How do the other herbal traditions relate to the Chinese herbal system?
Ron Teeguarden: Well, Chinese herbalism is not just China. It’s a system, much like Western herbalism isn’t just American Indian herbalism or European, it’s all the things pulled together. The Chinese also brought together herbs from many of the civilizations that they contacted over thousands of years, and they’ve organized it into a unified system based on these unbelievably great and profound principles of Tao, Yin and Yang, the Five Elements and so forth. All of the herbs that they discovered from these remote regions of the world-from Indonesia and way out in Siberia, from the fringe of Europe and all the way out to the Pacific Rim-they brought all those herbs together and created this great herbalism. But, it was principled, based on the three treasures. Western herbalism has never been united in that way. There is no great unifying principle and that’s what, to me, makes Chinese herbalism so great. I can’t find the unifying principle in Western herbalism yet. The emphasis still
