The “Missing” Western Herbal Philosophy,
The nature of illness, assessing the patient, exploring
decumbiture, the temperaments, and tongue and pulse diagnosis
A one day workshop with Dylan Warren-Davis, and Steve Taylor. When: Saturday 16th March 2019, 9.30-5.00pm
In the medieval monasteries learning of all sorts was encouraged, the monks and nuns copied and translated large numbers of manuscripts. The philosophical works of Aristotle, Plato, the Corpus Hermeticum, Euclid’s geometry and other texts were all incorporated to varying degrees into Catholic theology. Out of it emerged the Three World View of the medieval world, the Seven Liberal Arts which ultimately underpinned theology, law and medicine. The writings of Hippocrates and Galen naturally dove-tailed into the evolving cosmology. Consequently herbal medicine flourished within the Gothic era, with monks and nuns tending to the sick as a part their service in the community. It was this knowledge within the medieval era that Culpeper was trying to recreate in his writings for the common good of people, without the barrier of having to be classically trained in order to study it. We will explore this inherent philosophy as seen in a decumbiture chart, looking at the assessment of a patient’s vitality, its strength in relation to the disease, the nature of the illness, its course and prognosis, and last but not least the principles of sympathy and antipathy used to select herbs to strengthen the vitality and counter the illness
The Temperaments of patients, reading the tongue and pulses |