Introduction

Published on 23/06/2015 by admin

Filed under Complementary Medicine

Last modified 23/06/2015

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Chapter 1 Introduction

This book has probably been in the making for at least 20 years. At Chiropractic College, I was forced to wade through enormous tomes on orthodox pharmacology in order to weed out those drugs relevant to my professional needs from the more obscure ones whose use was limited to the highly supervised environment of a hospital.

As a herbalist, my frustration only grew further as I found that the chemistry associated with the therapeutic use of herbs was presented in an equally technical manner, and seemly divorced from my clinical needs. Although these kinds of book are excellent as reference tools, for overloaded students or busy practitioners there is simply too much material to be sifted through in the time they might have available. Another problem can arise from the books’ authors being experts on the subject but usually not clinicians. This tends to make the material difficult to relate to everyday clinical practice.

Things finally came to a head for me when I was asked to teach pharmacology to herbal students, which made me actively address a subject that is considered by most students to be nothing more than a ‘hoop-jumping’ exercise in the process of becoming qualified. This made me seek a way of making pharmacology meaningful. To this end, I decided to teach pharmacology from the ground up, giving basic principles on which the students could build and relate to their clinical experiences.

Overcoming a natural resistance to the subject, however, is difficult on the grounds that pharmacology is perceived by students and practitioners as subject only accessible to those with a scientific frame of mind. On a workable clinical level this is simply not true.

I was certainly not the most adept scientist at school and found my university course a trial. I realized later that this was because my subject was being presented from a purely academic viewpoint, with little reference to its application in the real world. I need – like many other complementary practitioners when presented with pure science – my work to be linked to the information presented if it is to be meaningful.

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