Dr Vilma Bharatan, a Research Associate in the Department of Botany at London’s Natural History Museum, has been working for a number of years on a database of plant/funghal names in homeopathy, translating them to their modern equivalents. Her work was published in book form in 2002, and the updated and expanded database became available online, with the addition of images, in October 2007. The database is freely accessible and searchable.

A further 1,500 images have recently been uploaded.

From the site:

“The homeopathy database is a standard reference system for homeopathic practitioners, and other users of plant remedies. It reconciles the old homeopathic codes with the current botanical code. The information is based on long established remedies in the Homeopathic Materiae Medicae that are now revised and updated and the online access means it can be maintained and updated easily in line with current concepts of botanical nomenclature.”

This valuable resource deserves widespread support, particularly given current attitudes towards homeopathy in the UK media.

This one deserves an entry to itself (as opposed to just an addition to the Links page).

Vilma Bharatan of London’s Natural History Museum has been working for a number of years on a database of plant/funghal names in homeopathy, translating them to their modern equivalents. Her work was published in book form in 2002, but the updated and expanded database is now online, freely accessible and searchable.

From the site:

“Homeopathic remedies have accumulated gradually over the past 200 years. During this time, the plants and fungi in the various Homeopathic Materiae Medicae have received a variety of epithets, although these are mostly Latin names. Often, the naming of these plant remedies has not followed any recognised botanical or medical code and, despite having some resemblance to the modern botanical system, nearly half of these names needed updating with respect to the current International Code of Botanical Nomenclature (ICBN; Greuter et al ., 2000; McNeill et al., 2006). In response to this problem, of outdated and often inaccurate nomenclature, a new checklist was prepared (Bharatan et al ., 2002; Bharatan and Humphries, 2002). This checklist together with the online searchable database can be updated in line with the revisions of the Botanical Code that take place every 6 years.”