At the end of this lecture, students should be able to characterize the basics of Chinese herbal medicines (CHM), their relationship to traditional Chinese medicine which also has been practiced in China for countless generations, and how these products are used and regulated within and outside of China.

Students should be able to identify some of the reported cases in which adverse reactions were seen to have been linked strongly to the use of CHM. They should realize that these cases are primarily due to misuse or lack of quality control of these products.

Students are also expected to know about the majority of CHM or Chinese herbs that by comparison are much safer and more effective, as this class of Chinese herbs has had a long history of use other than for medicinal purposes. These students should be able to describe the basic pharmaceutical properties that are characteristic to this major class of Chinese herbs.

As a fourth performance objective, students should be able to appreciate the factors that continue to make CHM unacceptable to a great number of people, especially those who are skeptical about holistic or folk medicine. These students may want to explore further on their own to offer some solutions to this problem.

Finally, from this lecture, students should be able to provide themselves with a good list of references and resources for further pursuit of CHM, should they find such a subject matter intriguing enough.