Subject: Re: HELP! Medical Plant info.

From: [email-masked] (Carol Brandt)
Date: 17 May 1995 16:13:25 GMT

Hello Hao -

You might do a literature search at a nearby library using the keyword
"ethnobotany".  I think you will find an overwhelming amount of
information. There is a whole area of research on tropical drugs,
pioneered by Richard Schultes, an ethnobotanist from Harvard
University. He has written several books about his adventures in the
South American forests looking for new drugs from plants. The most
famous of his discoveries was a drug now standardly used in heart
surgery.  One of my most favorite ethnobotanical references is written
by Frank Hamilton Cushing in his article on the Zuni Indians of New
Mexico, called "A Case of Primitive Surgery".  A medicine man uses
pinyon pitch, the gooey sap from Pinus edulis, and Datura meteloides, a
hallucinogen (used in this case as an anesthetic), to remove infected
tissue from a man's foot.  You can find this essay in a collection
edited by Jesse Green in his book called, Zuni: the Writings of Frank
Hamilton Cushing.  These references are good places to start.
Undoubtedly, they will lead you to other plants and plant derivatives.

Good luck with your paper!

Carol Brandt
Albuquerque, NM
[email-masked]