Resources (WWW & Books) with data on TCM nature of common Western Herbs

[Guest guest]

Hi Marie & All,

 

Marie Sepich wrote:

> i was looking for information on hibiscus about a month ago, but didn't

> know where to look for it... could you tell me the resource that you

> obtained this info?

 

Although I have many textbooks on TCM, acupuncture & herbal medicine,

etc, I rarely use books for data research except as a last resort, or to confirm

what I can find on WWW.

 

This is because, I find it much faster and more convenient to use WWW

data for research. One can capture the data (including the Hanzi characters)

for editing / summary generation and incorporation into a personal database

for rapid retrieval later.

 

For most WWW searches, I use Google Advanced Search [

http://www.google.com/advanced_search? ].

 

To search for data on a specific herb, I prefer to use its LATIN name (for

example " Flos Lonicerae " instead of " Honeysuckle Flower " ) AND its PINYIN

name, combined with an " OR " statement and one other search word, such

as dosage OR actions OR indications.

 

So, in the top line of Google Advanced Search, I might enter the string:

dosage AND flos-lonicerae OR lonicera-flos OR jin-yin-hua

 

See the result of that search at http://tinyurl.com/3ap6vo

 

If I want to search for CHINESE data, I must first know (or find out from

WWW or my personal files) the HANZI terms and / or the Pinyin name of the

herb / formula

 

If I could not find the HANZI term for the herb or formula in my own files, I

would enter the Latin or Pinyin term and set the Google option to " return

pages in " to " Chinese (Simplified) " . For example:

 

see http://tinyurl.com/365sxp for the result of the search Fructus-Cnidii in

Chinese.

and see http://tinyurl.com/2ldz58 for the result of a search for Gui-shao-Di-

huang-Wan in Chinese.

 

When you know (or can find on WWW) the correct HANZI term for a herb /

formula, you can enter the HANZI term into Google and return data in

Chinese for that search.

 

See http://tinyurl.com/2n2v45 for Chinese hits for the Hanzi term for Gui-

shao-Di-huang-Wan

 

To translate Chinese pages, I use Google Translate for an initial version and

copy the output into a personal (commercial) copy of WenLin Translation

Software for correction of the Google mistakes (which are many!!).

 

For people not literate in Chinese, this process (finding, capturing and

editing relevant data in Chinese) is VERY time-consuming. It can take

several hours to research properly, edit and summarise the data for one

herb or formula. Such work is not for the faint-hearted but is routine for those

with decades of experience as professional researchers.

 

Therefore, IF relevant data are available in a language in which one is

literate (say, ENGLISH, French or German), I prefer to use those data

because they are far faster to find, capture, translate and edit.

 

> ... have you any recommendations on books that describe herbs typically

> used in western europe according to TCM terms?

 

I leave comment on that query to others on the List; several colleagues are

expert in that area and some have published texts on it.

 

Best regards,