Vicki Pitman is a Western Herbal Medicine practitioner, registered with the URHP. She gained her M.Phil. in Complementary Health Studies at Exeter University. Her dissertation was subsequently published as The Nature of the Whole, Holism in Ancient Greek and Indian Medicine. This research combined her deep interests in both history and herbal medicine and traditional healing.

She has been a teacher and trainer in the field of Complementary Therapies and Adult Education. She is also qualified in Ayurveda, Reflexology, Aromatherapy, and Massage. In 1999 she co-organised with Dr. Dominik Wujastyk, a conference at the Wellcome Institute (now the Wellcome Library and Collection) on Precept and Practice in Traditional Medical Systems. She is a founder member of the Herbal History Research Network. www.herbalhistory.org Her writings include books on Herbal Medicine, Reflexology, Aromatherapy, several articles in international journals; and chapters in Reshaping Herbal Medicine, Knowledge Education and Professional Culture (ed. Catherine O’Sullivan, Elsevier, 2005) and Critical Approaches to the History of Western Herbal Medicine From Classical Antiquity to the Early Modern Period (ed. Susan Francia and Anne Stobart, Bloomsbury, 2014).