# Michael Moore (herbalist)

Michael Moore (January 9, 1941 – February 20, 2009), born Michael Roland Shaw Moore, was a medicinal herbalist, author of several reference works on botanical medicine, and founder of the Southwest School of Botanical Medicine (SWSBM). One of the areas at Mission Garden in Tucson, Arizona, honors Moore. Before he was an herbalist Michael Moore was a musician and a composer, father and husband. He operated the SWSBM as a residency program for 28 years, first in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and later in Bisbee, Arizona. For decades, Moore influenced, impacted, taught, and reached one way or another more practicing herbalists than any other living herbalist in the United States. His books put the previously unknown materia medica of the southwest into mainstream botanical field. Moore was known as the "godfather of American herbalism".
While Moore believed herbs and plants provided a natural way of treating many afflictions, allopathic medications were to be used when required.

## Work

Moore was an herbologist who was known for his books on medicinal plants that are found in the West, Southwest and Pacific Northwest bio regions. He founded and directed the Southwest School of Botanical Medicine in Bisbee, Arizona. Having grown up in Los Angeles, he opened an herb shop in Topanga Canyon. In 1970, he moved along with his shop, to Taos, New Mexico, calling it Herbs, Etc. In 1971 he moved the establishment again to found Herbs, Etc. a plant-based supplement store in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1971. Moore sold the shop, in the mid-1980s to an employee, to allow him to focus on teaching herbalism to others, and moved to Bisbee, Arizona, and then to Silver City, New Mexico. Later he moved back to Bisbee with his wife for found the School of Botanical Medicine there where he continued to teach until 2006.

## Resources revived by Moore

Michael Moore's web site is a major resource of historical material from the Eclectics and Physiomedicalists, of hundreds of plant images and data as well as SWSBM teaching materials. Moore was a major contributor in the revival of many historical texts of botanical medicine which had been lost to the general public. In 1990 Moore visited the Lloyd Library and Museum in Cincinnati, Ohio, where, in the basement, he found the accumulated libraries of all of the Eclectic medical schools, shipped off to the Eclectic Medical College as they closed. The material he published was from the Eclectics, Thomsonian medicalists and Physiomedicalists.

## Publications

Moore published numerous academic articles during his lifetime and published several books including:
* Medicinal Plants of the Mountain West (1979, 2003) Museum of New Mexico Press ISBN 9780890134542
* Medicinal Plants of the Pacific West (1993, 2011) Museum of New Mexico Press ISBN 9780890135921
* Los Remedios: Traditional Herbal Remedies of the Southwest (2008) Museum of New Mexico Press ISBN 9780890135808
* Herbs for the Urinary Tract (1998) Keats Publishing ISBN 9780879838157
* Medicinal Plants of the Desert and Canyon West (1989) Museum of New Mexico Press ISBN 9780890135914

## Death and legacy

Moore died in Tucson, Arizona in 2009 of complications of kidney disease. He was survived by his wife, Donna Chester, who serves as an administrator for the Southwest School of Botanical Medicine. Moore's writings, books and recordings are held in the New Mexico State Archives.