Dr Ronan Gleeson is an Irish pioneer in the field of herbal medicine. Now he's come up with something to help women with libido problems.
In the past in his private practice in Cork he identified what he believes to be an asthma epidemic in the city. As a GP he uses conventional medicines, but he has also gathered herbal remedies from the far corners of the globe and is a great believer in them.
On the asthma front and in the treatment of sleeplessness and depression he has had much success using herbs. He has a great interest in how other cultures use their natural environment as a medicine chest, gathering and harvesting the roots and herbs provided by nature. Down the ages, he says, the peoples of China, Africa and North America learned the secrets of the different plants and how to apply them to specific illnesses. Why not here too?
Libido - or loss of it - is a subject that is now engaging Dr Gleeson. "Women have libido problems too. The ancients understood this and knew how to deal with it using what nature provided. I'm just borrowing their knowledge to treat a particular condition."
To him this is not an indelicate matter . "No such thing," he says. "Once men or women trust their doctor and have faith in him or her, there is no difficulty in discussing any subject, even if it is of an intimate nature."
Women shouldn't be worried about libido problems, insists Dr Gleeson. The great outdoors can provide remedies.
All it takes is for somebody with the received knowledge to know what to do. He has been dispensing his herbal remedies during consultations with patients, and an increasing number of women have been confiding in him, he says.
Viagra, the male impotence drug, made in powder form by the Pfizer company in Ringaskiddy, Co Cork, has been a major hit throughout the world. But it's a drug for men only. Pfizer says work is under way on a female version but Dr Gleeson has been contemplating herbal remedies as a cure for female impotence for some time now too.
His answer goes as follows: take the red bark of the Yohimbe tree from Cameroon in west Africa, add to it the squaw root known to the Indian tribes of North America, and you have a female aphrodisiac. Perhaps there was sniggering in the teepees, because out on the plains, squaw root was a colloquialism for female genitalia. Anyway, this was what was used. His new herbal remedy will be called Femagro - the agro part of the title because it aggressively improves libido in women. Could this be something to clear the pubs an hour before closing time? Did Vigara bring the need for all this about? More research is obviously needed to answer all this. And what if Viagra man meets Femagro woman? Dr Gleeson remains silent on that one. But he does say that the herbal mix may be used productively by both sexes, although intended primarily for women.
"It comes in red and pink capsule form. It's deadly serious. I make it up and put it into capsule form. As a doctor I wouldn't be giving it to my patients if I didn't believe in it. I see it as a new option and one that the patients want to have."
It is, he believes, quite safe. "I'm a believer in conventional medicines but I also believe in natural ones. Having said that, and because I've studied both, I know there is no reason the twain should not meet."