American Botanical Council Announces Recipients of James A. Duke Excellence
in Botanical Literature Award
Editor’s note: The previous
version of this press release misstated the number of copies sold of the first
edition of Principles and Practice of Phytotherapy. Approximately 40,000 copies of the text have been sold worldwide, not
7,000 as originally stated.
(AUSTIN, Texas, Feb. 26, 2014) The nonprofit American Botanical
Council (ABC) is pleased to announce that two authors will be joint recipients
of this year’s James A. Duke Excellence in Botanical Literature Award.
Co-authors, herbalists, clinicians, and researchers Kerry Bone and Simon Mills
will receive ABC’s 2013 award 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 ABC James A. Duke Excellence in Botanical Literature Award was created in
2006 in honor of noted economic botanist and author James A. Duke, PhD. Over
the course of his long and prestigious career in economic botany and ethnobotany
at the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), Dr. Duke authored more
than 30 reference and consumer books. He is also a co-founding
member of ABC’s Board of Trustees and currently serves as Director Emeritus.
The Duke Award is given annually to a book or books that provide a significant
contribution to literature in the fields of botany, taxonomy, ethnobotany,
phytomedicine, and other disciplines related to the vast field of medicinal
plants. In 2011, due to the diversity of quality books related to
medicinal plants, ABC created two distinct categories for the James A. Duke
Award: reference/technical and consumer/popular. However, depending on a
variety of factors, ABC may or may not choose to designate recipients for both
categories each year.
Principles and Practice of Phytotherapy 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, co-founder and director of research and
development at MediHerb, and an Australia-based medical herbalist with more
than 25 years of experience.
“It really was the first text that addressed our own needs in the clinic: how
do we formulate for an individual who is asking for help in front of us?” said
Mills, managing director of SustainCare in the United Kingdom and secretary of
the European Scientific Cooperative on Phytotherapy (ESCOP), a multinational
consortium of European experts in herbs and medicinal plants. “As we did not
have a reference, we had to write one ourselves! It is still distinctive for
this reason.”
Bone and Mills — who have been colleagues since 1981 when they met at the
School of Herbal Medicine in the United Kingdom — previously co-authored The
Essential Guide to Herbal Safety (Churchill Livingstone), which was
the recipient of the inaugural ABC James A. Duke Excellence in Botanical
Literature Award for 2005.
As Dr. Duke noted, Bone and Mills — who have a combined 50-plus years of
experience as practicing herbalists — have a reputation for producing quality
herbal medicine-related work. “The authors are … meticulously scholarly,” he
said. “I, as a rogue herbalist in the herbal community, have long held them in
high regard.”
Since the publication of the first edition of Principles and Practice
of Phytotherapy in 1999, more than 40,000 copies have been sold
worldwide and it has become an essential component of many respected,
upper-level phytotherapy programs, including those at the Maryland University
of Integrative Health (formerly Tai Sophia Institute), the University of
Reading in the United Kingdom, and the Endeavour College of Natural Health in
Australia.
Containing more than 1000 pages of practical, thoroughly referenced
information, the new edition of Principles and Practice of Phytotherapy has
been extensively updated with the most relevant scientific and clinical data
from the past 15 years. Significant revisions were made to sections on
pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetics, safety and herb-drug interactions, and
herbal treatment for chronic disease states. In particular, the second edition
contains six new herbal monographs, discussions of many additional conditions
such as asthma, migraines, and prostate cancer, and innovative hypotheses on
herbal therapies for inflammation and autoimmune disease.
“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.”
“The authors are able to embrace traditional herbal use and respect science
related to herbal medicine,” said Steven Foster, chair of ABC’s Board of
Trustees. “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.”
In a foreword to the new edition, ABC Founder and Executive Director Mark
Blumenthal — who recused himself from the selection process due to his
contribution to the text — similarly praised Bone and Mill’s balanced
presentation of traditional herbal knowledge with modern clinical evidence.
“These authors are eminently qualified to convey this information, and they do
so in a lucid, non-dogmatic, rational manner,” he wrote.
Past recipients of the James A. Duke Excellence in Botanical Literature Award
include the following: Medicinal Plants and the Legacy of Richard E.
Schultes by Bruce E. Ponman and Rainer W. Bussmann (Missouri Botanical
Garden) in the reference/technical category and Smoke Signals by
Martin A. Lee (Scribner) in the consumer/popular category in 2012; Healing
Spices by Bharat B. Aggarwal, PhD, (Sterling Publishing) in the
consumer/popular category and the American Herbal Pharmacopoeia’s Botanical
Pharmacognosy (CRC Press) in the reference/technical category in
2011; Botanical Medicine for Women’s Health by Aviva Romm, MD,
(Churchill Livingstone) in 2010; An Oak Spring Herbaria by
Lucia Tongiorgi Tomasi and Tony Willis (Oak Spring Garden Library) in
2009; Mabberley's Plant-Book, 3rd edition, by David J. Mabberley
(Cambridge University Press) in 2008; Google Book Search in 2007; Medicinal
Spices by Eberhard Teuscher (MedPharm Scientific Publishers) in 2006;
and The Essential Guide to Herbal Safety by Simon Mills and
Kerry Bone (Churchill Livingstone) in 2005.
Principles and Practice of Phytotherapy: Modern Herbal Medicine, 2nd
edition, can be purchased for $125.00 through the ABC e-Store and other online retailers. (ABC members
receive a discount.)
The ABC James A. Duke Excellence in Botanical Literature Award will be
presented to Bone and Mills at the 9th Annual ABC Botanical Celebration and
Awards Ceremony on March 6 in Anaheim, California. The ABC event occurs during
the NEXT Innovation Summit (formerly Nutracon) nutrition, natural products, and
dietary supplements conference and Natural Products Expo West.
The ABC Botanical Celebration and Awards Ceremony is underwritten by generous
contributions from the following members of the herb, dietary supplement, and
natural products industry (i.e., raw material suppliers, supplement and tea manufacturers,
analytical laboratories, a law firm, an insurer, a media company, and a trade
organization):
Alkemist Labs
Amin Talati
Christie Communications
ChromaDex
EuroPharma
Grifcon Enterprises
Horphag Research
Indena USA
Martin Bauer Group
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MegaFood
Natural Factors Nutritional Products
New Chapter
New Hope Natural Media
PlusPharma
RFI Ingredients
Traditional Medicinals
United Natural Products Alliance
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