annieb123
Written on May 29, 2022
The Intimate Herbal is a well written, layman accessible herbal aimed at improving reproductive health, fertility, and related health subjects, written and curated by Marie White. Due out 14th June 2022 from nonprofit North Atlantic Books, it's 256 pages and will be available in paperback and ebook formats.
This is a well written and accessible guide (with recipes and tutorials) for herb use and herbal medicine. The author writes with competence and experience on choosing, processing, and using herbs and the active ingredients they contain. She has included a very useful chapter overview/introduction to the content which allows readers a short quick-start guide to finding content easily and quickly.The volume is extensively annotated and the chapter notes are well written and correct.
The chapters are arranged thematically: a comprehensive introduction is followed by a primer and overview over terminology, basic concepts and discussions on physical sexual health and bodywork. The following chapters cover specific subjects: sexual & reproductive health, intimate health conditions, a comprehensive herbal/materia medica, and finally the recipes.
The tutorials and recipes include tools and ingredients in a bullet style list. Measurements are in American/imperial units only, followed by step by step instructions. The recipes and herbal information included here isn't aimed at culture of individual plants, but more applicable to bought and prepared items. The materia medica does contain both botanical (Latin) name as well as some common names for the selected plants.
The book contains no illustrations. The author has included a resource and links lists, bibliography, chapter notes, and an index.
Four stars. This would be a superlative choice for public library acquisition, community garden/allotment member libraries, doulas, midwives, holistic health professionals, and the home herbalist gardener's library.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.