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x: Book Club
Herbal Antivirals (Harrod Buhner, S.; Storey Publishing, 2013) Reviewer: Colette Jones This book is about new viruses, viral infection, pandemics, and immune-supporting and antiviral herbs— ‘the finest chemists’. As SARSCoV-2 sparks Covid-19 worldwide, infecting our imagination and stultifying governments, this book offers perspective, science and therapies. Reflections on pandemics, viruses, demographic change and medical responses open the book and set a context for emerging pathogenic viruses. Chapters two and three launch into respiratory and encephalitic viral infections and their treatments, embracing; flu, SARS, Adenoviruses, Parainfluenza, Respiratory Syncytial Virus, Rhinoviruses, Japanese Encephalitis, Tick Borne and West Nile Virus. Chapter four mops up other viruses including Herpes and Cytomegalovirus. Buhner’s powerful descriptions of infection progression are accompanied, step-by-step, by details of the antimicrobial virtues of herbs. Don’t be put off by acres of text, such as the eight-page explanation of cytokine cascade; Buhner’s weave of disease aetiology and herbal action is a fine plaid. Therapeutic protocols are described using everyday language with recipes, methods of administration and reflections from personal experience. Under the ‘SARS and Coronaviruses’ subheading, Buhner lists twenty-two herbs active against SARS, having earlier noted about herbal treatments for flu: there are thousands… these are just the ones I have found useful. I, too, found his cough syrup recipe useful; as well as the advice to: just drink it as needed right out the bottle; …none of that 1-tablespoon-ata-time stuff… Chapters five and six, comprising half the book, are given over to exposition of ‘the top seven antiviral herbs’, with notes on six others, and three herbs that optimize immune function. All are well referenced, but not in the text. Over
1,500 research papers, journal articles, etc. are gathered in a neatly sectioned bibliography, so you can stroll undistracted through Buhner’s rigorous scholarship and relaxed prose. Thoughtful design also makes the vast amount of material in these 182 pages navigable. Individual monographs are found quickly via page headers of the common name of the herb, in bold white font on olive green. Properties of each herb are summarised under ‘actions’; ‘active against’; ‘use to treat’; ‘other uses’ and boxed by a pale green border. Recipes are concise with neat subheadings: ‘ingredients’; ‘to make’; ‘to use’. Shaded boxes, side bars, columns, hue and type make this Materia medica, together with the appendix on medicine making, accessible; demanding to be used. The book is a perfect blend of science and spirit, written to stimulate our thinking and create a more effective healing paradigm. Viruses, Buhner proffers, are not some ‘virulent other’— they are colleagues, ancestors. We need to comprehend to respond diligently. I am a fan of the TV series Killing Eve, and orthodox medicine holding up dexamethasone to SARS-CoV-2 is like MI6 officer Eve waving a toilet brush at the assassin Villanelle. Herbalists halt, momentarily perplexed. Can we leap forward, take orthodoxy by the throat and yell ‘Stop screaming! We-just-want-to-show-youthousands-of-healing-plants!’? Buhner invites us to bring our own genius, in whatever form, to the world. Read this book and play your part.
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