"This textbook is the third edition of a well known textbook to practicing naturopaths and others involved in the provision of complementary and alternative medicine. Without any doubt this is an impressive reference book that was updated and according to the editor has 10,000 citations of peer reviewed research literature. The textbook as in previous editions, is divided into a set of two volumes. The first covers philosophy and history of natural medicine, diagnostic procedures, therapies and treatments including the most common nutritional supplements and herbs. The second volume concentrates mostly on specific medical conditions which can be helped with natural medicine, and it covers about 75 conditions. Each topic is being referenced on evidence based material, or at least that is the aspiration. Every chapter is quite well referenced and most chapters have an average of over 100 references. 36 chapters have been added to this edition including a specific section in the pharmacology of natural medicines, on drug interactions between natural and conventional medicines This edition has an added feature of searching the entire text online with weekly content updates. (For those who purchased the E-Edition). The e-edition is easy to use and has a nice addition of accessing references, link to the Pubmed, full text articles, and links to important websites, which makes this feature quite useful. But there are a few deficiencies to this impressive and ambitious text. In this kind of a text I would like to see a clear discussion on the issue of the therapeutic relationship of the practitioner with his patients. Even though the authors do discuss the issue of the placebo response and positive mental attitude, a more in-depth discussion is expected from this leading text on ethics and how to develop a positive therapeutic relationship. Without that discussion the textbook loses its soul of intention to heal. Another major deficiency is the lack of discussion on how naturopaths and natural medicine can be integrated into the current medical system. Most authorities in complementary medicine today are discussing multiple issues related to integrative medicine and how integration should proceed. The text does mention this fact briefly, but fails to elaborate on this issue. Throughout the whole text it’s not clear how the natural methods can be easily integrated. Current models of integrative medicine as being practiced in the US, UK, Israel and others are not being mentioned. The biggest strength of the textbook is the section on pharmacology of natural substances that is quite extensive and useful. On the other hand the section on specific health problems lacks consistency in approach and quality among the different conditions that are being discussed. Even though there are a large number of references to each chapter, leading important references in some conditions are sorely missing and do not bring a full and up-to-date picture of the natural options that are available and their supporting research evidence. In most conditions its not clear which treatments are better than others, which one should be tried first, in what conditions specific treatment should work better than other natural treatments, discussion on specific red flags in each situation and at what point you need to be evaluated by a conventional practitioner, how to integrate those therapies with conventional treatments, etc. Instead we have in most conditions a long laundry list of possible treatments. In some chapters the description of the therapeutic approach is without justification or clarification why a specific treatment was chosen or added to the list. That affects the quality of the final product. Another point that needs to be made is the graphs and pictures; they are quite standard as you would see in a traditional text in internal medicine and not in a new vibrant text in natural medicine. I would like to see attractive pictures of plants and therapies, more decision making trees, nice summary tables that summarize the main important points in the text of each chapter, these would make the text more readable, attractive , practical and make more sense than the catecholamine and tryptophan metabolism graphs, which can be viewed elsewhere for those interested in biochemistry. Interestingly, a section on food as medicine which is one of the backbones in natural medicine does not exist in this text; this section is sorely needed and should be added in a future edition or to the e-edition. In summary, I still would recommend this text as a reference to students, teachers and practitioners who practice integrative and natural medicine, taking into account the above deficiencies as well as the high cost of this text. . "