Excellence in literature
The James A. Duke Excellence in Botanical Literature Award went to Kerry Bone (pictured above) and Simon Mills for the significantly revised and updated edition of their internationally renowned herbal medicine clinical practice guide, Principles and Practice of Phytotherapy: Modern Herbal Medicine, 2nd edition (Churchill Livingstone, 2013).
The book is widely regarded as the first comprehensive, science-based guide for herbal medicine practitioners. “From our work as educators we recognized the need for herbal clinicians and students to have a modern text that balanced both traditional practices and modern evidence,” said Bone.
“Biomedical science is now validating and elaborating many of the traditional insights of herbalists/natural therapists regarding the cause and treatment of disease,” noted Bone. “So there is a much better biomedical underpinning of the things we do and teach in clinical practice…. All of [this is] reflected in the second edition.”
“[T]here has been an explosion of information in the last 15 years,” added Mills. “However, most of it is laboratory based and of varying relevance to the practitioner. Our main challenge has been to wade through all this new material and process it for clinical relevance.”
Steven Foster, chair of ABC’s Board of Trustees, said: “The authors are able to embrace traditional herbal use and respect science related to herbal medicine. Since the first edition appeared 14 years ago, scientific understanding of herb actions and use has evolved to provide practical information for the clinician which is reflected in these pages.”