XVI International Botanical Congess

Tonics are a small but prevalent constituent of herbal remedies and folklore in many cultures. In concept, tonics are distinct in that their purpose is to tone or balance the health of a person or system in a bidirectional action. By contrast, most medicines are unidirectional in both purpose and action. In this study, I sought to define and describe the concept of tonics in herbal medicine cross-culturally. To do this I conducted a literature review on the subject of tonics, searched for incidence of tonics in the HRAF, and compared tonics from five groupings of herbal cultures: Europe, American Ozarks, Native Americans, Asia, and modern American.