The botanicals, media, and doses are outlined in my other booklet, Herbal Materia Medica. As herbs are far feebler biological agents than drug therapy, it is important to know if the disorder is acute or chronic, in a strong or immunodeficient person, just beginning or post-inflammatory, and so on. As an example, pharyngitis may often be treated with an appropriate antibiotic, whether the condition is acute, subacute, or chronic. Although such may indeed be necessary, antibiotics are often a major metabolic stress, substantially altering the ecologies of the skin and mucosa. Most pharyngitis involves normally endogenous viruses or bacteria that take advantage of membrane compromise, immunosuppression, or emotional or metabolic stress.
Herbs are often better suited in milder or subclinical conditions.
They may strengthen the membranes, stimulate both innate and acquired immunity, resolve the exudate and generally strengthen vital forces. This, without risking superinfections, allergic response or candidiasis. The validity and purpose of this repertory, therefore, is to give the therapist a constitutional and patient-specific approach to using herbs based on distinct symptoms leading to differential therapeutics, rather than the more common practice of differential diagnostics that lead to a fixed therapy. I have added several new Chinese herbs that I have learned to understand within the Western model. Bear in mind, of course, that the very basis of both the Oriental and Ayurvedic approaches IS differential therapeutics, and practitioners of these disciplines should have no difficulty in translating the therapeutics in this booklet into their modality, especially those that want to incorporate Western botanicals into their practice.