The Twelve-Herb Apothecary: Herbal Remedies for Beginners: Twelve Plants, Step by Step, With the Dosages, Drug Interactions and Safety Warnings Most Remedy Books Leave Out

COUNT THE PAGES ON THE BOOK YOU NEARLY BOUGHT INSTEAD OF THIS ONE. One promises a thousand time-tested remedies. Another promises eleven hundred. Now look at the page count: one hundred and eighty-seven pages. Do the arithmetic, because nobody else will. A thousand remedies across one hundred and eighty-seven pages is five and a third remedies on every page. What is left for each one is two lines. Two lines cannot tell you how much to use. Two lines cannot tell you what the plant does to the medicine you already take every morning. Two lines cannot tell you that the berries are poisonous until you cook them. This book is the opposite of that. TWELVE PLANTS. SIX PREPARATIONS. EVERY NUMBER FROM A NAMED SOURCE. Chamomile, ginger, peppermint, elderberry, echinacea, calendula, lavender, thyme, yarrow, plantain, lemon balm and garlic — each with a chapter of its own, built the same way every time so you can look things up for years. Infusion, decoction, tincture, infused oil, salve and syrup — six techniques, explained step by step with a figure for each. Once you can make those six things, you are not following recipes any more. You are making them. WHAT YOU GET THAT THE COMPENDIUMS CANNOT GIVE YOU REAL AMOUNTS. Not "a handful." Grams and millilitres and minutes, with the reason behind each one — and every figure taken from a named public health body, not from folklore. YOUR MEDICINE CABINET. Every plant chapter tells you what it does to the drugs you already take. Blood thinners. Sedatives. One plant here is ruled out entirely with a named medication. One must be stopped seven days before surgery. WHO MUST NOT USE IT. Pregnancy. Breastfeeding. Children, with real age limits that run from four weeks to eighteen years — because regulators set age floors, not fractions of an adult dose. Autoimmune conditions. Allergies. WHEN TO SEE A DOCTOR INSTEAD. Repeated in every single chapter, because the real danger in home herbalism is not poisoning. It is delay. AND WHERE THE EVIDENCE IS WEAK, THIS BOOK SAYS SO. This is the part that will surprise you, and it is the opposite of what the other books do. Nearly every herbal book on the shelf tells you chamomile is for sleep. It is the single most repeated claim in the field. The United States National Institutes of Health reviewed it and reports that a 2019 review found one study on insomnia — and that study found no benefit. Ginger rubbed on an arthritic knee has not been shown to help. Garlic has small effects on cholesterol and the evidence is weak. There is a whole chapter at the back that scores all twelve plants honestly: what the evidence supports, what is traditional but unproven, and what is simply repeated. You may find it uncomfortable. It is the most useful page in the book. WHO THIS IS FOR You are not a herbalist and you do not intend to become one. You are careful. You have children or grandchildren in the house and you would rather do nothing than do something foolish. You are, quite rightly, slightly suspicious of a field in which everyone shouts. You do not need a garden. Ten of the twelve can be bought dried. You do not need special equipment — a saucepan, a strainer, some jars, and a kitchen scale. The scale is the only thing this book will insist on. It costs very little, and it is the difference between making medicine and making a guess. INCLUDES A FREE ONLINE COMPANION — the complete dose table, searchable; a pharmacist checklist you can tick and take to the counter; and a label maker for your jars. No email required. A thousand remedies will not make you capable. Twelve plants, understood properly, will.