Herbal medicine is a system of healthcare working with medicines made from plants, shrubs, trees and fungi, utilising their phytochemistry and energetics. Herbal medicine can help in most cases. 

Herbal medicine is not the same as mainstream allopathic medicine. One main difference between the two systems is that herbal medicine can be considered slow medicine and is concerned in its purest form, with the patient’s constitution and not pathology.  This idea goes back in recorded history for at least 3000 years. 

Traditional herbal medicine aims to help the body heal itself by supporting the body’s self-regulating mechanisms. Traditional herbal medicine is also based on the concept of vitalism. The vital force is found within all creation and all parts of nature and can be divided into five elements and categorised by the four humours and the seven classical planets. 

This filing cabinet of ideas is merely a language to connect with the deeper concepts of traditional vitalistic herbalism. 

As a trained and registered medical herbalist, I am familiar with modern pathological understanding of disease, but I practice in a much more traditional framework. Traditional herbal medicine is not about suppressing symptoms (which is a commonality in modern pathological-focused medicine, known as allopathic medicine, or modern medicine), and because of this concept of not suppressing symptoms, but righting the constitution of the patient, leads to traditional Western herbal medicine being a gentle and progressive method of healing. It can take time to heal.