western herbs

[Guest guest]

Since it always has to start somewhere, I support the enterprise of

integrating western herbs into chinese materia medica, however several

things come to mind

 

1. It is certainly NOT the position of TCM that herbs grown locally are

better. The chinese materia medica includes herbs grown all over asia.

myrrh comes from the arab lands originally, for example.

 

2. chinese medicine is about formulae as much as it is about single

herbs, if not moreso. I can't see any way of replacing the known

complex effects of chinese formulae without either massive studies or

centuries of experience.

 

And even then, formulae from the SHL and jin gui would still be used

despite any " advances " . These formulae remain popular in china despite

centuries of attempting to improve upon them.

 

No individual has the authority to make any proclamations aout herb

properties, but everyone has a right to their thoughts on the matter.

It is clear, as craig states, there is no unanimity on this subject even

for the chinese herbs like ginseng (is it heat clearing or warming?).

 

It seems from my limited reading of classics that the properties of

herbs were understood first pragmatically, then theoretically. No one

sat down and just assigned qualities to herbs based upon any preordained

scheme until the sung period and this work was extremely contrived

stuff.

 

So I support the enterprise, but with the caveat that it comes from

experience, not speculation. While holmes, frawley, flaws, julian

scott, subhuti dharmananda and of course tierra have provided much

valuable consideration to these issues, they are in frequent

disagreement with each other and I believe the majority of their work is

speculative, not expereience based.