The Path Between: Where Herbalism Meets Philosophy, Science, and Medicine
For those who don't know me, I'm Thomas Easley. I've been studying herbal medicine since 1996, and I’ve been in clinical practice since 2001. In 2010, I founded the Eclectic School of Herbal Medicine, and in 2015, I co-authored The Modern Herbal Dispensatory, A Medicine-Making Guide. While I do a fair amount of writing, it's mostly been for my students or book projects, with the occasional series on my school blog.
When I started this Substack, I didn’t have a long-term plan, only a couple of pieces I needed to get off my chest. I've been thinking about how I want to use this platform, and I've decided to take a different approach than you might expect from an herbalist.
What You Won't Find Here
You won't find endless posts about individual plants and their properties. I won't be publishing the typical "10 herbs for [common condition]" content that proliferates across the internet. This isn't because I don't value materia medica—I absolutely do—but because I believe this approach often misses what's most important about herbal medicine.
The Problem with Decontextualized Materia Medica
While it's relatively easy to learn what medicinal plants do and even how to prepare them, the more challenging aspects of herbal medicine are understanding:
Why you might need an herbal intervention in the first place
When herbal approaches are appropriate versus when they might not be
How to determine which therapeutic actions are needed for a specific situation
Which herbs to select from many with similar or overlapping effects
This systematic approach to herbalism—the framework for clinical decision-making—is, in my opinion, far more important than accumulating knowledge about individual plants. Also, this is not something that can be easily learned independently. There are no Western herbal textbooks (yet) that teach clinical pattern identification and differential assessment in a comprehensive way - it’s all taught directly from teacher to student.
Without this systematic understanding, there's a real risk that decontextualized materia medica “facts” become an aesthetically pleasing illusion of control rather than a pathway to healing. People collect herbs and herb knowledge almost as consumer products, accumulating information and bottles without a coherent framework for application. The plants become disconnected objects rather than participants in a relationship.
This commodification serves capitalism more than healing. When herbs are reduced to "this herb for that condition" without systemic understanding, it's perfect for marketing but terrible for actual practice. Companies can sell you the "hot new herb" each month because you lack the framework to evaluate whether you need it or how it fits into a broader approach to your health.
I genuinely care about my plant friends. I don't want them wasted because someone didn't understand what was happening in their body, couldn't accurately interpret their symptoms, or didn't know how to select the right herb for the right situation.
It's easy to develop "herb lust" (a term I’m borrowing from my friend Howie Brownstein) —to become enthralled with the beauty of plants and the magic they can work when thoughtfully selected. But without a system to guide their application, our plant allies often end up as expensive additions to already crowded supplement shelves, used ineffectively or not at all, rather than as meaningful participants in our healing journey.
What This Substack Will Explore Instead
Rather than adding to the abundance of plant profiles already available, I'll be focusing on broader issues—the juicy areas where herbal medicine intersects with mainstream medicine, philosophy, and science.
I'll explore questions like:
How do we navigate between different systems of knowledge without falling into either uncritical acceptance or rigid dismissal?
What can traditional healing frameworks teach us about complex, multifactorial health conditions?
How might we develop more sophisticated approaches to evidence that respect both scientific rigor and clinical experience?
Where do current medical paradigms fall short, and how might herbal approaches help fill those gaps?
These explorations won't just be theoretical—they'll be grounded in my decades of clinical practice, teaching experience, and ongoing dialogue with plants and practitioners across multiple healing traditions.
My First Series: The Space Between Skepticism and Messy Reality
With that in mind, my first series will examine how oversimplified skeptical frameworks shape our understanding of medicine, exploring the gap between clean theoretical divides and messy reality.
I am both a skeptic and an herbalist. These two seemingly disparate approaches exist in dynamic tension within my practice and teaching. For me, skepticism means I hold my own beliefs—herbal or otherwise—up to scrutiny. If a cherished herb or approach fails under critical examination, I’m prepared to update my view. But that doesn’t mean throwing out centuries of accrued herbal knowledge just because it doesn’t fit neatly into a gold-standard RCT. Instead, I’m striving for a more nuanced approach where evidence-based medicine and lived clinical experience intersect. As a skeptic, I apply critical thinking to both conventional and herbal medicine alike - and most especially to my own thoughts, feelings, hunches and intuitions. In future writings, I'll address problematic concepts within herbalism itself - like how terms such as "adaptogen" have become clinically meaningless categories that serve marketing more than medicine.
But before critiquing specific practices or concepts, I believe we need to examine the very frameworks we use to evaluate claims in the first place. This series therefore begins not with an examination of particular herbal approaches, but with an exploration of how we understand, generate, and validate knowledge across healthcare domains.
The series will explore the problems with skepticism without complexity and the ways in which oversimplified frameworks fail both science and patients alike. It's about developing more sophisticated tools for evaluation before applying them to specific questions.
We'll examine topics like:
How identical medications face wildly different regulatory fates across borders
When "just the placebo effect" becomes a conversation-stopper rather than the beginning of deeper inquiry
How our evidence hierarchies illuminate some questions while rendering others invisible
The political economy that determines which research questions get asked and answered
My goal is to invite you into a more sophisticated relationship with evidence, uncertainty, and the inherent complexity of human healing.
What You Can Expect
My posts typically won't be short. They'll be detailed, nuanced explorations that resist oversimplification. I won't shy away from complexity or from acknowledging the limitations of my own perspective. I believe this depth is necessary to do justice to these topics.
I also won't be posting daily or even weekly. Quality takes time, and I'd rather share something substantive and thoughtful than rush to maintain a relentless publishing schedule.
What I can promise is content that:
Respects your intelligence and capacity for nuanced thinking
Draws from both traditional wisdom and contemporary science
Challenges oversimplifications from both mainstream and alternative perspectives
Offers practical insights alongside theoretical explorations
If you're looking for quick fixes or simple answers, this probably isn't the Substack for you. But if you're interested in exploring the path between scientific inquiry, philosophical examination, and herbal medicine, I welcome you to join me on this journey.
-Thomas