Search -
Handbook of Medicinal Herbs: Herbal Reference Library
Handbook of Medicinal Herbs Herbal Reference Library Author:James A. Duke A Practical, Authoritative CompendiumThis handbook catalogs 365 species of herbs having medicinal or folk medicinal uses, presenting whatever useful information has been documented on their toxicity and utility in humans and animals. Plants from all over the world - from common cultivars to rare species - are included in these 700 pages. The tox... more »icity of these species varies, but the safety of each has been formally or informally questioned by the Food and Drug Administration, National Cancer Institute, Department of Agriculture, Drug Enforcement Administra-tion, or Herb Trade Association.Easy-to-Locate Facts and FiguresDesigned to enable fast access to important information, this hand-book presents information in both catalog and tabular forms. In the catalog section, plants are presented alphabetically by scientific name. (The index permits you to locate an herb by its common name.) A detailed sketch of the chief identifying features accompa-nies most catalog entries. For each species the following information, as available, is presented and referenced:oFamily and colloquial namesoChemical contentoUses and applications - present and historicaloProcessing, distribution, and economic potentialoToxicological agents and degree of toxicityoPoison symptoms in humans and animalsoTreatment and antidotes oReferences to original literatureFive Tables of Accessible DataGiven a plant species, you can easily determine its toxins; or, given a toxin, you can discover which plants contain it. These and other data are presented in convenient tabular formats as appendixes to the handbook. Other information contained in these tables include toxicity ranking and other toxicity data (as applicable), such as mode of contact, organs affected, and lethal dose; and proximate analyses of selected foods. These tables are titled:oMedicinal Herbs: Toxicity Ranking and PricelistoToxins: Their Toxicity and Distribution in Plant GeneraoHigh Plant Genera and Their ToxinsoPharmacologically Active PhytochemicalsoProximate Analyses of Conventional Plant Foods« less