trial and effort. I eventually got a leg up when I began to find a few experienced herbalists such Norma Meyers of British Columbia and Dr. John Raymond Christopher of Provo, Utah to study from. This eventually extended to the study of Traditional Chinese Medicine and herbalism in Yunnan, China with some remarkable doctors. Through this path, I think I received a wonderful education. Certainly there were holes because of the sporadic nature of the learning process but I found that I would only learn what I could absorb at the time and gradually my understanding deepened.

To legislate and deprive others from this path of learning to me would seem a shame of the first order. I know today, that there exists a large number of herbalists living in the mountains, forests and countryside who practice with local plants in ways that are not "official" according to accepted standards of clinical Western herbalism, TCM or Ayurveda, and that the contribution of these individuals are just as important as those made by the professionals. I think that there remains a place for both lay herbalists and individuals who might follow a path similar to my own as well as those who may seek a more set curriculum leading to professional licensure.

Recently on our East West Herb Course private student forum, a student asked about my distinction between the terms 'herbology' and 'herbalism.'

Essentially, while both terms represent two sides of the same coin, I believe that herbalism begins where herbology leaves off.  While herbalism can encompass herbology (the more scientific aspect of plant study), herbology seems not able to encompass the various diverse aspects of herbalism.

For the majority of people involved with plants used as food, clothing, warmth, shelter and medicine, the study of plants is much more than an academic discipline or science, which the word 'herbology' implies. For them, the 'way of herbs' is a way of life expressing the fundamental relationship between the human family and plants, which are the primary source of all life energy on the planet. This, in a nutshell, is what I mean when I refer to 'herbalism.'
 

Plant Power, Cosmic Power

Recently we installed a full battery of photovoltaic cells to supply all of our home energy needs in our backyard herb garden. Picture this: I am now the proud owner of a large panel of somewhat unattractive industrially created solar cells, relatively inefficiently transforming sunlight into useable energy. This is juxtaposed against my beautiful garden of medicinal herbs, ornamental plants, grasses and dwarf fruit trees, which are not only more efficiently doing the same but with much greater aesthetic appeal.

I think to myself, "If I could only find a way to plug into my garden for the energy needed to power our cars, TV, computers, dish and clothes washer and drier and so forth!" Instead, I have to be content with the inferior Mondrianesque solar cell sculpture occupying about 40 feet of space in my yard. With a bittersweet sigh, knowing that life often involves compromises, I take satisfaction that the investment is worth it at this time for the sake of clean, non-polluting energy.

The lesson here is a broad one, one better ascribed to 'herbalism' than to 'herbology': that the life of our whole planet is, or can be, sustained by plants through the direct transmutation of the sun's energy into proteins and carbohydrates, through the simple process known as plant photosynthesis. Thus far, science and technology have not been able to duplicate this uncomplicated elegance that occurs everyday in the humble leaves of trees and plants.

I don't think plants' energy transmutation is exclusive to the sun, however. The moon, for example, has her dominion over the tides and currents (at least). Most of us have experienced the effect of the moon on the fluidic aspects of our being (the essential bodily Yin) with disturbed sleep patterns and a kind of emotional hypersensitivity. If much denser creatures such as mammals can feel the moon's effects, might not plants also?

The attribution of planetary rulership to specific herbs isn't a new concept. The 17th-century English herbalist Nicholas Culpeper, for example, famously classed plants and diseases by planetary and astrological influence. Further, throughout all traditional cultures, herbalists (not 'herbologists') ascribed the colors, shape and various healing properties of plants to astrology. Of course, these attributions are not scientific fact and represent only one particular way to classify and express the different qualities of plants and herbs.

One could delve even further into the cosmic relationship of plants to the earth, ourselves, and the universe, advancing the concept of 'herbalism' with the not unreasonable conjecture (which at this stage is my own belief) that besides the relationship of plants to the sun, moon, and planets, they may also be able to absorb and transmute elements from intergalactic sources into vital, life-sustaining elements. Throughout the year we are treated to spectacular displays of meteor showers and I can't help but wonder what effect this space debris may have on plants and us when it disintegrates into our Earth's atmosphere.

So, at least on the greater scale of things, we are interdependent with what happens in the cosmos and that interdependency is shared by all life including plants.
 

Herbalism: A Basis for Sacred Mystery

I believe that our relationship to plants represented by the term 'herbalism' may be the descendant of a way of thinking and set of beliefs that are probably older than all other spiritual and religious beliefs.

Our reliance on plant cultivation for sustenance, medicine and shelter have profoundly shaped who we are as humans and how we interact with each other and the Earth. Agriculture has even permeated our faith: the most high religious rites occur in the setting of our sacramentally sharing food -- usually made from plants -- which communally recognizes our dependence on the plant world for our very lives and as an entity which brings and keeps us together.

As the ancient Eleusinians knew, plants eloquently teach us the mysteries of death and rebirth, as over the endless cycle of seasons, they are perennially disassembled and reassembled. No matter how hard and long the winter, plants again flourish with boundless enthusiasm, energy and beauty to become the fundamental expression of Spring.

On the other hand, we cannot escape the incontrovertible fact that life feeds on life, and that without inevitable temporal loss there would be no renewal. From our perspective, what is eternal, therefore, is the power of plants to ceaselessly recycle the elements of life. Thus, cosmically, it is impossible to take away and diminish from wholeness.

What seems to pass away, and even this cannot be known for certain, is the individual form of things which is bundled with our changing physical appearance and our sense of individuality which we identify as the ego. By embodying the essence of both the collective and individual expression of the creative life force, plants provide a perspective on the role of form and by inference, ego, through the fundamental adaptive impulse of evolution.

I could probably ramble on with the more esoteric aspects of this topic, but my point is that whether referring to 'herbology' or 'herbalism,' 'herbologist' (now an antiquated term) or 'herbalist,' it is 'herbalism' that informs the basis of our relationship with plants.

But in the end, maybe e.e. cummings sums it up best, though without any specific reference to herbalism, in the following poem:

when faces called flowers float out of the ground
and breathing is wishing and wishing is having-
but keeping is downward and doubting and never
-it's april (yes,april;my darling) it's spring!
yes the pretty birds frolic as spry as can fly
yes the little fish gambol as glad as can be
(yes the mountains are dancing together)

when every leaf opens without any sound
and wishing is having and having is giving-
but keeping is doting and nothing and nonsense
-alive;we're alive, dear: it's (kiss me now) spring!
now the pretty birds hover so she and so he
now the little fish quiver so you and so i
(now the mountains are dancing, the mountains)

when more than was lost has been found has been found
and having is giving and giving is living-
but keeping is darkness and winter and cringing
-it's spring (all our night becomes day) O, it's spring!
all the pretty birds dive to the heart of the sky
all the little fish climb through the mind of the sea
(all the mountains are dancing; are dancing)

-- e.e. cummings

For a musical representation of the poem above, I recommend the wonderful setting of this lyric by the American composer Dominick Argento. You can download it for a mere 99 cents from iTunes.

For yet another sense of the relationship of herbalism to herbology, I recommend that you check out East coast filmmakers Terrence Youk and Ann Ambrecht's Numen: The Nature of Plants, a film documentary on herbalism still in the works. If you support herbs and herbal medicine, go to their site and watch the inspiring 15-minute preview. Then you can kick in your $10 donation to help launch it into existence next year.