Leaves of Life (Vol.1) is a priceless resource of information on over one hundred single plants, believed to have been lost over generations. With this reference manual of plants from Guyana, organized into easily useful diagnostic categories, you can use this information to improve the quality of your life and to spread the knowledge of the medicinal and healing properties of single plants.

The aim of Leaves of Life is to assist the layperson in self-healing through the use and preparation of herbs by providing important information on the medicinal and traditional uses of herbs from Guyana in a succinct easy-to-use form. In Guyana, the knowledge of the uses of these medicinal plants traditionally passed down from generation to generation by word of mouth.   Both in its philosophy and its practical application toward healing, Obeah, as an African healing system, has a great deal to offer Western Medicine.  There are still large numbers of medicinal plants, which remained, undocumented and uncharacterized.   Every day new plant sources of medicine are also being discovered.[1] The advent of pharmaceutical chemistry during the early twentieth century brought with it the ability to synthesize an enormous variety of medicinal drug molecules and allowed the treatment of previously incurable and/or life-threatening diseases. It is estimated that Americans consume more than 40 billion tablets a year.[2]   Nearly $500 million is spent on over-the-counter drugs containing aspirin each year. [3] However, synthetic drugs have been plagued by unwanted toxic side effects.  The emergence of new infectious diseases, the proliferation of disorders such as cancer, and growing multidrug resistance in pathogenic microorganisms have prompted renewed interest in the discovery of potential drug molecules from medicinal plants. 



[1] Ahmad Iqbal,  Aqil Farrukh and Owais Mohammad, Modern Phytomedicine: Turning Medical Plants into Drugs, Germany: Wiley-Vch Verlag Gmbh & Co. KGaA, 2006;  252.

[2] Hou, Joseph P. and  Jin Youyu, The Healing Power of Chinese Herbs Binghamton,  New York: The Haworth Integrative Healing Press, 2005; 2.

[3] Ibid., 2.

Leaves of Life: Volume 1
$ 20.99