Re: [Gnumed-devel] Usage of GNU-med for TCM

[Busser, Jim]

On 2012-02-28, at 1:27 PM, Axel Wachtler wrote:

> What I have seen in the current used TCM software is, that they have 
> implemented a kind of lexica. In simple words they have the plant
> name (latin, english, german, pinjin), a description what the plant
> does and literature references. On the first view the information is
> organized like a wikipedia for med. drugs and herbs. A free data base would 
> be very helpfull here. Technically, the descriptions of the plants should 
> have a trust level, so one or more readers/authors should sign the article or 
> parts of it if they agree. Additionally there should be the option of 
> allowing different parallel descriptions of one drug, because there will be 
> sometimes different interpretations all over the world or the description is 
> in different languages available.
> I've just found that one university of Honkong started a page with such
> a collection, but without signed information.

I imagine that if the latin name of a plant (genus, species) is sufficiently 
distinct and identifying for its medicinal properties, one might even start to 
think about it as the equivalent of an

        International Nonproprietary Name (INN)

although the analogy may break, because surely it will make a big difference if 
we are talking the plant root, stem, leaf, seeds, berries etc not to mention 
the method(s) of preparation and therefore something more than the just the 
name may be required to be the product's "unique identifier".


-- Jim