The Herbal Medicine-Maker's Handbook_ A Home Manual - James Green [170]
PILLS
Pills are globular dosages designed for oral administration. They are prepared by incorporating an herb with other material in such a proportion that a cohesive mass is formed and this in turn is molded into a desired shape. For the past several hundred years pills occupied a place of major importance in pharmacy. The word “pill” was nearly synonymous with doctor and disease; and why not, with the very root of the word and the main mass of its spelling being the word “ill.” But not all that long after the horse was replaced by the automobile and passion was replaced by TV, the pill started being replaced by the capsule. Most of what remains in popular use today to honor the tradition of this medical champion is The Pill, which of course continues to reign as an undisputed superstar in bedroom pharmacy. Making pills that have any aesthetic appeal whatsoever and won’t quickly dry out and harden to the point where they will no longer disintegrate in the alimentary tract, requires considerable time, labor, and technical skill. Many of the advantages in administering herbal doses that the pill once possessed such as smallness of bulk with consequent ease of administration, concealment of taste, and relative permanence no longer exist, as these features are supplied today more economically and more efficiently for an herbalist by the easily acquired capsule. Therefore, I suggest that if you are determined to make a pill for delivering a dose of an unpleasant-tasting herbal powder, a very simple method is to roll the powder in a small piece of fresh bread. This works very effectively, unless, of course, you are on a grain-free diet.
PLACEBO EFFECT
The faith, hope, and beliefs an individual holds when she or he decides to re-experience his or her health, call forth the innate ability of the body to heal itself. These are probably the most dynamic aspects of any therapeutic results. The beliefs of both a client and a practitioner, their trust in each other, in the process, and in the form of medicines employed generate a significant (probably the major) portion of the therapeutic interaction. If a therapeutic process does not stimulate this profound energy, the chances of success are greatly diminished, no matter what medicines are used. The power of the client’s belief in the potential for cure has been observed by all schools of health care throughout history. The use of placebos grafts research-based allopathic medicine back onto the common root stalk from which grew the methods of primitive medicine people as well as the science of the re-emerged shamans and herbal medicine folks of today. Modern placebo research forces the truly objective thinker to reassess all traditional therapies and view mainstream medicine’s allopathic practice in a more accurate perspective as one of many diverse, equally effective health care modalities.
POSOLOGY
Posology is the study of dosage and its relation to different ages, sizes, weights, sex, idiosyncrasies, tolerance, time of administration, and conditions of disease in individuals (see “Dosage” above).
POWDERING
This is the subdividing of dried plant material. Dried herbs are powdered prior to dispensing or just prior to an extraction process in order that as much of the cell contents as possible can come in intimate contact with the digestive juices or a solvent. In pharmacy, the act of powdering is also referred to as comminution or trituration, which means literally to rub, crush, grind, pound, and pulverize into fine particles or into a powder.
The mortar and pestle is our classic device to use for this purpose. However, this can be quite laborious to use, which is why the electric