ABSTRACT
In recent years herbal medicines and other forms of complementary or alternative medicine (CAM) are being chosen with increasing frequency in Western countries (1, 2). Conversely, in many parts of developing countries, traditional medicines may be the only form of health care readily available or affordable to the majority of the population. Chinese herbal medicine (CHM) is a major component of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), which has a history in China of several thousand years and is a highly developed, welldocumented system with its own theoretical background. Neighboring countries, such as Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and Taiwan, have developed their own variants of TCM and TCM is readily available throughout the world in Chinese communities and is now also used by many other ethnic groups.
