Volume 38 Issue 3

“What’s in a name?” Juliet asks in Romeo and Juliet, before deciding that a rose would still smell as sweet by any other name.¹

Perhaps, but names do matter. They carry identity, history and culture. They can also tell us something about where we belong, or where we are going.

Australian botanists know something about this. For much of their taxonomic lives, the bloodwoods were classified as Eucalypts. In 1995, they were separated into the genus Corymbia when the old name no longer reflected their botanic character.² The trees themselves, apparently untroubled, carried on being trees. And they are still colloquially known as Eucalypts.

There is something reassuring in that.

After many years as the Australian Journal of Herbal and Naturopathic Medicine (AJHNM), the journal is becoming the International Journal of Naturopathic and Herbal Medicine (IJNHM).

The journal has not suddenly become something different. The new name describes more about what has already been happening. Our authors, reviewers, editorial contributors and readers increasingly extend beyond Australia, and the journal occupies a growing place in an international naturopathic and herbal community.

The name also gives us something to grow into.

IJNHM makes our intention to raise the visibility of peer-reviewed research in naturopathic and herbal medicine explicit. It also distinguishes the journal from primarily serving an Australian association.

None of this diminishes the journal’s Australian origins. AJHNM has a history worth carrying forward, built through the NHAA and through the work of successive editors, authors, reviewers and practitioners who understood the importance of a scholarly home for this research.

A change of name does not erase that legacy. Like Corymbia, it simply describes the next stage more clearly, and it will always be known as the NHAA’s journal.

On behalf of the editorial board, we are grateful to the NHAA Board for supporting the journal’s continued development, and for its commitment to naturopathy and herbal medicine as disciplines worthy of serious research and scholarship.

So, what’s in a name?

In this case, a history – and a direction.

Welcome to IJNHM.

The papers this (southern hemisphere) spring also reflect the journal’s widening international reach and the breadth of research across naturopathic and herbal medicine.

From India, a case series explores integrated naturopathy and yoga as a conservative approach to lumbar disc herniation, while Nurhayati and colleagues from Indonesia review the antihypertensive potential of Moringa oleifera. Closer to home, a narrative review from Western Australia revisits Scaevola spinescens, bringing together its Aboriginal medicinal use, unusual regulatory history and emerging pharmacological evidence, and asking what might be required for its current Schedule 4 classification to be reconsidered.

Together, the papers move across clinical practice, experimental pharmacology, phytotherapy, traditional knowledge and regulation, an appropriately broad collection as the journal begins its next chapter.

Author(s)

Susan Arentz PhD, BHSc (Hons)
Editor, Australian Journal of Herbal and Naturopathic Medicine
PO Box 696, Ashfield, NSW 2131, Australia
Email journal@nhaa.org.au

References

1. Shakespeare W. Romeo And Juliet: As it is Performed at the Theatre-Royal in Drury-Lane. Tonson; 1753.
2. Brooker MIH. A new classification of the genus Eucalyptus L’Her.(Myrtaceae). Australian Systematic Botany. 2000;13(1):79–148.