A New Integrated System
Jeremy Ross is at the forefront of
development of a new integrated system that incorporate
western herbal tradition, Chinese medicine, and modern pharmacological
and clinal research.
This unique integration provides a new level of
understanding that can resolve many of the difficulties
and controversies of the past. It can give a broader and deeper
understanding of the individual herbs, enabling more sophisticated
herb combinations that are both safer and more effective.
 Why
use Western Herbs?
Western herbs represent a treasure-trove of effective
traditional medicines and the collected and refined experience
of practitioners for over 2000 years.
For people living in the Western world they have advantages
over herbs from other areas. They are more readily available,
and it is often easier to control their quality and hence
their effectiveness and safety.
Also, to quote Julian Scott, since they grow here in the West:
“This means that the plants can be studied at first
hand: the way they grow; their preferred habitat; and the
effect of climate on their therapeutic effectiveness. All
can be observed through the changes of the seasons, often
in the wild within a few miles of where one lives. They can
be gathered in the wild or grown in the garden. All this helps
to deepen one's understanding of the nature and action of
a herb.”
Western
Herbs and Chinese Medicine:
The Best of Both Worlds
The main problem in the practice of Western herbal
medicine has been the lack of a system of theoretical principles
for choosing herbs and for creating a balanced herb combination.
The Galenic theory system has not been in use for two centuries,
and attempts to explain herb choice in terms of either Physiomedicalism
or conventional Western medicine have not been wholly satisfactory.
Using Western herbs according to the theoretical principles
of Chinese medicine has been seen by many as the most effective
way of building balanced formulas of Western herbs. There
has been a great upwelling of interest in this system in the
West, among practitioners of both Western and Chinese herbal
medicine.
A
New Integrated System
However, just to apply the principles of Chinese
medicine to Western herbs is to ignore the 2000-year tradition
of herbal theory in the West. It also ignores the
enormous development of pharmacological theory and research,
and the large accumulation of clinical research data.
This website presents a new integrated system for the principles
of herb combination incorporating theoretical principles and
empirical knowledge from:
• Western herbal tradition
• traditional Chinese medicine
• modern pharmacological and clinical research
This new system is developed in Jeremy’s ground-breaking
text Combining Western Herbs and Chinese Medicine, and in
his workshops.
Note:
In this website, and in Jeremy’s books
and seminars, the phrase Combining Western Herbs and Chinese
Medicine is used as shorthand to indicate the new system combining
the three paradigms.
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