Excerpts from the Wall Street Journal
“The Cleveland Clinic, one of the country’s top hospitals, is a surprising venue for the dispensing of herbs, a practice that is well established in China and other Eastern countries but has yet to make inroads in the U.S. because of a lack of evidence proving their effectiveness. The herbal clinic, which opened in January, has one herbalist who sees patients on Thursdays. Patients must be referred by a doctor and will be monitored to ensure that there are no drug-herbal interactions or other complications. The herbal clinic is part of the hospital’s Center for Integrative Medicine, whose offerings also include acupunture, holistic psychotherapy and massage therapy.
“Western medicine does acute care phenomenally.… But we’re still struggling a bit with our chronic-care patients and this fills in that gap and can be used concurrently,” says Melissa Young, an integrative medicine physician at Cleveland Clinic.
While acupuncture programs have sprouted across the U.S., there are only a handful of herbal clinics. Osher Center for Integrative Medicine at Northwestern University and NorthShore University HealthSystem, affiliated with the University of Chicago, both include herbal medicine among their offerings.”
