Medical Herbalism

Traditional medical herbalism around the world uses thousands of substances as medicinal herbs. Some of them are not herbs at all. In Chinese herbal medicine, for example, mineral and animal products have been used for centuries, even millenia. I will include some substances which are not exactly herbs here; but I will not discuss any products made from endangered animal species. (Unfortunately, some products traditionally used in herbal medicine required killing animals; I do not wish to encourage using these substances.)

The exact number of medicinal herbs used around the world is unknown. Some Chinese medical texts claim that 7000-10,000 different substances are used in TCM (TCM is an abbreviation for Traditional Chinese Medicine.) There are many other traditional medical herbal systems, with many herbs not necessarily found in TCM. Scientists are living with native people around the globe learning about different, little known, herbal medicines.

The number of plants in the South American rain forests that have been catalogued is much smaller than the number of unkown species. New information is added to the store of herbal knowledge every year.

This website will not be an exhaustive catalog of all the medicinal herbs used around the world, I would not likely live long enough to add all the information which currently exists, even if I live well into my hundreds, let alone all of the growing amount of information.

My goal with this website is to offer what I consider to be the most important medical herbs from whatever tradition, based on my experience and study. I will also add any new information I learn which I think will benefit my readers. (I still continue to study, and read many books, magazines and journals every month.)

I will add links here as I add articles about specific herbs to make it easier to find the information.