A Taste of Philosophy

Good Health Is Not Just The Absence Of Disease

Herbal medicine (phyto-therapy) is the science of using medicinal plant remedies to treat illness, and, just as importantly, to maintain good health.  This means that herbs can be taken for general well-being and the prevention of disease, as well as for established ill health.

Herbal medicine is as old as humankind.  There is evidence from a cave in Iraq that Neanderthal man 60,000 years ago may have used medicinal plants, as species still used medicinally today have been found in a burial site.

Knowledge of medicinal plants and their uses have been recorded from antiquity; by Imhotep, the priest physician of ancient Egypt; by Galen, personal physician to Marcus Aurelius; by Paracelsus; right up to modern times.

Herbal medicine is the oldest form of healing and there is virtually no group of people, however remote and isolated, who did not practice some form of herbal medicine.  Amazingly, the same plant has been found to be used for the same purpose in cultures widely separated by place and time.

3000 years ago, Asclepios, one of the great men of ancient medicine said ‘First the word, then the plant, and finally the knife.’  This is still applicable in modern clinical practice.  In family medicine, time taken to listen to troubles and strife, followed by a ‘word’ of comfort, reassurance and advice is a very powerful and effective tool.  This listening approach, along with a thorough physical examination (and a gentle plant medicine if required), is widely applicable to many cases seen in general practice today.

Hippocrates (460BC – 377BC) is regarded as the father of medicine.  Hippocratic medicine is based on the premise that physical, mental and emotional balance is essential to health; and that disease is a disturbance of this balance.  This disturbance expresses itself in symptoms.  Thus, as well as being the father of medicine, Hippocrates is also the father of wholism; which means that our modern, trendy concept of wholistic medicine is actually thousands of years old.

Orthodox medicine has its roots in the use of herbs.  One quarter of prescribed drugs sold in western pharmacies are directly derived from plants.  Some important modern drugs are based on traditional medicinal plants; for example, the cardiac drug, digitalis from fox glove; the opiate pain killers from the opium poppy; the anti inflammatory aspirin from willow bark and the anti-cancer agents vincristine and vinblastine from the Madagascar periwinkle.

The current surge of interest in herbal medicine began in the 1960’s and has been expanding ever since.  It is driven by consumer demand which stems from an underlying sense of dissatisfaction with modern medicine. There is fear of pharmaceutical drugs and their side effects.  There is a fear of hospitals and their ‘super-bugs’. There is fear of the trauma of surgery and it’s complications.  Brief consultations are unsatisfactory for both doctor and client; and, for those who can afford it, the wholistic health practitioner, with a longer time spent with each client, is now filling the role of health advisor surrogate counselor and support person.

Modern health care has a tendency to treat a physical disease entity and address a pathological condition. This is reflected in our hospital system where we have heart specialists and lung specialists and bowel specialists and joint specialists and kidney specialists; a fragmented, microscopic view rather than a broad-based, wholistic approach.  This may be appropriate for serious life-threatening illness but is unhelpful for the great majority of people who present in general practice.

There is a huge increase in chronic degenerative diseases world wide, reaching epidemic proportions in developed countries.  Diseases such as osteo-arthritis respond poorly to orthodox treatment and the drugs used in treatment of this condition can have serious side effects. (An example is the recent finding that many of the most commonly used anti-inflammatory drugs may adversely affect heart disease.)  By contrast, arthritis may be relieved by appropriate herbal and nutritional remedies with a very low side effect profile.  There are clinical trials confirming the efficacy of Devil’s Claw, Ginger, Glucosamine and Fish oil, to name but a few that have shown benefit for sufferers of arthritis.

Herbal remedies play an important part in health care.  In general, herbs act to integrate and balance the body’s physiology and augment innate vitality.  Thus any condition that is medically treatable will benefit from Herbal medicine.  However, Herbal medicine is not always the treatment of first choice.  Obviously a broken leg, a heart attack or an acute asthmatic episode are examples of situations where modern medicine comes into it’s own.

Herbs are neither intrinsically ‘good’ nor pharmaceutical drugs ‘bad.’ Each has it’s place and it’s merits and is appropriate in different circumstances. We are lucky to have a choice of treatments.