Herbal Education and I passed my exam!
09/14/2015
In August, I attended a 5 day intensive veterinary herbal medicine course in Maryland. The course included multiple herb walks, hands on labs and lots of great information from the leaders in veterinary Western herbal medicine. At the end of the course, I stayed an extra day to take the certification examination for the VBMA (Veterinary Botanical Medicine Association) and passed!! Once I have my cases written up and approved, I will be a CVH "Certified Veterinary Herbalist" with the American College of Veterinary Botanical Medicine (ACVBM). This has been a long process including years of graduate level coursework, studying up on the actions, interactions, chemical constituents and identification of over 110 specific herbs for the test and many more in the course!While in Maryland, my classmates and I had the honor of meeting ethnobotanist Dr. Jim Duke* and touring and exploring his medicinal herb garden, the Green Farmacy. What a fascinating life he has led! He spent many years traveling in tropical jungles seeking out plants with medicinal qualities studying them and using them personally. "Down to earth" is an understatement and if longevity and vitality count for anything he seems to have found the secret! Dr. Duke has contributed much knowledge on plants, their chemicals and uses—traditionally and scientifically.
*James Duke, Ph. D, author of many plant books including the Green Pharmacy and that Peterson's Guide to Medicinal Plants sitting on your shelf—or at least mine... He's also a pretty good blue-grass bass player and writer of quirky plant songs.
Here are a couple of bits and bobs on Dr. Duke: (yes, I'm writing from the UK now!)
A New York Times interview from 1991:
http://www.nytimes.com/1991/09/19/garden/botanist-s-quest-plants-for-all-ills.html
The Green Farmacy Garden:
http://thegreenfarmacygarden.com/jim-and-peggy-duke/
Duke's famous phytochemical database:
http://www.ars-grin.gov/duke/