A Walk in The Wild

Newly Minted Herbalists Call Interest Academic

The ginkgo's branches spread behind a low concrete wall. As a small group of students and faculty gathered around the tree, Adriane Fugh-Berman described how, over the centuries, its leaves have been used in various preparations intended to aid memory and blood circulation.

She then led the group around the corner, stopping at a small juniper tree.

"Can anyone tell me what juniper is used for?" Murmurs but no answers. She looked disappointed. "What? No alcoholics in the group?" She laughed and passed juniper berries around to smell. Faces brightened. Gin. "Yes, but juniper has also been used as a diuretic and for indigestion," Fugh-Berman said.

It is a sunny spring day, and this "herb walk" is an epilogue for the first graduating class in Georgetown University's master's program in Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM). Unlike other academic endeavors devoted to alternative medicine, it's devoted less to teaching clinical applications and more to training researchers to subject complementary treatments to scientific scrutiny.

The year-long master's degree program, the first of its kind in the United States, is offered by Georgetown's Department of Physiology and Biochemistry. The herb walk was one the last times the 10 students -- who entered the program last September -- would be together before they scatter to complete their required internships.

Next up: the Pharmaceutical Garden, planted in 2000, a long narrow strip of earth next to Georgetown's Basic Sciences Building. But it's not a working garden; it's an ornamental lesson.

The group passed lilies-of-the-valley ("toxic," said Fugh-Berman, "but once used as a wash for gout"), rosemary ("for baldness and gastrointestinal disorders"), foxglove ("ground up by drug companies for its digitoxin, for congestive heart disease").

It's when the group talks about the dandelions that the focus of the CAM program becomes apparent. "Dandelions are purported to have diuretic effects, but from our findings, that hasn't been fully determined," announced student Dia Wirsing, who, with fellow student Mary Saphyakajon, studied dandelions' effects on laboratory rats.

"The fundamental idea [behind the program]," explained professor and program co-director Adam Myers, "is teaching them to think scientifically and critically about [CAM]."

People today are spending more money out-of-pocket for complementary and alternative therapies than they pay for all hospitalizations, Myers said, yet conventional doctors remain largely ignorant of CAM practices. Doctors, Myers said, "need to understand what their patients might be taking." This can't happen unless someone does the research into what works, what doesn't and other essential details like interactions, side effects, contraindications and so on.