VITALISM brought on the acute pancreatitis in that patient in the first place then I just go back to crude herbs and decoctions and infusions and all of that and got just as good an outcome . I was surprised to be quite honest . That baseline concept is that we need to constantly have this discussion about things like vital force , about things like the therapeutic order in clinical discussions , because there are times when it is completely appropriate to treat the patient like that . You might not have scientific literature that I found afterwards really that showed the use of herbal medicine for an acute medical condition like that . This is just one of those things where going back to establishing the conditions for health and supporting and tonifying the weakened system is what helped alleviate the symptoms . As a community of professionals , we need to move back . I don ’ t mean we need to take large steps back but we need to seek balance in all things . However , we ’ re not balanced as a profession at this point . In our absolute driving love of science , we forget our philosophy and I think we need to come back to it .
Andrew . We ’ re not talking practising like a Druid but embracing the past while embracing the future as well . The manufacture of herbal medicines – should we indeed be paying a lot more attention to the traditional ways that herbal medicines were manufactured . The specific example here is kava . You spoke about ephedra . The second one , and I ’ ll give a shout out to Dennis Stewart and Paul Keogh who saved me basically from the pit of only single standardisation , which is too pharmacological for me now , and Dennis Stewart is famed for saying ‘ a good red wine is not chosen because of it ’ s levels of resveratrol ’. Perhaps we need to look into multiple assays of chemical constituents , other than thinking that one thing is an active .
REFERENCES
1 . Finnell JS , Snider P , Myers SP , Zeff J . A Hierarchy of Healing : Origins of the Therapeutic Order and Implications for Research . Integr Med ( Encinitas ). 2019 Jun ; 18 ( 3 ): 54 – 59 .
2 . Evans S . Changing the knowledge base in Western herbal medicine . Soc Sci Med . 2008 Dec ; 67 ( 12 ): 2098-106 . doi : 10.1016 / j .
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