It's the best of jobs, it's the worst of jobs

I've said this before but not in this way:

Herbalism - the maintenance and improvement of health through the use of plants.  Some things are covered by this which shouldn't be, for instance you might improve health by using plants to clear the atmosphere of formaldehyde, benzene and ammonia, by creating a landscape garden or using a park as a city's "green lung", but this is specifically to do with herbalism as a narrowly medically defined approach to health.

Incidentally, this is the first video i've done using a tripod and i had endless trouble with it.  Whereas the tripod itself was very useful, the batteries ran out towards the end and on editing it, Avidemux and Windows Movie Maker both screwed it up several times.  Therefore, there are rather more um's and er's in this than i would ideally like, but i'm working to a tight schedule and ended up posting it as is.

My points are threefold really.  One is that research has shown that most of the general public do not know that herbalists exist or what we do, in spite of strenuous efforts to remedy this, so i thought it would be helpful to do a video which went through this in detail.  Another is the major discrepancy between the scepticism shown towards herbalism along with the research apparently showing that it doesn't work and my own measurable findings which occur after people consult me and i give them herbs.  That's an ethical red herring and in fact there's even an argument for herbalism being a good thing if it doesn't work.  Finally, there are two real ethical problems associated with herbalism which are rarely mentioned.  One is that seeing someone who hoards information about health doesn't ultimately help the client, and the other is that given the fact, widely known among herbalists, that it is nearly always impossible to make a living as a herbalist, the tacit pretence that it is cannot be justified.  Candidates of herbal medicine courses need to be told, before they start the course, that the chances of them being able to use their degrees professionally rather than as general degrees like English or History, are practically zero. a