From Professor E. J. Shellard, FRPharmS
SIR,—I was interested in “Onlooker’s” paragraph “Verdict
on herbal remedies” (PJ, September 23, p432)
but why should he be concerned if the “mode of action of such remedies
is not yet understood”? There are thousands of people today benefiting
from herbal remedies — and I am one of them — in spite of this lack
of knowledge. And why should be still persist — though he is not alone
— in thinking that in herbal remedies there can only be one constituent
responsible because he goes on to show how incorrect this is?
Plants contain many chemical constituents, some of which can be isolated and
used in their own right as pharmacological agents as indeed many are in modern
formal medicine. But in herbal extracts most of these constituents may be present,
some in very small quantities, and they may all contribute, sometimes synergistically,
to the therapeutic action. But I must agree with him when he says that pharmacists
should be at hand to advise patients — and even doctors — about herbal
products and that more information should be given to undergraduates about herbal
treatments.
Before I retired in 1978 I did give a course of lectures on herbal remedies
to final-year students at Chelsea department of pharmacy who were not specialising
in other subjects, but this was at a time when the Council of the Pharmaceutical
Society was successfully persuading other schools of pharmacy seriously to reduce
or even cease the teaching of pharmacognosy. So, for many years, while the public
interest in herbal medicine was growing, the Society and many of the schools
of pharmacy had their heads in the sand. The report by Jo Barnes from the British
Pharmaceutical Conference (PJ, September 16, p427) indicates that even today,
when there is a greatly increased consumption of herbal remedies and herbal
supplements, the time spent in the MPharm course is far too low to do justice
to the subject.
E. J. Shellard
Hounslow, Middlesex