Published Books

Below are books written and contributed to by Legendary Herbs founder Eric Brand.

For centuries, pharmacists and clinicians have relied on the traditional method of macroscopic identification to assess the quality and authenticity of medicinal materials. Macroscopic identification uses the naked senses to assess herbal quality, combining appearance, texture, aroma, and taste with traditional methods of fire and water testing. For the first time, this text brings this specialized discipline of knowledge to English readers using a concise, illustrated format that distills the experience of China’s foremost authorities in visually rich, easy-to-understand format. Chinese Medicinal Identification: An Illustrated Approach records 429 commonly used Chinese medicinal materials (including associated medicinals), using the Chinese Pharmacopoeia (2005) combined with domestic and international market investigation as a basis for determining medicinal nomenclature. For each medicinal, details are provided on nomenclature, origin, harvesting and post-harvest handling, functions and properties, macroscopic characteristics, and decoction pieces. The book can be referenced via a Chinese stroke order index, a Pinyin index, and indexes organized by Latin Pharmaceutical names and Latin binomials. This book emphasizes the experience-based differentiation of Chinese medicinal materials, which is a treasure of China’s cultural heritage that has been inherited and systematized, combining the technical terms derived from experience in differentiation with a modern scientific perspective. At the same time, the authors draw upon a foundation of years of field research and experiments related to medicinal materials, synthesizing information on trade, literature, and techniques, dissecting each detail. The book visually illustrates the art and science of macroscopic identification of medicinal materials in a way that is easy to learn, easy to remember, and easy to disseminate, supplementing the insufficient state of illustrations in the current literature.

In recent years, granules have become the most popular delivery form for Chinese herbal medicine in the West. However, while the convenience, portability, and efficacy of granules has revolutionized professional herbal medicine, many practitioners have not been exposed to a systematic discussion of critical issues such as dosage and clinical strategies. Over the past 40 years, different approaches to dosage and formulation have emerged in Taiwan, Japan, and mainland China. While granule efficacy can be maximized by observing modern clinical trends in Asia, resources that shed light on this subject are few and far between. In an effort to bridge this knowledge gap, Eric Brand has traveled to factories, hospitals, and clinics throughout Asia to research the manufacturing and clinical trends in the world of granules.

In this practical granule handbook for clinicians, Eric covers:
* Effective dosing strategies
* Methods of formula combining
* Common clinical approaches seen in mainland China and Taiwan
* Concentration ratios and their effect on dosage
* Various manufacturing methods and their impact on patient care
* How to set up an efficient pharmacy with attention to good compounding practices