Book Reviews

Herbal Medicine, Healing, and Cancer : A Comprehensive Program for Prevention and Treatment by Donald Yance. Yance is immersed in a private herbal practice concentrating on patients with cancer and other serious chronic diseases. He brings to this book the results of that hands-on practice, lasting for more than a decade. A must for the medical professional or herb student who treats cancer patients, or for the cancer patient seeking self education from a professional specialist.

Herbs for Pets by Mary Wulff-Tilford and Gregory Tilford. This hardbound text includes information on herbal forms for pets, principles of holistic medicine for animals, a materia medica of herbs, with indications and contraindications, and a complete section on herbal and nutritional therapeutics by ailment. This is the most useful book yet on herbs for animals, and sets an entirely new standard for future books on the subject.

Herbal Medicine-Expanded Commission E Monographs
by Mark Blumenthal(Editor), Alicia Goldberg.  The German Commission E monographs on medicinal herbs have been widely published and sold, yet the original publication was a disappointment to those seeking practical clinical applications or scientific references for the monographs. This smaller book gives more of the traditional usage, and, most important, complete scientific references for the most important of the herbs in the original text. For this reason, this smaller book is recommended over the larger, more expensive version.

 Botanical Influences on Illness : A Sourcebook of Clinical Research
by Melvyn Werbach and Michael Murray. Werbach has produced the definitive texts of scientific abstracts on nutritional therapeutics for various physical and mental diseases in his nutritional texts, and has now reproduced the feat for botanical therapeutics. His book have chapters by condition, and then a thorough review of clinical abstracts and references. this book is a must for the clinician seeking a scientific review of therapeutics.

 Native American Ethnobotany by Daniel Moerman. Dr. Daniel Moerman has spent several decades building a database based on the scholarly literature on Native American Ethnobotany. The steadily growing information has has several print and online incarnations, and this book, the latest, is by far the most extensive. a summary review of the body of literature on the subject, cross referenced by plant, by tribe, and by therapeutic catagory. Indispensable for the student of native ethnobotany.

Chinese Medicinal Wines & Elixirs by Bob Flaws.
Should we use the alcohol tincture form of Chinese herbs? Bob Flaws, a leading educator in traditional Chinese herbalism has reviewed the use of alcohol preparations of Chinese herbs from classic texts as well as modern medical usage. Recipes and dosages given in detail. Readers will need a basic knowledge of the terminology and concepts of Chinese medicine.

The Divine Farmer's Materia Medica: A Translation of the Shen Nong Ben Cao
This is the oldest book of Chinese Herbalism, from circa 100 AD, translated into English for the first time. Still fresh and useful reading for those familiar with Chinese herbs.

Chinese Materia Medica : Chemistry, Pharmacology and Applications
by You-Ping Zhu. The most popular materia medicas on Chinese herbs, by Bensky and by Hsu, for the most part leave out details of scientific research. This book fills that gap in the current english language literature on Chinese herbs. Zhu offers extensive details on in vitro research, and, when available, human clinical trials for all the major herbs in use in China today, as well as a brief overview of traditional use.

Healing Herbs of the Upper Rio Grande: Traditional Medicine of the Southwest by L.S.M. Curtin (revised and edited by Michael Moore).Santa Fe, New Mexico: Western Edge Press, 1997.

Laura Curtin lived and worked among the curanderas and Native Americans of Northern New Mexico during the early part of the twentieth century. She fell in love with the plants and their lore, and  later, at the prompting of a friend, decided to record them. Healing Herbs was first published in 1947, at a time when interest in traditional healing in Northern New Mexico was in decline. It helped preserve traditional information for a new generation -- when editor Michael Moore arrived in Santa Fe in the 1960s he found copies of Curtin’s book as a prized possession in many traditional households. The book is unique in the literature of ethnobotany in that it was written essentially by an insider in the tradition, rather than by an observer doing interviews.

Saw Palmetto for Men and Women by David Winston. Pownal, Vermont: Storey Books, 1999

Author David Winston has more than thirty years experience an all aspects of herbalism, including a mastery of medicine making, and studies of Eclectic medical herbalism, traditional Cherokee herbalism, and traditional Chinese medicine. The book covers the uses of Saw Palmetto completely from both traditional uses and scientific research. The traditional uses are much broader than simple treatment for prostatic hyperplasia in males. Winston also describes alternate and related treatments for both men and women.

Herbal Medicine, Healing, and Cancer, by Donald Yance with Arlene Valentine. Lincolnwood, Illinois: Keats, 1999

Donald Yance is unquestionably the contemporary North American herbalist-nutritionist with the most hands-on experience treating cancer. He has practiced for some twenty years in Connecticut, and recently in southern Oregon. We are lucky that he took time from his busy practice to write this book. The book doesn’t give pat protocols for treating cancer, but, like the writings of Eli Jones, the physician-herbalist who wrote the first major work on the treatment of cancer in American Medical history a hundred years ago, Herbal Medicine, Healing, and Cancer offers a mixture of overall healing strategies with extensive herbal and nutritional materia medica.
 
 

Principles and Practice of Phytotherapy: Modern Herbal Medicine. By Simon Mills and Kerry Bone. New York: Churchill Livingstone, 2000

Principles and Practice is designed as a text that would accompany a college-level program in the fundamentals of herbal medicine as practiced in the modern British tradition. The authors are senior educators in that system, Mills in Britain and Bone in Australia. This text has the most scientific orientation the books reviewed here, and could easily meet the standards of a contemporary medical school. Yet it does not slight traditions, and the materia medica sections contain, in addition to an unusually complete scientific review, details of the plants’ traditional uses. The therapeutics sections reflect traditional approaches rather than single-bullet modern scientific herbalism. The authors collective experience provides balance in the interpretation of the science and the relative importance of hypothetical aspects of toxicology and potential adverse effects.

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