forward: Ancient Herbs and Modern Herbs

Ancient Herbs and Modern Herbs: A Comprehensive Reference Guide
to Medicinal Herbs, Human Ailments and Possible Herbal Remedies
by James Kedzie Sayre.

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Herbs have been used by people for culinary, medicinal and dye purposes for thousands of years. New uses of old herbs are being discovered each year. This book has been a personal response of the author to the veritable renaissance in the uses of herbs for health and medicinal purposes in the 1990s in United States.

Part of this growth in self-medication is due to the collapse of the traditional corporate-funded health care programs and their replacement by the now ubiquitous Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs). These HMOs, which are a uniquely American for-profit form of health insurance and health care, were devised by the medical and insurance industries as a response to the climbing costs of health care. They are a stop-gap measure designed to prevent the imposition of national, government-funded and government-run health insurance programs.

With the rise of the Internet and the World Wide Web, information and misinformation about herbs and their medical uses is multiplying rapidly. Europeans have a long written history of using herbs for medicinal purposes. Some of the Asian cultures, especially the Chinese, Tibetan and Indian (Ayurvedic) also have even longer written histories of their culture's use of herbs as medicines.

The term herb itself has gone through an evolution over time, and is used here to describe any plant material that is used in a culinary, medical, or health fashion, as well as those used as sources of dyes. This broad view is closer to the original meaning of herb's Latin root, herba, grass, greencrops, herbage, herb, To that large list of plants, I have taken the liberty of adding some of the more common poisonous plants which a resident of North America may encounter in a garden, in the wild or in the form of a house plant. These are identified by the statement that they have no widely known medicinal or culinary value. They are also identified by the Note: POISONOUS.

In part of this renaissance of herbs and plants, there is a prejudice in favor of the "natural" as opposed to the "man-made" or synthetic. This book is a note of caution, for there are many natural plant materials which are quite toxic if ingested.

Questions? Comments? Suggestions? Please feel free to Email the author at sayresayre@yahoo;com. sayresayre@yahoo.com

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Contact author James K. Sayre at sayresayre@yahoo.com. sayresayre@yahoo.com

Web page last updated on 14 May 2003.