Herbal Formularies for Health Professionals, Volume 4: Neurology, Psychiatry, and Pain Management, including Cognitive and Neurologic Conditions and Emotional Conditions

I could go on and on about the abundant clinical treasures in this book.Instead, I will focus on just one:The chapter on Pain is 65 pages long.As someone who has been studying, practicing and teaching herbal medicine for 25+ years, this is the most extensive, in-depth reference on ths topic in the herb community.This title is a must-have for the serious herbalist/healer.There will probably be someone who complains the book is too complicated or doesn't explain things in enough detail.This book is more for intermediate-advanced herbalists who have a solid knowledge base and are willing to be pushed out of their comfort zone.If you are newer to the herb community and looking for a good reference, anything by Rosemary Gladstar is recommended.If you are willing to spend some serious time learning how to work with some of the deeper health issues facing the modern world, Volume 4 by Dr. Stansbury belongs on your bookshelf.

Lovely text! Everything I was looking for as an herbal practitioner. If you are a beginner, I would suggest other texts though. Some of the preparations are more advanced.Note: as of September 4, 2021, Amazon advertised this book as hardcover but softcover was shipped to me. If that's important to you, you may look to the publisher for an actual hardcover book.

One of the things that has become common among more "professional" holistic practitioners has been to strive to be objective, to justify the use of herbs by citing studies and literature reviews, explaining mechanisms of action through phytochemistry, and using the models of evidence based medicine. There is obviously merit here, but too often I have seen this done at the expense of the practitioner's own experience and wisdom: in the attempt to be objective, they leave themselves and their valuable experiences using plants with people out (after all, we don't value "anecdoctal" evidence as "experience based medicine", an equal to "evidence based medicine").Not so with Jill Stansbury, whose understanding of plant constituents and pathophysiology is more than matched by her deep knowledge of plants, and how herbalism works. In this 4th volume of her Formulary, Jill explores the complex interactions of our cognitive and emotional experience, as well as how these interact with pain. As have the other volumes, this work offers a divers array of potential base formulas, with context given for personalization. It is exactly what we want in a resource: the culmination of decades of clinical experience shared by a gifted practitioner who really knows her herbs.

This is probably the gold standard and herbal text.

this is a must have for all herbalists

This book presents lots of very nice formulas, but with many plants that are not readily available. And since there is no explanations on the purpose of each plant in the formula, it is a lot of work/study (or investment$) to make a substitution. The autor does present a simple monograph for plants, which can be helpful since some of them are not in the materia medica of common traditions. Also, she never gives the concentration for the tinctures used in the formula. Not too bad for common plants, but she suggests highly toxic material (belladona, amanita, aconit, etc.) and she never gives hints on the preparation of those plants. It's not something you can buy everywhere, and slight changes in concentration can be highly damageable. On the good side, the explanations about diseases are very interresting. But, I won't buy the other ones of the serie. Too bad.