Intro to Medical Ethnobotany

Why Ethnobotany and Not Ethnozoology? Primary production – biomass We literally ARE what we eat and plants are ultimately our energy source Plants are immobile – they can’t run away from consumers or move to avoid inhospitable conditions; they also can’t move to carry out reproductive activities So, plants produce a vast array of secondary chemicals for activities such as defense, protection, pollinator attraction, and seed dispersal

Why study people living a more traditional lifestyle? People tend to have a more intimate connection with the plants they use – they know where their food was grown, what plant it comes from, etc. People typically have been in the same area for long enough to know their local plants and their properties

Carl Linnaeus & Botanical Nomenclature In 1753, Linnaeus proposed a standard way to form scientific names (in Species Plantarum) Introduced ranks (e.g., family...genus...species) and binomial species names A form of this system is still in use today

Carl Linnaeus & the Sexual System

Linnaeus & Ethnobotany Before the scandal... In 1732, Linnaeus traveled alone to Lapland (in N. Finland) There, he lived among the Sami people for many months, learning their language and culture and documenting their use of plants

William Withering An Account of the Foxglove and Some of Its Medical Uses.

digoxin digitoxin

Richard Evan Schultes and Modern Ethnobotany As an undergraduate at Harvard in the 1930s, Schultes chose to write about the peyote cactus for his senior thesis – he traveled to Oklahoma in 1937 to study with the Kiowa Indians and learn about their ceremonial use of this cactus Schultes’ doctoral research took him to Mexico, where he documented the use of the sacred mushroom of the Aztecs, Teonanacatl, for the first time

Richard Evan Schultes and Modern Ethnobotany After receiving his PhD in 1941, Schultes documented the ethnobotany of the tribal peoples of the northwest Amazon When he returned to Bogota from the Amazon Basin, he learned that WWII had begun Went to the American embassy to go home, but they sent him back into the Amazon Schultes was assigned to determine the density of rubber trees in the Amazon and to see if the local tribal people could harvest the rubber Spent 14 years traveling through the NW Amazon

Richard Evans Schultes

Claude Levi-Strauss – Father of structural anthropology

Three common components of all indigenous healing systems a cosmological view of the universe that informs the cause, diagnosis, and treatment of disease a cultural context in which healthcare is given a standard collection of pharmaceutical substances

components of successful ethnopharmacological research… knowledge of culture’s self-identity, world view (borrows from structural anthropology) knowledge of culture’s concept of disease cause / etiology knowledge of culture’s names for diseases knowledge of culture’s plant taxonomy (may or may not correspond to Western concepts)

ethical ethnopharmacological practice indigenous property rights appropriate compensation conservation of resources (cultural and biological) return of knowledge?

“Grey Pharmaceuticals” Many safe and effective drugs are not marketable in Western pharmaceutical industry – no more safe or effective than an existing treatment – drug affects more than one point in a biochemical pathway

Ethnobotanical Research and Medicine in Developing Countries In Western medicine, only pure compounds of known molecular structure and pharmacological activity are acceptable drug candidates Developing drugs that conform to these standards is expensive and these drugs are typically inaccessible to people in developing countries Crude plant extracts that are proven to be clinically safe and effective offer a sustainable and low cost alternative to Western drugs in the developing world

Ethnobotanical Research and Medicine in Developing Countries many countries, including Mexico, China, Nigeria, and Thailand, are integrating traditional botanical medicine into their primary health care systems According to the World Health Organization, more than 3.5 billion people in the developing world rely on plants as components of their healthcare

Ethnobotanical Research and Medicine in Developing Countries rapid urbanization / Westernization often accompanied by the loss of traditional medical knowledge ethnobotanical research plays an important role in documenting and preserving traditional knowledge for transfer into primary health care system

Preserving resources cultural (language, customs, myths, values & world view) ethnobotanical knowledge biological (biodiversity, accessibility)