Registration, tea/coffee 9:30am

 

10:00am-5:00pm:

 

Organ-specific Materia Medica and drop dosing (Day II)

 

In taking a case it is best to determine, (1) tissue states, (2) organ location, and (3) specific indication.  This is the age old method – See The Key to Galen’s Method of Physick,1652, by Nicholas Culpeper.  Plants have powerful organ-affinities and act on functional spheres of activity associated with organs and systems.  Oganizing one’s knowledge of plants according to their organ-affinity is a good memory device that prepares one very well for sitting down and taking a case history.  A look at herbs through the lens of tradition, history, energetics, clinical experience (personal and historical), and pharmacology.

 

In this case we will review how to take a comprehensive, holistic case history.  We look for taking a case it is best to determine, (1) the energetics or tissue states, (2) the location in the tissue, organ, or system, and (3) specific indication.  This is the age old method – See The Key to Galen’s Method of Physick, 1652, by Nicholas Culpeper.  Plants have powerful organ-affinities and act on functional spheres of activity associated with organs and systems. 

Energetics actually reflects pharmacology.  Cooling remedies are generally fruits and watery plants that we naturally take to cool off in the hot summer.  This includes flavonal glycosides (rose hips, hawthorn, elderberry), cyanogenic glycosides (peach leaf, wild cherry bark), citral volative oils (lemons, limes, lemon balm), narcotic sweet sedatives (poppy, linden), cooling faux fruits (rhubarb, curly dock root, watermelon), and stimulants that open the capillaries (yarrow, lavender, echinacea).  Warming medicines are almost entirely those rich in volatile oils, hence pungent in taste, or containing resins and pine oils (rosemary, thyme, sage, oregano, zatar, cabbage, shepherds’ purse, pine, cedar, spruce, hemlock spruce, arnica, goldenrod, gravel root, etc.)  And so with the other categories: damp stagnation (treated by alteratives, mostly bitters), dry (treated with moistening agents, mucilages, emollients, sweet tonics, carminatives, dietary oils, foods), tense (acrid relaxants) and relaxation (astringents, mineralizing tonics).  The bitters act mostly on damp and dry.  A knowledge of taste acts as an “inner repertory,” that is, an index for selecting plants that are suited to different combinations of imbalance.    

Plants also have organ-affinities, some of them well known.  We have remedies for the heart and circulation (hawthorn, cayenne, rosemary, yarrow, wild cherry bark, angelica), liver and gallbladder (iris, dandelion, burdock, curly dock, celandine), mucosa and lungs (marshmallow, slippery elm, comfrey, anise seed, star anise, goldenrod, elecampane, white hoarhound, coltsfoot, mullein), upper and lower GI (too numerous), kidneys (nettles, goldenrod, gravel root, pipsissewa, watermelon).  Organizing one’s knowledge of plants according to their organ-affinity is a good memory device that prepares one very well for sitting down and taking a case history.  We will talk about the organ systems that the majority of the class would most like to hear about. 

Specific indications tie down the herb very exactly to observable pathological signs and symptoms (not to disease names per se).  For instance, hawthorn has red on the checky parts of the palms, showing capillary engorgement, wild cherry bark has the same plus a yellowish complexion (very valuable in hot climates), watermelon has congested kidneys in hot weather, chimaphila has chronic congestion of lymph and kidneys.

We also want to examine how herbs work, particularly in small doses.  These can be very effective without as many side-effects or environmental stress on plant populations.  Most herbal actions cannot be explained by scientific models, since it is not apparent how the secondary metabolite (medicinal substance) gets into the body and operates therein.  However, there are general principles of pharmacology that explain broad behavior of poisons, drugs, herbs, foods, and homeopathics.  These are called the regulatory effect, reverse effect, and rebound effect.  Various hormones, essential fatty acids, salts and minerals have a regulatory effect in small doses but a poisonous effect in large ones.  Foods have no effect in small doses, but a regulatory effect, so to speak, in large ones.  In excess they too are destructive.  The reverse effector hormesis shows opposite effects in large and small doses.  This is highly unpredictable.  It was formerly thought that homeopathy worked according to this method, but it is now recognized that it works according to the rebound effect.  Hormesis confers immunological tolerance to toxins over time – it was the method used by King Mithridates.  Examples in herbalism would be valerian and lobelia, slight dose changes causing opposite reactions.  The rebound effect is based on the fact that a stressor or poison entering the symptom causes an initial set of symptoms as it distunes the self-regulatory system, then, as self-regulation is re-established an opposite set of symptoms is produced by the body.  These opposites are generated by time not dosage.  They are called the primary and secondary symptoms in homeopathy.  Homeopathic remedies work by stimulating both responses.  Conventional drugs force a symptom profile that suppressed undesirable symptoms by maintaining the primary symptom.  This is also how an addictive substance works: it maintains the primary symptom as long as it is taken; when it is discontinued a detoxification set of opposing symptoms occur.  The secondary metabolites in nontoxic herbs are not strong enough to force a permanent primary symptom; instead they work by producing a mild primary and secondary response.  Thus, herbs cure gently and also can normalizer between two opposite states.  Also, they do not produce good homeopathic provings because are not very toxic.  Some herbs work by the regulatory effect, some by reverse effect, but most by the rebound effect.  Some toxins like Podophyllum produce a drug-like primary effect in a large dose, but a gentler healing effect in a small dose – severe evacuation of the bile versus gallbladder regulation.    

   

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All participants will receive notebook, pen for note-taking and other bonus items in their delegate bag. Door prizes, tastings and much more.

Access to MP3 OR MP4 recording TBA

 

Delicious, healthy & organic morning and afternoon teas and bottled Hepburn Springs Natural Mineral Water provided at all 2-day workshops. Lunch is available from local cafes or bring your own and enjoy eating within CERES’ Environmental Park. Car parking and public transport also available.

 

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(NHAA 2 CPE points per hour

ANTA 1 CPE point per hour

ATMS 1 CPE point per 2 hours)