The Urban Fringe Dispensary is about herbal medicine in the context of urban transition culture. It has been set up by Bristol Herbalist, Max Drake, with the aim of providing a shared knowledge base and use of local resources, including wild and cultivated herbs for medicines.
You will find us at our shop, dispensary and clinic on Colston Street in Bristol. You can come in here and get free impartial information on health and how a holistic approach might be able to help you.
Our practice extends out from herbal medicine to include acupuncture, therapeutic massage, reflexology, shiatsu and craniosacral massage. Our practitioners all subscribe to our holistic principles, which is in effect our clinic manifesto.
Sustainability goals of the Urban Fringe Dispensary Project
Aside from the legislative and financial issues, it is also interesting to note that the majority of medicinal herbs on sale in this country (greater than 90%), are grown abroad. One of the main aims of the Urban Fringe Dispensary project is to develop an indigenous pharmacopoeia, where herbs are entirely sourced from the UK, with the majority coming from the local area. With this aim in mind we would encourage herbalists to explore and regain the knowledge of our forebears about the uses of the many indigenous herbs that have gone out of fashion, largely as a result of the profits that can be made from importing more exotic sounding herbs.
What is the Urban Fringe? You may well ask….
This is all the wild and cultivated green spaces in and around the city. This is
what we use to help city people form a more satisfying relationship with the natural
world. By learning about herbal medicine in a modern context we can start to free
our minds from the over-
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We do walks, talks, workshops, and run courses all connected to herbs and how to use them. These are designed for a whole range of individuals and interest groups, from absolute beginners to practising herbalists.
We are also engaged in cultivating medicinal herbs and mapping the local area for herbs that can be foraged sustainably for professional and domestic use. At the risk of stating the obvious, we believe that an essential part of learning herbal medicine is about getting to know the herbs. This includes what they look like, how they grow, and generally having a direct perceptual experience of them in their prime, whilst they are still in the soil. This is a factor that is largely missing from contemporary herbal medicine courses. Also, in the spirit of transition awareness, it makes sense to grow medicinal plants locally, to build up community resilience in the face of near future changes in legislation and availability of resources (such as the resources that are required for the manufacture and distribution of pharmaceutical medicines). It makes equal sense to spread the knowledge and skills required to use native and local plants and medicinal preparations, empowering folk to take responsibility for their health and the health of the community.
Changes in legislation affecting the supply of herbs
When the Traditional Herbal Medicines Products Directive is finally implemented in 2011, most medicinal herbs and herbal preparations will disappear from retailer’s shelves. The only products that retailers will be allowed to sell will be those that have been granted a product licence by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulation Agency (MHRA). Each product, made by each manufacturer, will have to satisfy a wide range of safety and efficacy standards, and will have to be manufactured according to pharmaceutical Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) before it will be granted a licence. Manufacturers estimate that the cost for each licence will be a minimum of £25,000, and more realistically, £50,000. There have been 4 licences granted so far.
Furthermore, a Department of Health report issued in 2008 recommends state regulation
of the practice of herbal medicine. The recommendations, if implemented, will allow
registered herbalists to carry on using all the herbs that they can currently use,
and dispense them to their patients, without licences. The main stipulation being
that before you sell someone a herbal medicine, you must be able to demonstrate that
you have conducted a consultation with the buyer. Herbalists will also be allowed
to manufacture their own medicines without using a GMP certified production facility.
However, and this is the crunch bit, if a herbalist chooses to buy in herbs or herb
preparations from a supplier, than that supplier must have GMP certification. At
present there are only two suppliers in the UK who have the certification, and it
is unlikely that the rest will be able to afford to make the necessary changes to
their production plants to get certified -
Thus there is a near future scenario where there are only 2 suppliers left in the market supplying the whole of the UK. This seriously limits the choice of what is available, and given the cost of GMP certification (@£500,000 all in), the net result will be a large increase in price. So there are very sound financial reasons for herbalists to source and produce their own herbal preparations.
Urban Fringe Dispensary, 58 Colston Street, Bristol, BS1 5AZ. Tel. 0117 9276527