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.

So, when writing this book I decided to cut the principles of pharmacology back to the bare minimum to leave a platform from which to present the subject as applicable to the complementary healthcare profession. Although this book can be used as a quick-reference book for a specific subject, if the reader takes time to methodically work through it, then pharmacology in field of herbal medicine, nutrition and orthodox medicine not only becomes clear but also a source of enlightenment. This enlightenment should break down the final resistance to a subject that is not only fascinating but empowering to the practitioner who grasps it with both hands. Taking it on board, it is possible to see that art and science can live side by side, providing you have an open mind.

Having said this pharmacology is not an area of instant comprehension. Like playing a musical instrument, it takes time to build up proficiency. The way the book has been constructed, however, with numerous cross-referencing, should make the process easier.

This book has not been written as a definitive guide to every possible aspect of pharmacology, in fact it might, by those well-versed in the subject, be criticized as too simplistic. I have for example mainly used bibliographies, restricting references to instances where the material is not commonly found in the textbooks available on the subject. It is my experience that in a book of this nature too many references are off-putting.

Any omissions are generally in areas where the items are not normally encountered in clinical practice, e.g. in Chapter 22 ‘Terpenes’, sesterpenes – which are not normally found in plant material – have been left out, as have the more obscure orthodox drugs. I have relied on 20 years of clinical experience to cover the subjects you are mostly likely to need on a daily basis; the final chapter outlines some basic principles on how to investigate a query further.

Pharmacology can be learned by rote, so it is possible to know that flavonoids are antioxidants or that chemotherapy kills cancer cells. However, understanding the underlying principles of pharmacology enables a practitioner to use it intelligently: to see beneath a presenting condition to recognize that it might be a side effect of a drug, or to anticipate a possible interaction of a herb with a drug.

A reasonable grasp of pharmacology is rapidly becoming a necessary skill in the field of complementary medicine as the choice and use of orthodox medications becomes more complex and might possibly impact on the treatment being given.

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