This book, entitled Pharmacology: A handbook for complementary healthcare professionals, is a useful tool for all healthcare practitioners within the so-called complementary sector. The author, Elaine Aldred, represents this sector well, as she holds degrees and competencies in chiropractic, acupuncture and herbal medicine. She has written this book as a result of her frustration as a lecturer with material currently available to students in the complementary healthcare sector, and also for practitioners out in the field as a quick and relevant source of comprehensive information on pharmacology.

Being the principal of the Anglo–European College of Chiropractic, a higher education institution devoted to chiropractic education, and also a practitioner, I share Elaine’s frustrations and I will be pleased to add this book to the reading list for our students. It will also become handy in my own practice as there is no doubt that we need to understand the correct approaches to the use of pharmacology in patient treatments. Specifically, understanding pharmacodynamics and kinetics, the risk–benefi t profile of a drug, its drug interactions and the relevance of its use in our patient care is essential in a holistic approach to health. The content of the book has a logical approach, starting with an explanation of the basic principles of pharmacology and gradually putting the building blocks together for a complete understanding of the use and action of pharmacology suitable for its audience.

For this audience it is essential not only that the basic principles of pharmacology are dealt with to give the student or practitioner a solid grounding but that the material also allows for a deeper and more detailed understanding. As the aim of the book is to bridge the gap between orthodox and complementary fields in the understanding of pharmacology, it is inevitable that it focuses on vitamins and minerals relevant to pharmacology, ensuring the complementary practitioner’s understanding of possible interactions of supplementation provided in conjunction with orthodox medication. The book therefore describes the major classes of drugs that affect the respiratory, cardiovascular and gastrointestinal systems, and how these relate to physiological and gastrophysiological mechanisms. The section on plant metabolites used in herbal medicine adds great value to the book for the complementary practitioner, particularly for those who need to develop a deeper understanding of the use of herbal medicine and, of course, for students from all sectors of complementary medicine.

The section on toxicology and laboratory tests follows a fairly standard format but is nevertheless an essential ingredient in a book like this. The introduction to the principles of evidence medicine is perhaps brief but still important. All complementary medicine is being judged by the yardstick of orthodoxy and it rarely matches up to expectations. Someone once said that if you play tennis you should not be judged by the rules of golf. I fear that complementary medicine often finds itself in this dilemma. Our treatment of patients or patient encounters are often so individualistic and specific that evidence of efficacy or effi ciency is often lost in the orthodox randomized clinical trial paradigm. This does not mean that there is no evidence that what we do works, it means that we have to strive to find a new paradigm for such measurement. Although this book is not intented to be a bedtime read, it can be read cover to cover, equally useful for student and practitioner, and I thoroughly recommend it.