Green Pharmacy: The History and Evolution of Western Herbal Medicine

Absolutely brilliant. Very well written and thoroughly researched, Barbara really brings the colourful and historical characters of medicine to life. You don't need to be interested in herbal medicine, if you enjoy well written, historical books then you won't be disappointed. If you have an interest in how modern and herbal medicine have evolved, then you will be absolutely delighted with this book.

This book is on a list of books I have been asked to buy for a course I am taking on Medical Herbalism. I have started to read it and it is brilliant!

Thoroughly enjoying this book and finding a great resource for a course I am doing

This is an excellent book, it is as easy to read as a novel and way more gripping and fascinating! It is highly entertaining, and very informative, would recommend it to anyone with an interest in herbs and/or an interest in medicine

Enjoyable read. One to keep and re read in the future.

Very good for my master herbalist degree. This book was an expected buy for the master herbalist course I took. It met its requirements and aims for the course.

Anyone who has an interest in the development of medicine, philosophy of healing, or the politics of who is allowed to heal and why, cannot help but be uplifted and angered by this book. Griggs is an excellent writer, and she has given a clear and sobering account of mankind's relationship with medicinal plants from pre-history. She looks at developments of a philosophy of healing, and charts the unfortunate history of conflicts between those who sought to empower their patients, and to demystify healing (often a female tradition) and those who sought to make a lot of money out of 'healing'. This latter group had a vested interest in making 'healing' something which only they could 'do' for someone else, and therefore the methods of healing had to be difficult, rare, costly - and often downright dangerous. She contrasts the philosophy of herbalists such as Nicholas Culpeper, and his use of 'simples' with apothecaries who were using a whole range of far flung exotic substances, often engaged in 'heroic' practices such as bleeding, purging, cupping etc. There is a sobering account of the outlawing of herbal treatment in this country - and of course many many parallels to be drawn between the earlier conflicts between 'wise women/'witch' herbal practitioners and 'educated' professionals with often some pretty newfangled, untried remedies - and the modern conflicts between herbal medicines and the big pharmaceutical giants. Parallels between the use of mercury and arsenic in large (not homeopathic doses) in the 17th/18th century, which often killed the patient, and, for example, unopposed oestrogen being put on the market as the absolute to be desired for menopausal women - and 10-15 years down the line, the link between ORT and endometrial cancer, anyone? Thalidomide? Valium? etc. etc.

This book is an excellent overview of the history of herbal medicine. It is easy to read making it an enjoyable book to just read.

This was my first purchase off Amazon and I was not disappointed! arrived early! And the quality is amazing! Thank you

This book is a must read for every one, not only interested in herbal medicine, but any kind of profession related to medicine. It explains in detail where the aggressiveness and ignorance of todays medicine comes from and it gives a clear understanding of where todays battles with diseases, cure all medicines and the hidden folk medicine emerged from and that we have tampered with the same problems for several hundreds of years. This book finally gives me an understanding of that what seems to be latent in the human persona, is to find that one quick fix and that one miracle drug that immediately cures the problem and that applies to conventional as alternative alike (of course not all). Wonderful reading, I truly enjoyed it and learned tons and this book should be read in the schools. Thank you.

This book should be in every herbalist's library collection, in my opinion of course. It is an easy read, with a bulk of information on herbs and who used them in history, and what they are used for today. As a herbalist, one has to read, study, and engage the mind with vital, and relevant information on herbs and their constituents. This book is a keeper, it gives much history and answers many questions for the herbalist.

This book helped me with a project for school. It appears to be well-researched. Barbara Griggs covers the history of herbal medicine from prehistoric times to the present. Archeological evidence suggests that people used herbs as medicine before we figured how to write down the recipes. She covers multiple cultures, including our contemporary science-supported culture of conventional western healthcare. Griggs respects non-western epistemology and discusses the voluminous evidence (including non-scientific) that supports herbal treatments & therapies. This is a great book for anyone who is passionate about alternative healing.

I received this in the mail yesterday afternoon. I am very excited to learn the history of herbalism and this is but the first step along the way I have high hopes that this will be a great information source and was referred to me by a few teachers. I did get a damaged copy for $2 but its really not as bad as they had made it seem all I need to do is heat the binding to get the cover to stick to the spine of the book.