Guest guest Posted May 27, 2009 Report Share Posted May 27, 2009 Eric and Michael, I just checked MMIII (Bensky / Clavey), and they parse out this issue (p.613). I wonder what English books Michael is referring to? Anyway, the MMIII lists the major plants in which herbs come from. They also state that jiang huang (Curcumae longae Rhizoma) can come from different source species. - On Behalf Of Eric Brand Wednesday, May 27, 2009 1:36 AM Re: fu zi and other TCM ambiguities <%40> , mtierra wrote: > > I second Thomas's comments. Western herbalists are so far ahead of Chinese > herbalists in regard for their appreciation of plants. Dear Michael, I basically agree with you and Thomas that most Western herbalists have more knowledge about botany and live plants than many TCM herbalists. However, I think that there are many major differences that influence this issue. Chinese medicine is relatively " departmentalized " relative to Western herbalism. There are doctors prescribing the herbs, there are pharmacists who need to have a thorough knowledge of the crude drugs and their processing, and there are people who grow and wildcraft the herbs in nature. Are these people all " herbalists? " Certainly they have different appreciations of plants from one another, or rather, they appreciate different parts of plants. In the West, herbal medicine has had a long but broken history, and it seldom had the diversity of trade and academic development that Chinese herbal medicine enjoyed. While people in all parts of the world often appreciate those plants that are in their immediate environment, only a small fraction of the commonly-used ingredients in Chinese medicine could be grown or crafted in a single area. An elaborate trade in these products developed, and specialists in the dried crude drugs emerged in addition to specialists in the live plants in each region where the item originally came from. The Western herbalist must be the doctor and the pharmacist, and he or she often gathers the herbs in nature themselves. The Chinese herbalist can be simply a doctor that knows how to use the medicine, they don't need to understand botany or even herbal pharmacy. Of course, the more one knows, the better, but comparing a TCM doctor to a plant specialist is like comparing a biomedical doctor to a chemist. Certainly Western doctors know more about chemistry than the average TCM doctor knows about botany, but neither is really an expert in the other field. Or needs to be. That said, I do love plants and I think it is a shame that most TCM practitioners don't know more about botany or herbal pharmacy. If there is anything that we should learn first and foremost, it is herbal pharmacy, but nearly all TCM schools in the West lack even a single course in the discipline. Interestingly, the first class that my adviser told me that I will take during my PhD study will be Chinese herbal botany. My teacher in Hong Kong wildcrafts herbs from throughout the world and certainly has the same appreciation of plants that my undergrad horticulture teacher had in Boulder. But in Asia, herbal botany, herbal pharmacy, and other courses form entire sub-disciplines within TCM. If the only part of the field that you are looking at is the clinicians, the doctors, then you aren't really paying attention to the part of the field that is really concerned with the plants themselves. > Coming down to that I wonder if anyone has ever mentioned how turmeric are > both listed with the same Latin binomial despite the fact that there are > two distinct species Huang Jiang and Yu Jin. Evidently people who are > translating and writing the materia medica's in English don't know the > difference either. Hey now, be nice. I translated and wrote a materia medica in English, and I know the difference. And my book clearly states the issue of jiang huang vs. yu jin. Jiang huang is the rhizome of Curcuma longa, whereas yu jin is the tuber of several species of Curcuma, including C. longa. Unlike jiang huang, yu jin can also come from several other species (C. wenyujin Y.H. Chen et C. Ling, C. kwangsiensis S.G. Lee et C.F. Liang, C. phaecaulis Val). So they differ in plant part and in their source species. Their Latin pharmaceutical names and source names reflect these differences. There is consensus in the Chinese literature about what plants these items come from. It is not a single plant in the case of yu jin, and multiple plants are considered official according to the Chinese Pharmacopoeia. Eric Brand Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted May 27, 2009 Report Share Posted May 27, 2009 Does anyone else not get Eric's posts on this forum? Wed, 27 May 2009 06:33:38 -0600 Now Curcumin Eric and Michael, I just checked MMIII (Bensky / Clavey), and they parse out this issue (p.613). I wonder what English books Michael is referring to? Anyway, the MMIII lists the major plants in which herbs come from. They also state that jiang huang (Curcumae longae Rhizoma) can come from different source species. - On Behalf Of Eric Brand Wednesday, May 27, 2009 1:36 AM Re: fu zi and other TCM ambiguities <%40> , mtierra wrote: > > I second Thomas's comments. Western herbalists are so far ahead of Chinese > herbalists in regard for their appreciation of plants. Dear Michael, I basically agree with you and Thomas that most Western herbalists have more knowledge about botany and live plants than many TCM herbalists. However, I think that there are many major differences that influence this issue. Chinese medicine is relatively " departmentalized " relative to Western herbalism. There are doctors prescribing the herbs, there are pharmacists who need to have a thorough knowledge of the crude drugs and their processing, and there are people who grow and wildcraft the herbs in nature. Are these people all " herbalists? " Certainly they have different appreciations of plants from one another, or rather, they appreciate different parts of plants. In the West, herbal medicine has had a long but broken history, and it seldom had the diversity of trade and academic development that Chinese herbal medicine enjoyed. While people in all parts of the world often appreciate those plants that are in their immediate environment, only a small fraction of the commonly-used ingredients in Chinese medicine could be grown or crafted in a single area. An elaborate trade in these products developed, and specialists in the dried crude drugs emerged in addition to specialists in the live plants in each region where the item originally came from. The Western herbalist must be the doctor and the pharmacist, and he or she often gathers the herbs in nature themselves. The Chinese herbalist can be simply a doctor that knows how to use the medicine, they don't need to understand botany or even herbal pharmacy. Of course, the more one knows, the better, but comparing a TCM doctor to a plant specialist is like comparing a biomedical doctor to a chemist. Certainly Western doctors know more about chemistry than the average TCM doctor knows about botany, but neither is really an expert in the other field. Or needs to be. That said, I do love plants and I think it is a shame that most TCM practitioners don't know more about botany or herbal pharmacy. If there is anything that we should learn first and foremost, it is herbal pharmacy, but nearly all TCM schools in the West lack even a single course in the discipline. Interestingly, the first class that my adviser told me that I will take during my PhD study will be Chinese herbal botany. My teacher in Hong Kong wildcrafts herbs from throughout the world and certainly has the same appreciation of plants that my undergrad horticulture teacher had in Boulder. But in Asia, herbal botany, herbal pharmacy, and other courses form entire sub-disciplines within TCM. If the only part of the field that you are looking at is the clinicians, the doctors, then you aren't really paying attention to the part of the field that is really concerned with the plants themselves. > Coming down to that I wonder if anyone has ever mentioned how turmeric are > both listed with the same Latin binomial despite the fact that there are > two distinct species Huang Jiang and Yu Jin. Evidently people who are > translating and writing the materia medica's in English don't know the > difference either. Hey now, be nice. I translated and wrote a materia medica in English, and I know the difference. And my book clearly states the issue of jiang huang vs. yu jin. Jiang huang is the rhizome of Curcuma longa, whereas yu jin is the tuber of several species of Curcuma, including C. longa. Unlike jiang huang, yu jin can also come from several other species (C. wenyujin Y.H. Chen et C. Ling, C. kwangsiensis S.G. Lee et C.F. Liang, C. phaecaulis Val). So they differ in plant part and in their source species. Their Latin pharmaceutical names and source names reflect these differences. There is consensus in the Chinese literature about what plants these items come from. It is not a single plant in the case of yu jin, and multiple plants are considered official according to the Chinese Pharmacopoeia. Eric Brand Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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