The study of herbs and non-traditional therapies such as acupuncture got a shot in the arm yesterday as Harvard Medical School (HMS) announced a $10 million gift to study non-traditional medicine.

The grant is a major boost for the HMS Division for Research and Education in Complementary and Integrative Medicine, which is less than a year old.

The medical school plans to use some of the money to establish a new institute to study non-traditional medicine and set up a tenured professorship-the Bernard Osher Chair in Complementary and Integrative Medical Therapies.

The director of the division is Associate Professor of Medicine David M. Eisenberg `76, who became interested in non-traditional medicine as a young doctor on a trip to China.

For the past seven years, he has held conferences for practitioners of non-traditional medicine and physicians who want to learn more about it.

At a February conference, Eisenberg urged that more basic research be done into the efficacy and safety of herbal therapies and other non-traditional treatments.

"I think in the next years we'll see more basic science. This is necessary for the field to mature," he said at the time. "We need more definitive trials."

With the newest infusion of money, Eisenberg's division will be able to do more such research with its own resources.