Herbal Medicines

This new edition of a most successful text has been extended and revised such that its size is roughly doubled. It now contains 148 monographs of medicinal plants. Each monograph follows a standard, albeit not consistent, structure and is extensively referenced, including most of the relevant recent publications. The information provided in this book is concise and useful, particularly for pharmacists. Several limitations should, nevertheless, be noted. An explanation is missing as to what degree the research for this book was or was not systematic. A critical evaluation of the primary data would have been valuable. This is particularly important for clinical trials of herbal medicines, which are often methodologically weak. The authors of this book make no real attempt to distinguish between a rigorous and a seriously flawed study and many readers might find this slightly misleading. Another drawback is the fact that the book is not consistent. For example, the section on ‘clinical studies’ is included in some but not all monographs, and sometimes the authors only state that no clinical trials are available. Inconsistency of this type and degree is confusing to say the least. Often, the results of clinical studies of highly dubious quality are mentioned without any critical assessment. In other cases, important clinical trials or systematic reviews are not mentioned at all. Most importantly perhaps, no clinical judgements are provided that could guide therapeutic decisions. Despite these limitations, this book is a reasonably good reference text for pharmacists and other healthcare professionals with an interest in herbal medicine.