Overlap Between Homeopathy and Herbalism

[liveonearth]

The speaker for Botanical Medicine III today was Deborah Frances. Several times she recommended a Materia Medica written by Boericke. I just looked it up on amazon and found that it is a homeopathic materia medica. She studies it to know specific indications for herbs, in order to make more carefully customized formulas. When she makes tinctures, sometimes she will combine herbal and homeopathic methods in this way: first she makes a tincture for her patient with sufficient amounts of the herb to work in the herbal biochemical way. Then she serially dilutes and succusses a few drops of the tincture until it is potentized in the homeopathic way, and adds a few drops of the potentized mixture back into the original tincture. Viola! Both herbal and homeopathic medicine in one vial. Very interesting idea. And very interesting that so many herbalists use homeopathic indications for the prescription of herbs. While I am still skeptical about the non-placebo efficacy of homeopathy, I am learning herbs better because they are spoken of so much in both ways.