Advanced Herbal Pharmacy: The Practitioner's Guide to Preparation, Formulation and Compounding

The wait is over for a practitioner-oriented guidebook instructing on efficacious herbal preparation. Drawing heavily upon vintage western pharmacopoeias, Advanced Herbal Pharmacy uncovers and brings forth what was considered common knowledge to turn of the century (19th/20th) pharmacists/chemists; that is, how to prepare effective herbal medicines with efficiency and without overly elaborate equipment. These well-prepared herbal medicines (or rather 'organic drugs') went on to successfully treat a variety of disfunctions, some of which modern medicine struggles with, even to this day.

Dedicated instruction is given to the following preparations: Bath, Capsule, Confection, Douche, Elixir, Emulsion, Enema, Essence, Eyewash, Fluidextract, Fomentation, Glycerite, Medicated Honey, Hydrosol (usage only), Juice, Liniment, Lotion, Lozenge, Mucilage, Essential Oil (usage only), Infused Oil, Ointment, Oleoresin, Oxymel, Plasma, Poultice, Powder, Resin, Salve, Sitz Bath, Solid Extract, Spirit, Suppository, Syrup, Tea, Tincture (Percolation and Maceration), Vinegar, Nasal Wash, Medicated Water, and Medicated Wine.

Also included are percolation and fluidextract worksheets and specific tips/recommendations on various set-ups using lab glassware and cut-glass bottles as percolation cones. The repository lists specific tincture alcohol/water ratios and dosage recommendations for 450+ herbs. The Latin to common name (and reverse) cross-reference maintains 3000+ entries. For the formula-maker, 100+ herbal combinations are presented (with proportions and instructions) as therapeutic examples. Many are custom, arising from the author's decades-long herbal practice, and then others are traditional originating from the older pharmacopoeias.

This is not an entry-level herbal book, nor a Materia Medica. Advanced Herbal Pharmacy is for the practitioner (or enthusiast), who values a sensible, nuts-and-bolts approach and desires to prepare herbal medicines properly. A properly prepared herbal medicine translates to one that is effective (if applied correctly). When the herbal medicine is effective, people get better, the field improves, and the subject evolves.

There was once a time when herbal preparation technique was codified for uniform creation and optimal effectiveness. This era saw pharmacists prepare and doctors dispense a wide array of crude herbs and/or their derivatives as main treatments of the day.

As pharmaceuticals came on the scene and the old was replaced with the new, herbal therapy faded into relative obscurity. Known as the herbal dark ages, this period spanned much of the middle 20th century.

All was not lost though. Just as modern medicine embraced its most steely and isolationist forms, fledgling applications of the herbal past began to emerge anew. Fast-forward 50 years to today. The herbal field has grown, mainly due to the public's desire for non-invasive treatment options. However, there is one prime element that is missing from this resurgence: correct herbal preparation. Thankfully there is no need to reinvent the wheel. Essential herbal preparation has already been fully recorded (and implemented).

Advanced Herbal Pharmacy takes the most herbally-cogent of turn-of-the-century (19th/20th) western 'organic drug' pharmacy, and translates this knowledge into an accessible guidebook for the medical practitioner or advanced enthusiast.

Dedicated instruction is given to the following preparations: Bath, Capsule, Confection, Douche, Elixir, Emulsion, Enema, Essence, Eyewash, Fluidextract, Fomentation, Glycerite, Medicated Honey, Hydrosol (usage only), Juice, Liniment, Lotion, Lozenge, Mucilage, Essential Oil (usage only), Infused Oil, Ointment, Oleoresin, Oxymel, Plasma, Poultice, Powder, Resin, Salve, Sitz Bath, Solid Extract, Spirit, Suppository, Syrup, Tea, Tincture (Percolation and Maceration), Vinegar, Nasal Wash, Medicated Water, & Medicated Wine.

From the Introduction: With Advanced Herbal Pharmacy's use, the practitioner has the ability to not only prepare an herb properly, but most importantly, have an effective herbal medicine that is capable of doing what it should do. This is the crux of practitioner-level herbal medicine. When a preparation becomes optimized, much of the second-guessing that occurs with ill-prepared herbs and therefore a client's poor/non-response, is minimized or eliminated. Through this maximization, if the response is still lacking, it's likely the problem does not reside in the herb's preparation. Forgoing this unknown is one large step closer to consistent and successful practice-based herbal therapy.