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The Constituents of Medicinal Plants:
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By A Pengelly
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(5 Reviews)
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List Price: $43.00
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Our Price: $29.83
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You Save: $13.17 (31%)
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Availability:
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Available for immediate delivery.
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Publisher:
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Cabi
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Edition:
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2nd
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Published:
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February 20, 2004 |
Binding:
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Paperback
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews: Add Your Own Review |
Five Stars, January 19, 2015
By TexanWoman
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Beautifully written. Elegant book. Collector item.
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Four Stars, July 07, 2014
By MSW student (Falls Church VA)
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Good book, written in accessible English versus scientific speak.
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O-Chem for the Herbalist, November 21, 2013
By Jessie Woodring
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Andrew Pengelly does not claim to be a chemist. As an herbalist, he recognizes the need for all students of herbal medicine to understand the chemistry behind what they are giving to their patients. Pengelly has years of experience teaching herbal medicine to many students from different parts of the world. Pengelly previously was a member of the faculty at the University of Newcastle in Australia. He was the lead researcher in the herbal therapies and xenobiotics department. Research is being done there on flavonoids and other related phytochemicals and how they relate to wound healing. He held this position until 2007 and is now a professor at Georgetown University School of Medicine and Maryland University of Integrative Health. In his book, The Constituents of Medicinal Plants, Pengelly sets out to bridge the gap between herbal medicine and organic chemistry.
Each chapter in this text discusses a different category of chemical constituents. The first chapter, Introduction to Phytochemistry, begins with a background of how alternative and traditional medicines have converged into Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Pengelly goes into the basics of chemical components, biological pathways, and molecular structure. He summarizes the purposes of primary and secondary metabolites. Chapter two moves on to phenols, starting with simple forms and moving on to the more chemically complex forms. Next is a chapter on the polyphenols tannins and flavonoids and their origins and functions followed by chapters on sugar containing glycosides, isoprene based terpenes, and multi ringed triterpenoids, and saponins. Pengelly also includes additional information about the toxicity of cardiac glycosides. These compounds have a low therapeutic index, meaning that the amount that is therapeutic is very close to the amount that is fatal, making them dangerous to prescribe. Essential oils, resins, fixed oils, alkamides, polysaccharides, and alkaloids make up the final four chapters.
This book is a great tool for students who want to learn the basics of chemical interactions without going through two semesters of organic chemistry. As the reader journeys through each chapter they slowly learn the critical information they need to apply to their understanding of herbal medicine. Pengelly does a wonderful job of providing specific examples within herbal applications for each topic. For example, in the chapter on phenols, Pengelly chooses examples such as curcumin, a yellow dye that is also know to anti-inflammatory properties. The Constituents of Medicinal Plants would be a great text for a medicinal chemistry course for non-chemistry majors or a companion text for many medicinal courses. Pengelly provides a summary that would also be a good reference text for any working herbalist.
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/andrew-pengelly/17/920/6b6
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Quite a handy book, August 12, 2013
By Meagan
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Needed this book for a medicinal herbs class and it was quite helpful. I actually learned a lot from this book. It didn't just take up permanent residence on my shelf and become a dust magnet.
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Great book., September 30, 2007
By Man on the hill (CA, USA)
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Need some Chem background, but books like these will be Bibles in the near future?
2 of 12 people found the above review helpful.
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