By Susan Leopold
It felt right to bring the symposium home.
The 17th International Herb Symposium, a biennial conference founded more than 25 years ago by Rosemary Gladstar, convened this past year in Cincinnati. This location holds unique significance in the history of herbal medicine, as it was home to the Eclectic physicians, whose work shaped the course of American botanical medicine. Cincinnati was also the city where the Lloyd Brothers’ pharmacy operated, producing their renowned “Specific Medicines.” The Eclectic Medical Institute, a cornerstone of this tradition, was one of over 55 schools of eclectic medicine across the county.
Memorial Hall, the venue for the gathering, once served as the site for the graduation ceremonies of the Eclectic Medical Institute, embedding our symposium within the very geography that nurtured this influential movement. Rather than approaching the legacy of the Eclectics from an academic distance, participants stood within the actual spaces where their groundbreaking work unfolded, forging a tangible connection to the history and spirit of American herbalism.
From September 12 through 14, 2025, roughly 600 herbalists, healers, farmers, students, and plant lovers filled Memorial Hall downtown. Classes were offered by fifty-six teachers across five tracks Eclectic medicine, clinical herbalism, plant spirit work, folk medicine, and herbal business. The Herbal Emporium that filled the venue was stellar: more than thirty vendors, representing some of the most thoughtful medicine-makers and plant businesses working today. And through all three days, Amikaeyla Gaston who introduced herself as “Mama Naturezaaaa, from the white sage and indigo plant nations” held the gatherings with the grace, warmth, and fierce artistry.
Opening ceremonies: acknowledgment, directions, lineage
Amikaeyla who also has roots in Cincinnati opened the symposium with a ceremony that set the tone for everything that followed. She began with a land acknowledgment honoring the Shawnee and Miami peoples the original stewards of this land, whose cultivation and protection of local plant medicines continues to inform the work we do. She called in the six directions, naming the East for the air that carries plant medicines, the South for warmth and transformation, the West for the waters of the Ohio River that sustained generations of healers, the North for the earth that holds the roots of our plant allies, Above for the sky that brings rain and light, and Below for the soil that nurtures our medicines.
Then she invoked the lineage. Not the usual lineage of white coat physicians that herbal history often gets flattened into, but the actual genealogy of American botanical medicine: Harriet Tubman, who used lichens to determine direction on the Underground Railroad. George Washington Carver, who documented wild edible plants and medicines for public consumption in Nature’s Garden for Victory and Peace. Samuel Thomson, whose grassroots domestic medicine movement empowered common people against the establishment of his day. The Lloyd Brothers, whose innovations in plant medicine production still influence us today. And “all the mothers and grandmothers we don’t know who held this space down.” Imani with her drumming followed with a guided meditation. The room arrived and the portal opened.
John Uri Lloyd himself, through his novel Etidorhpa, described the work this ceremony was doing:
“Man is more than a physical being; within him lie boundless possibilities. As he learns to look inward, to listen to the silent music of nature and the voice of truth, he rises slowly, surely toward light, toward knowledge, toward peace.”
Amikaeyla extended that opening across the weekend with an original play she wrote based on Etidorhpa, John Uri Lloyd’s strange and luminous 1895 novel. Etidorhpa “Aphrodite” spelled backward is a subterranean visionary work, part mystical allegory, part pharmacological fever dream, a book almost no one reads anymore and almost everyone who does finds unforgettable. To see it rendered as performance, in the city of its origin, was a gift.
John Uri Lloyd walks into the room
The opening keynote was the kind of moment you cannot plan twice. Ashley Lloyd Ford the great-grandson of Nelson Ashley Lloyd, one of the three Lloyd brothers took the stage as John Uri Lloyd himself, bringing the Cincinnati pharmacist, chemist, and novelist back to life to address a room of six hundred herbalists in the building where Eclectic Medical Institute graduates once received their diplomas.
Lloyd’s own words, from Etidorhpa, hung in the air:
“You see only the gross effect, the outward form, the final expression of what to your senses is a material existence. Behind this lies a hidden universe. You do not see the cause; you cannot detect the finer forces that operate beyond your physical senses, and yet these finer forces are the true realities.”
That is the Eclectic argument, distilled. It is also the working premise of any herbalist who has ever watched a plant do something a lab test couldn’t explain.
Pat Van Skaik, Executive Director of the Lloyd Library & Museum, welcomed everyone to the symposium. The Lloyd Library stayed open all day Saturday for attendees, and Christopher Hobbs along with David Winston taught on-site sharing stories from the stacks. Marielle & The Flowers brought live music to the weekend, including “Plant Allies,” a song whose lyrics were inspired by Rosemary and the plants and many other songs that we all know but with a twist on plant inspired lyrics.
The Herbal Product Contest
Each IHS the community brings its best work to the Herbal Product Contest, facilitated by John Cummings, with judges drawn from teachers and staff. Products are entered blind, judged during Free Thyme on Saturday, and winners announced at the close of the symposium. These are not commercial awards. They are the community recognizing fine medicine made by its own.
The Grand Prize Winner of the 17th IHS was Chelsea Joel of Conscious Seed Apothecary in Loveland, Ohio, for her Kava Chai, which also took first place in the Anything Goes category.
Purely Medicinal
1st — Alex Williams, First Curve Apothecary, Black Walnut/Wild Cherry Bitters (Chicago, IL)
2nd — Helen Magnani, Wellness by Helen, Restorative Tonic (Los Angeles, CA)
3rd — Amanda Souther, Archaeus Apothecary, Blue Lotus Spagyric Tincture (Asheville, NC)
Anything Goes
1st — Chelsea Joel, Conscious Seed Apothecary, Kava Chai (Loveland, OH)
2nd — Michele Crosta, MotMot Collective, Mukhwas Carminative Blend (Ocean, NJ)
3rd — Stan Haught, Appalachian Sweet Dreams (Glouster, OH)
Medicinal Salves, Ointments, Oils, Luscious Lotions & Creams
1st — Erica Macrum, Sweet Fern Apothecary, Get The Funk Out (Washburn, WI)
2nd — Keya Kai Guimarães, Ecotone Kauai, Ona Ona (Kapa’a, HI)
3rd — Amanda Souther, Archaeus Apothecary, CBD Liniment (Asheville, NC)
Congratulations to every winner, and to every person who entered. The contest is one of the quiet engines of craft in this community.
What carries forward
As discussed in this issue’s Director’s Note, the Eclectic tradition did not come to an end because it was ineffective. Rather, its dismantling followed the publication of the Flexner Report in 1910. The Flexner Report critiqued Eclectic medicine a system that emphasized plant-based remedies and individualized treatment, drawing from a range of therapeutic traditions. This approach was fundamentally based on a different way of understanding health and disease compared to the germ theory and reductionist science that Flexner promoted. Flexner explicitly regarded sectarian forms of medicine including eclecticism, homeopathy, and osteopathy as unscientific. He advocated for the unification of medicine under a single scientific framework, which he believed should be the only legitimate basis for medical practice. In doing so, he left no room for alternative therapeutic philosophies to coexist within mainstream medicine.
“I had become wearied with the shams of science, the hypocrisies of society, the masks men wear. I desired truth naked truth no matter where it led me, no matter how it changed me.” Edidorpha
Thank you to every teacher, student, vendor, musician, volunteer, and attendee who made this past year’s IHS what it was. Thank you to Amikaeyla, Imani, Ashley, the Lloyd Library, Marielle & The Flowers, and every elder, maker, and stranger-who-became-family over three days in Cincinnati. And thank you to the plants, who are, as always, the reason we keep showing up.
The 18th IHS is already on the horizon. See you there.
