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Meetings: As
Announced
President: Jessica
Hanson
Advisor: John
Pirog
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Herb Growers/Suppliers:
General Links
Magazines:
Plant Anatomy:
Indigenous Herbalism:
A collection of gardening knowledge,
wit and wisdom:
Resources for Herb and Drug Interactions
Recommended by Michael Smith, MR, Pharm S, ND
John Pirog’s Cool Web Sites:
- Institute for Traditional
Medicine
This is one of the most valuable TCM websites on the internet.
It belongs to the Institute of Traditional Medicine, an
organization run by Sabudhi Dharmananda. Sabudhi is a
pharmacist, and his website contains information that
cannot be found in other English language sources, like
allergic reactions to Chinese herbs. Since the ITM website
also serves to sell several lines of herbs, you need to
take some of the information with a grain of salt. He
also uses the Hong-Yen Hsu nomenclature system for individual
herbs.
- Herbmed
This site is a database containing extensive scientific
research on a very small number of herbs. Useful in that
it is one of the few such websites that is sponsored by
a not-for-profit corporation. This makes the information
much more reliable.
- Women’s
Health Network
This is the only national public interest membership organization
dedicated exclusively to women's health. They do not accept
financial support from pharmaceutical companies, tobacco
companies or medical device manufacturers. Although most
of the information is about general medical issues and
not CAM, I have found it to keep me well-informed about
women’s issues such as estrogen-replacement therapy.
I highly recommend that you subscribe to the newsletter,
which requires a $25.00 membership fee. This is an organization
that natural healers and women’s health advocates
need to support.
- A
Guide to Botanical Nomenclature, A Tennesee Tutorial
This site is referred to as “A Tennessee Tutorial”.
It was written by a professor trying to simplify the rules
of taxonomy for his students.
- Henriette’s
Herbal Homepage
This site contains a wealth of hard-to-find information,
including the British Pharmaceutical Codex, as wall as
reproductions of numerous American and European Materia
Medicae, some quite old.
- Dictionary
of Botanical Epithets
The epithet is the second term in the binomial that identifies
a plant, e.g. “dichotoma” in Stellaria dichotoma.
This website will tell you what “dichotoma”
actually means in Latin or Greek. It’s based on
a list of American and Alpine plants, but a lot of epithets
get re-used around the world, so you can still find a
lot of the epithets used in Chinese herb names.
- Glossary
of Roots of Botanical Names
This is another website that helps you interpret the meaning
of Latin plant names. Unlike the previous website, it
is not restricted to epithets, but includes genera as
well.
- UW-Madison
Department of Botany, Instructional Technology
This is a great website that allows you to trace out the
phylogenic trees of various plants. It even contains sample
photos. If you want to understand plant taxonomy, spend
some time on this website.
- NatureServe
Explorer, An Online Encyclopedia of Life
NatureServe collects information on American wildlife
for conservationists. Although it doesn’t contain
any Chinese herbs (except the ones that have become naturalized
here), I like it because it provides the phylogenic tree
for a given plant, allowing you to determine which order
and phylum it belongs to.
- Herb Research
Foundation
The Herb Research Foundation is “the world's first
and foremost source of accurate, science-based information
on the health benefits and safety of herbs---and expertise
in sustainable botanical resource development.”
Although their real focus is on Western Herbs, not Chinese,
you should still check this website regularly to stay
abreast of developments in the field.
- Herbasin
This is a German-China supplier of bulk herbs that has
a superb data base of Chinese herbs, including Latin,
English and Pinyin cross references. It also contains
details about processing and growing not found in other
sources.
- List
of Animal Species used in Traditional Medicine
This is a very useful and seemingly comprehensive list
of all the animal products used in TCM. It’s a Word
document so you can download it.
- International
Code of Botanical Nomenclature
This is the full text of the International Code of Botanical
Nomenclature, which is dictates the rules for naming plants.
- Dr. Duke’s
Phytochemical and Ethnobotanical Databases
This is Dr. David Duke's Phytochemical and Ethnobotanical
Databases. Although the data is somewhat limited, it might
prove helpful in looking up specific chemicals.
- National
Gardening Association
The National Gardening Association plant name finder lets
you to cross reference between a common name and scientific
name for a plant. Although there are 10,000 plants in
the index, my guess is that they are mostly Western.
- Basic
Principles of Nomenclature
This is an Adobe file that some botany professor put together
for his class. It’s about the” Basic Principles
of Nomenclature”, and it includes a simplified survey
of the main rules used in Botany and Zoology.
- Survey
of the Botanical Phyla
Another college course web page, which lets you navigate
through the different botanical phyla.
- Pub Med,
National Library of Medicine
You can use this site to look up herb-drug interactions.
In the search box, type in:
[name of drug], herb-drug interactions
- International
Plant Names Index
This is the definitive site for looking up plant names,
authorities, and synonyms. It’s the only source
I’m aware of that lets you find out the actual name
of an abbreviated authority attached to a binomial such
as Alpinia oxyphylla Miq..
- Sun
Ten Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd.
This is the website for Sun Ten industries. If you encounter
one of the Hong Yen Hsu names in any of your readings,
you can try looking it up in this website to find a more
conventional equivalent.
- World
Health Organization, Essential Drugs and Medicines Policy
The World Health Organization website contains a wealth
of information of traditional medicine, including herbal
medicine. This hyperlink will take you to a series of
monographs on individual herbs; the monograph on Ephedra
is particularly important. You should navigate through
the rest of the WHO website to check out the other stuff
they have available, including very useful statistics
about world use of herbal medicine, acupuncture, and so
on.
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