How to use MedicineTraditions

A quick crash course in how to get the most from MedicineTraditions.

MedicineTraditions has become huge ... so huge, its difficult to know where to start! So here are a few pointers:


1. STUDY A HERB
If you're studying a herb or other traditional medicine, most likely you'll find a monograph on that medicine. Many Monographs have both a free and paid (subscription) version. The free version has reduced content, and links to formulas won't work. The full version, available with subscription, will have far greater detail, with a number of herbal combinations, and active links to formulas containing the medicine.

You may also want to do a site search for the medicine to see if there are other pages, articles, illustrations etc. related to the medicine.

The monograph will contain knowledge from the various medicine traditions that used the medicine. So for example, you may discover that Licorice has been used for Cough and Lung conditions in the European tradition, Unani, Ayurveda, Tibetan and Chinese Medicines, and then be able to see how these different traditions combined it with other herbs.


2. STUDY COMBINATIONS AND FORMULAS
You can't become a good herbalist without understanding how to combine a medicine with other medicines. And with herbal medicine, you really need to study traditional formulas to fully appreciate this. All the Traditions, from Unani and Tibetan Medicine to Ayurveda and TCM, study traditional formulas as a necessary part of learning herbal medicine.

MedicineTraditions takes this a step further by giving you access to formulas from multiple systems, so you can really explore how different masters from different systems have used and combined medicines to achieve better results.

Sadly, it is evident that very few modern western herbalists know how to write a good formula, when compared to the formulas of the masters. Treating Asthma with a combination of 4 herbs that have been shown in modern research to have some benefit in that disease is simply not good practice, but the standards of Traditional Medicine. What about the root cause? Is there heat, cold, excess phlegm, or Lung weakness? Each of these pathologies require different treatment and different formulas.


3. EXPANDING YOUR ARSENAL
All of us who have studied Traditional Medicine have a large number of traditional formulas at our disposal. But no system is perfect, and all physicians have cases that don't respond to standard treatment.

This is when it's good to have other options.

In many instances, a formula from another system might take a radically different approach, being unlike any formula you have studied, yet composed primarily of herbs you are familiar with!

1000 years ago, Arab physicians were found in most large Chinese cities, and were noted to treat diseases that the local doctors couldn't. Today, in Sichuan, West China, locals often try Tibetan Medicine when TCM has failed. Why? Is it because Unani and Tibetan Medicine are better than TCM? Certainly not. It's simply because they use different strategies with different formulas.

In reality, their cure rate is probably no better or worse than that of TCM. It's just that when the tactics of one methodology haven't succeeded, it's possible another way may work.

And that's what you get with MedicineTraditions. An almost endless and ever-increasing arsenal of combinations and formulas, written by some of the greatest masters in the history of medicine, for treating some of the most stubborn and difficult cases to affect humanity.