At one point Timmy's tonic was made with licorice according to
ingredients lists people sent me to look up, but I do not know what
it is made with now. Any of the natural licorice products can cause a
false adrenal-appearing condition in some species, and more importantly
in just about anything it can cause heart problems and thrown clots
(which will look like "stroke" if they go to a peripheral area like
limb (or limbs if a saddle thrombosis) or if they go to the brain. If
they go to an organ like lung or kidney they can cause organ failure.
So, do check the ingredients and look them up for good and bad.

In the U.S. an excellent resource that is kept up to date for each
publication is the _PDR for Herbal Medicines_. With a fifth edition
coming up there are very, very affordable copies of the fourth edition
at Amazon right now:

<http://www.amazon.com/PDR-Herbal-Medicines-Thomson-Healthcare/dp/1563636786>

Then you can look up any natural meds. If you want to be more up to
date then look in
https://www.pdrbookstore.com/Default.asp?

What you want is a resource that is by at least one pharmacognocist.
That is a discipline in pharmacy which goes in depth into the good,
the bad, the interaction, the counter-indications, etc. of natural
medications. In the U.S. it is often a degree with a doctorate.

The PDRs are HUMAN refs so not all will carry over to animal medicine.
Be warned on that, but the very basic things like licorice's effect on
the heart will apply. One great thing to do is to double check in

http://www.aspca.org/pet-care/poison-control/
for safety's sake.

There are some veterinary refs on natural meds but the two I tried were
abysmally poor and incomplete. I do not know if there have been better
ones since then. Hopefully, so.

Some natural ingredients have been looked up in the past and should be
able to be found in the FHL and FML Archives. The FML Archives address
is always in the FML's header for easy use, and the URLs of both are in
my sig lines.

Pretty much any meds, natural or not, have the capacity to do harm just
as they have the capacity to help. Harm can happen if the individual
(human or ferret or other) gets side effects, or has a medical
condition that makes the med dangerous, or is of a species that makes
the the approach unsafe, or gets too much, or takes other meds (natural
or not) that conflict or add onto that med, or...

Sukie (not a vet)

Recommended ferret health links:
http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/ferrethealth/
http://ferrethealth.org/archive/
http://www.afip.org/ferrets/index.html
http://www.miamiferret.org/
http://www.ferrethealth.msu.edu/
http://www.ferretcongress.org/
http://www.trifl.org/index.shtml
http://homepage.mac.com/sukie/sukiesferretlinks.html
all ferret topics:
http://listserv.ferretmailinglist.org/archives/ferret-search.html
"All hail the procrastinators for they shall rule the world tomorrow."
(2010, Steve Crandall)
On change for its own sake: "You can go really fast if you just jump
off the cliff." (2010, Steve Crandall)

[Posted in FML 6910]