This book is the first volume of a comprehensive 2-volume book covering modern pharmacological and clinical studies of the most commonly used Chinese herbal drugs. It contains monographs of 250 kinds of the most commonly used Chinese Materia Medica. The information on each herb was compiled by a research specialist active in the scientific investigation of that particular type of herb. The description on each drug includes an introduction (source, character and taste, actions and indications according to traditional Chinese medicine etc.), chemical composition, pharmacology, clinical studies, adverse effects and references. The translation of the book into English was done by qualified professionals in the field and the terms used are consistent with those used in Index Medicus, Chemical Abstracts and Botanical journals.

The Western Herbal Tradition provides a comprehensive and critical exploration of the use of plant medicines through 2000 years of history from Dioscorides to the present day. It follows each of the 27 herbs through a wide range of key sources from European, Arabic and American traditions including Greek, Roman and Renaissance texts. A rich discussion of the historical texts is balanced with current application and research. The herbs have been selected on the basis of common use by practising herbalists. Each illustrated monograph contains: Species, identification and botanical description A study of the characterisation and medicinal use of the plants consistently drawn from featured herbals which includes the authors' own translations from the Latin Assessment of past and current texts in the transmission of herbal knowledge Consideration of traditional therapeutics, including humoral and physiomedical approaches Suggestions towards a modern experiential approach through Goethean methodology Current evidence on pharmacological constituents Review of evidence on safety Recommendations for internal and external uses, prescribing and dosage - Excellent illustrations accompany each monograph to aid learning - First book to cover broader historical - perspective and discussions of issues surrounding each herb - Written by leading experts who are well known in the field - Includes some monographs of which there is little material already available - The bibliographic evidence provided could support applications for registration of Herbal Medicinal Products under the provisions of the Traditional Herbal Medicinal Product Directive - An excellent valuable resource for everyone interested in herbal medicine

-- Natural History

The culmination of more than fifty years of research by the foremost living expert on plant classification, Diversity and Classification of Flowering Plants is an important contribution to the field of plant taxonomy. In the last decade, the system of classifying plants has been thoroughly revised. Instead of describing every individual family, Takhtajan includes descriptions in keys to families, which he calls "descriptive keys." The advantage of descriptive keys is that they give both the characteristic features of the families and their differences. The delimitation of families and orders drastically differs from the one accepted by the Englerian school and from the one accepted in Arthur Cronquist's system. Takhtajan favors the smaller, more natural families and orders, which are more coherent and better-defined, where characters are easily grasped, and which are more suitable for information retrieval and phylogenetic studies, including cladistic analysis (because it reduces polymorphic codings).

In this volume treatments are offered for 52 families containing 432 genera belonging to 13 eudicot orders, many of which have recently been newly designed; four families remain unassigned to order. Emphasis is on the early-diverging eudicots and basal core eudicots. The wealth of information contained in this volume will make it an important source of reference for both the scholar and the practitioner in the fields of pure and applied plant sciences.