The Desktop Guide to Herbal Medicine: The Ultimate Multidisciplinary Reference to the Amazing Realm of Healing Plants in a Quick-Study, One-Stop Guide

This is a wonderful book, but needs a much more comprehensive index.

oh I LOVE this book! My mom is German, and having the herbs listed by their common names in other languages is AWESOME! I've never come across that in an herb book before. She and I often talk herbs, and she's always thinking German names, now I can easily find what she is referring to.It's easy to read, well laid out, and VERY informative. I'm an Aromatherapist, and am adding herbs to my practice. This book is worth it's weight in gold. My focus is on safety and health benefits of the herbs, and it's all there in her pages. Good job Brigitte Mars!! I'll be looking for some of your other books to add to my growing collection.

This book is comprehensive and has a lot information on A LOT of herbs. My biggest qualm with it is the editing. I keep finding typo after typo. Okay, maybe I've found like eight, but I have only read about 30 plant profiles in the whole book and they seem to pop up more and more. This matters when you are writing up information about plants and include Latin names, constituents and herbal actions. Spelling matters. I like the book and find the spelling errors forgivable. It's good that I have a few other books to cross reference the spelling. Or I can use the internet.Some of my other herb books, that are written by more well-known herbalists give completely opposite information, mostly in areas regarding the moisture of the plant or its temperature. Hard to say who's right and plants can have opposite effects on two different people.If you can only buy a few books on herbal medicine, I wouldn't choose this one. Although, I personally like it and use it. I would have given this book 3.5 stars but I rounded up because I have a few herbs books that I bought and never use. At least this one comes off the shelf.

I don't think this reference will be sitting on my desktop for very long mainly because of the lack of scientific research and dosage options. I'm very big on the scientific aspects of herbalism and not so big on the alternative views such as the yin and yang of plants and what element the plant corresponds with. Not saying that doesn't work for some people, it just doesn't work for me. With this in mind it made my overall view on the book a bit apathetic. Mars does say what constituents are in the plants, but it seems very dry and lacking with no introduction on the basics of the botanic break-down of these constituents and what they are used for and why. Another reason why I felt like this book was lacking as a "desktop reference" is that each herb doesn't have a particular "general use" column. She does say what the herb is good for in a specific form, (e.g. tincture, extract, poultice...) but the way it is written seems clumsy to me almost as if most herbs are all-cures. More specifically she lists around a twenty-five average of ailments a single herb can cure and although some maybe true, as a desktop reference I would enjoy seeing some scientific evidence of these herbs working in this form or manner, or even what active ingredients/constituents go into aiding the ailments.I did enjoy the book for a few reasons though, and this is why it truly remained a 3/5 instead of a dashing 1/5. I loved the inserts on languages for each herb. For every herb Mars wonderfully translates the common-name into various languages around the world. I thought this was a great learning experience for me to find out what my favourite herbs name's are in different languages. I did enjoy reading on the "Medicinal Uses" column, not because I was looking for the actual use, but because Mars had a lot of lovely historical information that is just lovely to read--even if a bit hard to filter out from the other clutter. I would also like to point out her, "Other Uses" column which by itself was worth the price of the book. In this column there's always a tid-bit of interesting mythological, historical, or alternative use for the herb in question--which in my opinion is a wonderful addition to the book.Overall, I'd say Mars book is well worth looking into. Even if not for a herbal reference, her knowledge on herbs is nearly boundless and, even if she may not be as scientific as others, Mars historical and alternative insight shines through brightly in this lovely book that I would recommend to any herbalist looking for a good read.

The book is fine but it isn't as detailed as I expected. I have other books on this topic that go more in-depth.

This is an excellent reference guide and once again one of Brigette's earlier books that shows how knowledable she is and how quickly the individual with no prior training can jump right into learning about Herbal Medicine. I don't refer to this book as often as I use to, but it's an excellent reference tool and learning tool. Just flipping through it, you will become a fan of Brigette and so want to own all her books. She lays it out in a digestable way, you learn fast and easy and it's never to wordy. To the point and emphasis on areas that need more detail. A must have in your library of Herbal Medicine.

I LOVE this book! Simply and great info! Must have!

I was so happy to find a book that looked like a real reference to the herbal world. But a lot of common herbs are missing from it, no instruction for making tea or other healing material from them, no dosage, no pictures. The translations to different languages have several mistakes, misspellings, false names. I speak 5 languages, and in that, I speak, all of them have mistakes in the translations, sometimes not even that world on the language that they wrote. Poor writing, poor editing, poor proofreading.I am extremely disappointed with this book.I DO NOT recommend buying. You could find more valuable information on the internet about herbal use than in this book.

Item is very good but it was a little damaged due to the rather flimsy packaging. Its a paperweight book and as such needed extra padding.

Poorly written, lacking real information on the herbs and no directions as to dosing. Don't waste your money

Diese Buch ist im Grund eine Aufzählung der wichtigsten Kräuter und ihrer Einsatzgebiete. Es fehlt aber ein Index zum Nachschlagen nach Krankheit oder Kraut. In diesem Falle empfehle ich eher ein großes Heilkräuterbuch, wie es unzählige gute im deutschsprachigen Raum gibt. Diese Buch mag toll im englischsprachigen Raum funktionieren, es gibt in Deutschland aber einfach soviel gute Auswahl. Schon auf amazon mit einem Klick Das Große Kräuterheilbuch.