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The Lost Language of Plants: The Ecological Importance of Plant Medicine to Life on Earth: The Ecological Importance of Plant Medicines to Life on Earth

by: Stephen Harrod Buhner

Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing (2002)

$19.95

Out of stock

Staff Pick by comrade: BC

This book is part critique of industrial medicine (particularly the insanely large amount of antibiotics that we put into the environment), part critique of the dominant universe-as-machine epistemology of mainstream science, and part description of the amazing things that plants can and will do to take care of themselves, their landbases, other plants, insects, and other animal creatures such as ourselves.

With a quite accessible writing style, Buhner takes us through the very recent history of modern medicine, and a plethora of its deleterious effects on the environment, including shockingly large amounts of radiation.

I have experienced first-hand the idiocy of the "scientific" testing regimen of the pharmaceutical industry. I can tell you that I trust much more the thousands of years of experiences with plants as medicine than the very recent and brief experience that the medical industry has with medicines designed in laboratories. These medicines are composed of chemicals our bodies have never had experience with, and inevitably flush through our bodies and into the greater environment, quite often to its detriment, and inevitably the detriment of ourselves.

At once poetry, science, reasoned critique, and appeal to conscience, this book shatters our everyday beliefs about the health of ourselves, as well as our land, and how we maintain that health.

I don't use the word "crucial" lightly, but the ideas put forth in this book are crucial for the survival of pretty much everything except the pharmaceutical industry.