ABSTRACT
Herbalists use whole plants, and traditional physicians use purified ingredients derived from plants.
The reason that
herbalists
and physicians use different terminology, and the reason that most herbal medicine books are of little use to the physician confronted with a desperately ill patient, is that herbalists and traditional physicians think about diseases (and the medicines used to treat them) differently. Of course, many of the drugs first used in modern medicine are extracted from plants. But herbalists use whole plants, and traditional physicians use purified ingredients derived from plants. Traditional physicians and scientists generally believe that, if a plant has any medicinal value at all, it is because different components of the plant act synergistically (Cupp, 2000).
