MATERIA MEDICA DIFFERENTIALS
SELF STUDY
 
137 Audios (11 hours and 38 minutes total)
Notes & Slides
PDF Resources (12 total)
 
This is the Self-Study option for this course, which means you can study and learn this material for personal development. This option does not provide faculty support, grading of assignments, or a certificate of completion.
 
This course is a part of the curriculum for the Advanced Western Materia Medica program.
 
Overview
In this course we will describe and differentiate:
Nutritive herbs, with humoral differentials
Demulcent herbs with differentiation between bitter and sweet and superficial vs constitutional effects
Topical herbs, with differentials by humoral effect, and also five types of action on chronic biofilm infections.
Nervine herbs with differentials for warming, cooling, drying, and demulcent.
Anodynes, with differentials by humoral effect, effect on spasm, and tissue types for antispasmodics.
Differentials and analogues among the 3 Cohosh plants
The Mints, with differentials for bitter vs sweet, effects on the pattern of constrained liver chi, and for anti-herpes and antifungal effects, and effects on the cardiovascular system.
Expectorants, with differentials based on stimulating vs relaxing effects on the membranes.
Hot herbs, with differentials for anti-inflammatory, anti-diabetic, and aphrodisiac effects.
Urinary tract differentials for heating vs cooling, diuretic strength, stimulating vs relaxing.
Bitter herb differentials including strength, tonic-astringency, aromatic properties, and sedative or laxative effects.
Alterative differentials, including effects on the liver, the bowel, the kidney, the immune system, and digestion.
Berberine-containing herbs, with differentiation between plants with companion-alkaloids.
Adaptogen differentials, including stimulation, tonification, and effects on the immune and reproductive systems.
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A complete study of materia medica goes far deeper than the this-for-that model of herbalism. For effective clinical use, and to avoid adverse humoral/energetic effects, an herb must be understood in the categories of humoral and energetic effects, including hot vs. cold, moist vs dry, tension vs relaxation, in addition to definite clinical actions, tissues affected, uses, and useful combinations and formulas. With this depth of study, we find that herbs can be recognized in groups that have very similar effects, and may be interchanged as analogues clinically. In this course we describe more than 30 such “herbal affinity groups” of more than 100 herbs, show how the herbs within the group may be used as analogues, and describe differentials between them. This course is the culmination of in-depth study of comparative materia medica at the North American Institute of Medical Herbalism over a period of 25 years.