Write to Sue Evans in Australia and ask her for a pdf of this recent paper, based on her doctoral thesis. Its important.

sue.evans@scu.edu.au

Changing the knowledge base in Western herbal medicine.:

Soc Sci Med. 2008 Oct 25;

Authors: Evans S

The project of modernising Western herbal medicine in order to allow it to be accepted by the public and to contribute to contemporary healthcare is now over two decades old. One aspect of this project involves changes to the ways knowledge about medicinal plants is presented. This paper contrasts the models of Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) and Traditional Knowledge (TK) to illuminate some of the complexities which have arisen consequent to these changes, particularly with regard to the concept of vitalism, the retention or rejection of which may have broad implications for the clinical practice of herbal medicine. Illustrations from two herbals (central texts on the medicinal use of plants) demonstrate the differences between these frameworks in regard to how herbs are understood. Further, a review of articles on herbal therapeutics published in the Australian Journal of Herbal Medicine indicates that practitioners are moving away from TK and towards the use of EBM in their clinical discussions.

PMID: 18952343 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]

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Kevin Kelly, Executive editor of Wired magazine and has a wide ranging personal web site that includes a blog called Cool Tools devoted to gadgets that work. I am a fan of Kelly’s writing and if you are unfamiliar with it go check out his work at kk.org. His Cool Tool blog is here

Cool Tools today mentions The Blender Bottle - a brilliant non electrical device for blending smoothies - for camping, road trips, travel or just home convenience. The protein plus smoothie is a foundation of all patient protocols at our clinic, and the challenge of making these brews on the road is a recurrent complaint. The Blender Bottle is the best answer to date.

The Blender Bottle is a shaker bottle with a free-floating surgical stainless steel wire ball inside. Not unlike a kitchen whisk, the ball moves freely within your drink, breaking up clumps and further mixing the mix as you shake it for a smooth, totally grit- and clump-free serving..

Blender Bottle
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There is little doubt that J M Thurston was the key theoretician of the physiomedical movement. His decisive work was published in 1900 - The Philosophy of Physiomedicalism. Although the Eclectics are often viewed as the progenitors of modern herbal medicine (especially in the US) in fact the physiomedicalists Lyle, Cook and Thurston laid the foundations of modern western herbalism. Thurston was the thinker - and he developed a lucid and coherent critique of the regular (mainstream) medicine if his day which is applicable almost word for word to the modern situation. Although the language of physiomedical therapeutics is arcane at times, (which tends to push people towards the materia medica writings of Cook and Lyle which are relatively accessible) the strength of this text is its philosophical clarity. Where today are the philosophers and theoreticians of Western herbal medicine? For those who might be put off by some of the historically bound language and semantic density of the physiological thinking of the physiomedical therapeutics, the recommended section to start with after the introduction is “Food , Medicine, and Poison“. Brilliant. A direct line connects us to this tradition, especially via Priest and the UK School of Phytotherapy in the 60’s and 70’s.

Thanks to Avi Solomon for the grunt work: the pdf file has been bookmarked with Thurston’s section titles.

Download direct from here, or visit the downloads page of the main herbological site. (2.5 Mb pdf)

Increasing public popularity, increasing numbers of practitioners, increasing professionalization and recognition by the mainstream - the tide is turning in favor of so called “CAM” (a redundant term) or so it would seem. But the vision, the radical content, the big picture is becoming more obscured if anything rather than clarified. We are at a critical time, for many reasons. Time is running out for the planet, and for the species. Non-conventional healthcare can no longer exist in a self satisfied self contained mythological state of CAM - the patient is sick. In the rush towards regulation, recognition and professionalisation the lack of attention to fundamentals threatens to destroy the soul and the essence of healing, reducing our work to a reductionist appendage of a bankrupt system that is the cause of the problem. With the recent passing of Dr “Bill” Mitchell, we are reminded of how few are the thinkers in our movement who express its core principles and push the horizons forward.
Acupuncturist Lonny Jarret, interviewed (intelligently) by Gregg St Clair in the current issue of Acupuncture Today is one of these few. He sees the big picture and has a clear grasp of how the role of consciousness is critical in the transformation process called healing, not simply at the level of understanding identity between the individual and the planetary, but by pinpointing the actual transformation of the consciousness of the practitioner as they key component of a transcendental medical practice that is demanded by the challenge of our times, from theory to the bedside. Read this very cool interview “The Cutting Edge”

A great quote by Lonny Jarrett from this interview:

One of the main qualifications that a practitioner should have to posses to actually be considered a “healer” would be the renunciation of the right to take any more time to heal based on the discovery of, identification with, and absolute conviction in that best part of him or herself that doesn’t need healing because nothing ever happened there. And this is the only place that will afford the absolute perspective so desperately needed to carry the medicine forward out of the flat land, egalitarian value system it now seems mired in. It’s not what a practitioner knows; it’s who he or she is, as evidenced by the degree of integrity actually manifested as living action, that matters most in healing.

An extraordinary set of photographs entitled a Mother’s Journey by accomplished news photographer Renée Byer , currently of the Sacramento Bee has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for feature photography this year.. The series of 20 photographs are described as an “intimate portrayal of a single mother and her young son as he loses his battle with cancer”. I would recommend taking some quiet time to absorb these deeply moving photographs taken of young Derek Maden and his mother Cyndie French during their 11 month journey with his neuroblastoma diagnosis. It is rare for those outside the confines of pediatric oncology to be able to glimpse this world, and these pictures honor not only Derek and Cyndie, but all children and young people with cancer challenge, their families and care givers, and the humbling work of pediatric oncologists.

A simple and eloquent statement in this abstract ( my emphasis added - see below ) should qualify these guys for a Nobel peace prize or equivalent. Free full text on PLos….

Willow Leaves’ Extracts Contain Anti-Tumor Agents Effective against Three Cell Types. El-Shemy HA, Aboul-Enein AM, Aboul-Enein KM, Fujita K: PLoS ONE. 2007;2:e178

Many higher plants contain novel metabolites with antimicrobial and antiviral properties. However, in the developed world almost all clinically used chemotherapeutics have been produced by in vitro chemical synthesis. Exceptions, like taxol and vincristine, were structurally complex metabolites that were difficult to synthesize in vitro. Many non-natural, synthetic drugs cause severe side effects that were not acceptable except as treatments of last resort for terminal diseases such as cancer. The metabolites discovered in medicinal plants may avoid the side effect of synthetic drugs, because they must accumulate within living cells. (DUH!! YEAH!!) The aim here was to test an aqueous extract from the young developing leaves of willow (Salix safsaf, Salicaceae) trees for activity against human carcinoma cells in vivo and in vitro. In vivo Ehrlich Ascites Carcinoma Cells (EACC) were injected into the intraperitoneal cavity of mice. The willow extract was fed via stomach tube. The (EACC) derived tumor growth was reduced by the willow extract and death was delayed (for 35 days). In vitro the willow extract could kill the majority (75%-80%) of abnormal cells among primary cells harvested from seven patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and 13 with AML (acute myeloid leukemia). DNA fragmentation patterns within treated cells inferred targeted cell death by apoptosis had occurred. The metabolites within the willow extract may act as tumor inhibitors that promote apoptosis, cause DNA damage, and affect cell membranes and/or denature proteins.

PMID: 17264881 [PubMed - in process]

In an unbelievably tragic turn of events, Bill Mitchell, co-founder of Bastyr University, died suddenly two days ago only hours after his eldest son also suddenly passed away. Both died from heart attacks. Bill was a friend, mentor and confidante for me, and the world of plant medicine is never going to be the same.

Om mane padme hum.

“We have a fundamental rule for the Integral Approach, which is: when a knowledge discipline makes claims about its own discipline, listen to it. When it makes claims about other disciplines, don’t.”

Ken Wilber, Integral Institute, 2007

Michael Moore, elder, herbalist, teacher, founder and Director of the South West School of Botanical Medicine, author of many books and a monster web site resource of classical texts, plant images and more is recovering from a serious illness. An appeal for funds to help with medical expenses has been set up, check out the following site and/or pdf file

Appeal web page:

Appeal pdf download

In September at the Breitenbush Herbal Conference in Oregon, and again in October at the American Herbalist Guild Symposium in Boulder I gave a presentation on Bach’s discovery of the English Flower remedies.

The approach was a little unusual in focusing on Bach’s own process, and developed its argument based upon close textual readings of Bach’s own writings. I suggested that Bach’s system transcended the medical model, and that the remedies are transformational tools in the vajryana buddhist sense, and arguably Bach was the most spiritually developed healer of the 20th Century, more a mystic than a medicine man.

A slide shown in Keynote by Apple (made famous by Al Gore) was appreciated by some audience participants. This requested upload is an MPEG movie of the keynote slides but without audio. You can get the audio from Living Tree, or else it will be posted here as soon as I get my grubby hands on the MP3 file. That file will be podcasted - this one is a straight download from the link below. I did an iPod optimized version (smaller file) but on my 80g video iPod it was illegible - so this is a big video file - 41 Mb - be warned, but at least it shows the nifty Keynote builds and transitions.

fast broadband best for download….
Bach Keynote Movie