Ethnoveterinary Medicine: The Science of Botanicals in Equine Health and Disease - Proceedings of Horse Health Nutrition - Lelystad, 2004

Introduction “Botanicals as medicine” is not a novel concept. For the entire breadth of human culture we have used plants as our major resource for health-promoting substances, and even in contemporary society plants still offer our most valuable reservoir of new drugs. What is relatively new, however, is the ready and largely uninformed access that the horse industry has to herbal products. Though not without its benefits, this herbal revolution has faded the line between “feed” and “drug”, and leaves both horse owners and veterinarians confused about the distinction between husbandry and health care. Fundamental issues of dose, efficacy, and safety are, at best, left to an educated guess and, at worst, completely ignored. Even for those wading through the scientific literature for basic and applied research, animal-based research on many herbs is difficult to come by, and research on herbs for horses is virtually non-existent.