Trying to Give Ease: Tommie Bass and the Story of Herbal Medicine, and: A Reference Guide to Medicinal Plants: Herbal Medicine Past and Present

These two volumes were originally published in 1989 under the collective title Herbal Medicine Past and Present. Their reissue should be a welcome relief to the pocketbooks of ethnobotanists, ethnopharmacologists, and historians of pharmacy and medicine, who can now add these titles to their personal collections at less than half the cost of their clothbound counterparts.

More than financial considerations warrant the reissue of these titles. The story of the Appalachian herbal healer Tommie Bass speaks to issues and concerns that in many ways are more in evidence today than when it was first released. The importance of domestic medicine and so-called alternative health-care systems is underscored by the new scientific attention they have received through the Office of Alternative Medicine at the National Institutes of Health, and other leading institutions. Because of the growing role of phytomedicinal products in the over-the-counter retail drug market, knowledge of the historic traditions of herbal medicine takes on renewed significance. Although Tommie Bass died in 1996, the record of his practice in northeastern Alabama is preserved through Crellin’s meticulous and painstaking analysis (Philpott’s work was attenuated by ill health).

What is uncovered in Trying to Give Ease is the practice of an empirical healer who held to no particular theory of medicine but implicitly followed diverse (often antiquated) principles such as humoralism and the notion of the body as a thermodynamic engine. Thus blood purifiers, alteratives, and other outdated concepts form a significant part of the Bass therapeutic regimen. Bass’s sources of information about the plants he used were as varied as his notions of therapeutics: he drew from almanacs, herb-buyer’s catalogs, drugstore calendars, domestic medicine manuals, popular health magazines like Prevention, and the radio. Apparently making little or no distinction between the authority of his reference guides, he supplemented these external information sources with observation and verification through the anecdotal accounts of those under his care.

While such an approach is unquestionably unscientific and perhaps even dangerous, there can be little doubt that Tommie Bass has left an impress upon the community he served. The resilience of his practice in the face of modern medicine can be explained by a variety of factors, ranging from economic considerations to dissatisfaction with the provision of mainstream medical care, its impersonalization, and the side effects of many of its chemotherapeutic agents.

For the historian, this book is a window into a bygone era. True, herbalists still abound, but not the homegrown variety like Tommie Bass who learned his practice from folk traditions and gathered his medicines from field and forest. By the last years of his life, even Bass was beginning to use prepackaged dosage forms rather than the time-honored methods of wildcrafting.

As important as Bass’s story is, this approach has its limitations; the major one being its narrow focus. The reader is cautioned that this is, in fact, Tommie Bass’s story: we do not know how typical or atypical his practice was. We cannot say with certainty, for example, that all American herbalists gathered their information from as diverse a body of sources, uncritically accepted, as did Bass. We also cannot broadly characterize the interaction of the herbalist with his or her community, for if this book tells us anything it is that the herbalist/patient relationship comprises a complex array of factors not dictated by scientific considerations but measured and directed by the personalities of those involved. The best that can be said is that the practices of domestic healers are rich and colorful but idiosyncratic and difficult to characterize.

Nevertheless, because...