Medicine Making RESOURCES
Make your Medicine
One of the things that makes herbal medicine so special is that we can make it in our own kitchen. We can make it in a field under the stars. We can make it for our loved ones. We can make it together with friends.
Our dream with these medicine making resources is to support the craft of community herbalism and help us continue our traditions in healthcare. These guidelines are not intended for large commercial enterprises.
We invite you to read, share, print, and adapt the materials you find here in the interest of community health, so long as you do so under our Creative Commons licensing terms (see the accordion section LICENSING for more details).
Please respect our labor and respect the Commons!
As a practicing herbalist, I have made a pledge to my patients, to my community, and to my planet to heal and serve. This means that I hold to certain standards of practice, such as cleanliness, transparency, sustainability, environmental protection, quality, and affordability, all of which guide my daily practices in the clinic and dispensary… aka Good Herbalista Practices.
It is a big responsibility to create medicines that people ingest.
- We want to be confident that what we say is in the bottle is really what it in the bottle (proper ID– botanical/ organoleptic/ etc.)
- We want to be able to recreate our masterpieces and avoid replicating our disasters (documentation of process)
- And we want to be able to track our remedies to a reasonable extent, so if a problem occurs, we can contain the situation.
To help us in our Good Herbalista Practices as community herbalists, we have generated lots of worksheets and instructional guides. You will find them on this page and also in our Herbalista Toolkit.
The Good Herbalista Practices are absolutely intended as a riff on the Good Manufacturing Practices which were passed by the FDA in 2008. I feel that there is a difference between a massive herbal product company and a community herbalist practicing in their kitchen. And here is a little piece I wrote on the subject a few years back …
In Defense of Good Herbalista Practices
In Defense of Good Herbalista PracticesThank you for your support and for wanting to donate herbal remedies. Whether it be to Herbalista Free Clinic or to other community projects there are a few things we’d like you to consider to make the most of these herbal gifts. Here are some guidelines we’ve written to help you when making and sharing herbal medicine.
Herbal Medicine Donation Guidelines
Herbal Medicine Donation GuidelinesWater Medicine
Other Preparations
A4 Worksheets
First and foremost, learn your herbs! Making good medicine begins with good herb. Your ability to properly identify herbs will improve as you spend more time working with them. Watch them grow, learn to harvest and to process them, touch them, taste them, and smell them!
BOTANICAL IDENTIFICATION
By harvesting your own plants or receiving them in whole plant form, you can often use a plant key or flora to positively identify your plant. Learn which guides are best for your region.
Kew Gardens Herbarium The Herbarium at Kew Garden’s is one of the largest in the world, with over 7 million plant specimens. These plants have been either pressed and dried or preserved in spirit. Kew works to make these specimen available to botanists around the world and are building an electronic Herbarium catalogue. Hundreds of thousands of specimen have been catalogued so far, with many more each day.
ORGANOLEPTIC + BOTANICAL ID
“The Identification of Medicinal Plants: A Handbook of the Morphology of Botanicals in Commerce” Free online resource at the American Botanical Council’s website. “The purpose of this manual is to assist purchasers or collectors of common unprocessed botanical materials in using easily observed morphological characteristics to confirm the identity of those materials. The focus is on species and plant parts that are used to produce botanical medicines or dietary supplements.”
Botanical Identity References Compendium Free online resource compiled by The American Herbal Products Association. This database covers just around 100 herbs and shares photos of botanical vouchers, organoleptic characteristics/ descriptions, macroscopic and microscopic characteristics, and chromatographic information. “The AHPA Compendium is a cooperative and centralized source of information on physical characteristics and test methods that can be used by qualified and experienced analysts to determine the identity of plant species and articles of trade obtained from these plants.” — AHPA Website
Plant Monographs by the World Health Organization— Volume 1, 2, 3,and 4. The WHO Monographs on Selected Medicinal Plants (4 volumes available online) – These monographs are useful references when trying to Positively Identify your plant material you are working with. They list Botanical Descriptions, Organoleptics (taste, smell, etc), and Microscopic Characteristics.
King’s Dispensatory, 1898 Materia Medica originally published in 1854 that covers herbs commonly used in American botanical medical practice. The entries include botanical descriptions, and raw material specifications as seen in commerce. This index is on Henriette Kress’ website (“Welcome to the Bark Side”)
Raw Material Specifications Files shared in the open source project by Guido Mase.
Sanitation Considerations
Dispensary + Compounding
THE HERBS
Black Locust Gardens Black Locust Gardens is a farm and plant nursery, dedicated to sustainable agriculture and positive regeneration of agricultural ecospheres. We are currently growing a variety of medicinal /culinary herbs, and fruit, on 20 acres. They ship both fresh and dried herbs.
Gentle Harmony Farm Organic herbal farm in North Carolina. They grow the most beautiful, vibrant herbs imaginable! Fresh and dry herbs available.
Hearthfire Farm & Nursery With a mission to help people grow their own herbal medicine, there is incredible heart in the herbs grown by farmer Timothy Hayes. Fresh & dry herbs available as well as plant babies!
Mountain Rose Herbs Online ordering for bulk herbs, essential oils, carrier oils, etc…
Pacific Botanicals Online ordering for bulk herbs (high quality, certified organic.) Not only do they carry dry herbs, but will do fresh overnight shipments as well.
Stellar Roots Herbs Stellar Roots is a regenerative herb farm offering artisanal, high vibration herbal products and raw herbs We blend practices from Biodynamic and Organic farming towards whole ecosystem health.
THE MENSTRUUMS
Alchemical Solutions Micro-distillery. Great source for organic, ethically sourced and produced pure spirits (grape, grain, and cane)
J.Edwards International We source our organic glycerin from J.Edwards. They have affordably priced bulk 5 gallon buckets (25 kg) and have very responsive customer service.
Pharmco Source for organic pure spirits (corn and cane) Bulk ordering, affordable prices. Formerly Pharmco-Aaper.
THE BOTTLES + BITS
Aromatics International This is our supplier for blank aromatic inhalers. The inhalers come in many counts (from 5 to 5000) and in many groovy colors.
The Cary Company We began using this company in 2022. They have competitive prices and a good range of bottles and other packaging.
SKS Bottle Herbalista’s preferred source for bulk bottles, packaging, etc… When you make an order of $250 or more, the shipping is free! This is a great opportunity to gather your friends and do your orders together!
HERBALISTA FREE SCHOOL
Since 2022, the Herbalista Free School has been offering free online herbal education. All our courses are free, self-paced and you can enroll at any time. The Herbal Medicine Making Course is open for registration.
No matter where you are, you are surrounded by herbal medicine. Even in the urban concrete jungle there is healing all around us. Herbal medicine is the oldest and most widely used form of medicine in the world! Effective, affordable, environmentally friendly, with minimal side effects, and tantalizing to all the senses, herbs are a vital part to a healthy present and future!
Join Herbalista as we dive into the exiting world of herbal medicine and explore a range of skills and techniques for creating potent plant medicines.
Appropriate for complete beginners or for folks wanting to hone or acquire additional apothecary skills, this is a self-paced course open for enrollment at anytime!
In addition to hours of video demonstrations, this course offers extensive resources, including instructional handouts, medicine making worksheets, delish recipes and other helpful resource listings.
Your teacher is Herbalista Lorna, founder of the Herbalista Free Clinic and Free School. She is a practicing herbalist, foot worker, medicine maker, and driver of the Herb Bus.
COURSE CONTENT
This course covers a wide array of preparations and medicine making techniques:
- Tincture Making
- Weight : Volume Method
- Basic Maceration of Fresh and Dry Plants
- Mixing Custom Menstruums
- Percolation
- Alcohol-free Extraction
- Hot Glycerite Extraction
- Vinegar-based Extraction
- Water Medicine
- Infusions + Decoctions
- Syrups
- Hydrotherapy
- Oil-based Medicine
- Infused Herbal Oils
- Salves
- Herbal Distillation
- Hydrosols + Essential Oils
- Herbal Candy + more
In addition to the basics of medicine making, we will also take a look at how to build and maintain an herbal apothecary, using the Herbalista dispensary as an example. We will share tips on concepts such as:
- Good Herbalista Practices
- Proper Labeling
- Record-keeping + Tracking
- Proper Identification and Using Organoleptics
- Sanitation + Bottle Cleaning
We share a mini-tour of the original Atlanta Herbalista Apothecary and hope to share with you all the simple methods that we use to create a highly functional community dispensary.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
(The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.)
You are free to:
- Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
- Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material or any purpose, even commercially.
Under the following terms:
- Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
- ShareAlike — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original.
- No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
Recipes & Elixirs
HERBALISTA TOOLKIT
For additional medicine making tools, recipes and templates, please join us as a sustaining member to access our online Toolkit. The Toolkit is filled with the tools to help folks do herbwork in their community. From templates to recipes, how-to videos to packing lists — we got you covered. Available to Sustaining Members, we hope the Herbalista Toolkit helps you on your herbal journey, just as your support helps us on ours.
Medicine Making Gallery
