PDF File - Asclepius Herbal Consultancy

Contents
To the Heart of the Matter
1. Introduction...................................................................................................................................5
1.1. The Veil of Context...............................................................................................................5
1.1.1. Science in Traditional Therapy....................................................................................6
1.2. Western Herbal Medicine as an Empirical Repository ~ a hypothesis ...............................7
2. The Context of Medicine in an Historical Perspective................................................................9
2.1. The Imposed Limitations of Reductionism.........................................................................10
2.2. Psychoneuroendocrinology ~ the return of vitalism ?.......................................................11
2.3. The Conceptual Context of Western Herbal Medicine
~ empiricism, eclecticism and biomedicine .......................................................................13
2.3.1. Biomedical Understanding in Western Herbal Medicine
~ the phytotherapeutic dilemma.............................................................................14
2.3.2. Defining the Empirical Understanding in Contemporary
Western Herbal Medicine ......................................................................................15
3. The Heart ~ holistic perspectives in biomedical science and western herbal medicine..........18
4. The Cardiovascular System ~ the modern biomedical context .................................................20
4.1. The Role of the Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenocortical Axis...........................................20
4.1.1. Corticotropin Releasing Factor...............................................................................22
4.1.2. The Glucocorticoids.................................................................................................26
4.2. The Autonomic Nervous System.........................................................................................28
4.3. Cardiovascular Pathogenesis ~ a psychoneuroendocrinological understanding.............29
5. The Cardiovascular System ~ the western herbal medicine context.........................................32
5.1. Humoral Medicine .............................................................................................................32
5.1.1. Modern interpretation of the humoral principles....................................................34
5.2. Physiomedicalism and Contemporary Western Herbal Medicine Practice ......................35
5.2.1. Influential Development in Physiomedicalist
Understanding of the Cardiovascular System .......................................................37
5.3. Cardiovascular system Herbal remedies...........................................................................38
5.4. The Western Herbal Medicine Context ~ a commentary...................................................42
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