Nature's Pharmacopeia

A World of Medicinal Plants

Dan Choffnes

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN:
  9780231540155
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Alternative & Complementary Medicine

This beautifully illustrated, elegantly written textbook pairs the best research on the biochemical properties and physiological effects of medicinal plants with a fascinating history of their use throughout human civilization, revealing the influence of nature's pharmacopeia on art, war, conquest, and law. By chronicling the ways in which humans have cultivated plant species, extracted their active chemical ingredients, and investigated their effects on the body over time, Nature's Pharmacopeia also builds an unparalleled portrait of these special herbs as they transitioned from wild flora and botanical curiosities to commodities and potent drugs.

The book opens with an overview of the use of medicinal plants in the traditional practices and indigenous belief systems of people in the Americas, Africa, Asia, and ancient Europe. It then connects medicinal plants to the growth of scientific medicine in the West. Subsequent chapters cover the regulation of drugs; the use of powerful plant chemicals—such as cocaine, nicotine, and caffeine—in various medical settings; and the application of biomedicine's intellectual frameworks to the manufacture of novel drugs from ancient treatments. Geared toward nonspecialists, this text fosters a deep appreciation of the complex chemistry and cultural resonance of herbal medicine, while suggesting how we may further tap the vast repositories of the world's herbal knowledge to create new pharmaceuticals.

Chapter 1

Concepts of Ethnomedicine

An herbalist portrayed in Quechua folk art, Peru. (Paint on wood [twenty-first century])

Around 60,000 years ago, groups of humans began to venture out of their southern African center of origin and colonize new areas. Consummate explorers, some marched through eastern Africa and onward to Europe, others into Asia and beyond.¹ As they traveled, they encountered new plants and animals and perhaps new illnesses too. By nature curious, they undoubtedly tasted hundreds of leaves, roots, fruits, and seeds along the way. As they settled into lives in their new homelands, they developed a rich knowledge of which herbs were poisonous and at which times of the year. They learned which plants to gather for sustenance and eventually how to propagate them to support their growing communities. Existence was challenging for these early human explorers and colonizers. Fortunately, wherever they traveled, people discovered plants that fortified their bodies, healed their wounds, eased their pains, and affirmed their faith in the spirits that watched over them.

Communities maintained oral traditions, and in time some developed the ability to document their experiences with medicinal plants in art and writing. Archaeological evidence places the use of medicinal plants to as early as 5700 B.C.E. in Europe and approximately 4100 to 3500 B.C.E. in Asia.² Records describing the medicinal properties of plants date to at least 2500 B.C.E., when ancient medical-religious texts of India describe herbs as components of the “knowledge of life.”³ Around the same time, the Yellow Emperor in China is chronicled in legend as having documented an array of curative plants.⁴ In Egypt around 1500 B.C.E., papyri record that garlic (Allium sativum) and juniper (Juniperus spp.) were used for their healing abilities.⁵ This evidence in written form shadows the tradition linking herbal knowledge across generations in the development of a medicospiritual discipline. In North and South America, Australia, and Africa, people practiced medicine and passed on their expertise, and by the time the Europeans encountered these peoples, elaborate health beliefs and vast herbal resources existed.⁶ Indeed, societies from Asia to Europe and the Americas likely independently developed their worldviews and ideas of wellness, philosophies in which plants were integral.

Before the systematic study of anatomy, notions of germs, and the advent of clinics, humans constructed detailed scenarios to explain the circumstances conducive to health and to remedy conditions of illness. In various forms of traditional medicine, people entrusted their physical, mental, and spiritual wellness to a framework of beliefs shared by members of the same community. Interestingly, some of these health-related ideas, while embraced by societies living far apart, share certain elements. For example, one such shared principle in traditional medicine is the belief that human health reflects a balance of forces or energies. When observing the world around them, early societies recognized that natural phenomena can frequently be described by terms in sets of opposites: light and dark, hot and cold, wet and dry, among others. A harmonious natural environment, these observers reasoned, was one in which neither heat nor cold is to an extreme, in which periods of dryness are followed by rain, and they expected a balance of such contrasting forces to promote life and vigor. The human body, being part of the natural world, also expresses such conditions. Thus when the body loses its balance, illness results, and balance can be restored through spiritual exercises, physical manipulation, and medicinal herbs. This equilibrium must occur in the individual as it does in the world and in the universe, in which the same forces occur and are usually at balance. The idea that health is a function of balance is among the most widespread of the traditional medical beliefs, evident in ancient China, India, the Mediterranean, and the Americas.⁷ It also demonstrates that in many societies, medicine was inseparable from philosophy and religion.

As people settled in many different regions of the planet, they harvested native plants for medicinal purposes and cultivated those they brought from elsewhere or acquired in trade. The combination of locally sourced flora, particular landscapes and physical challenges, distinctive languages, cosmologies, and social structures together imparted unique characteristics to the world’s many types of indigenous medicines. Rather than look at any region as uniform in terms of medical culture, it is worthwhile to consider the diversity in health-related beliefs and practices along several dimensions.

First, numerous ways of treating health can exist at the same time among a group of people—that is, medical plurality. For instance, different practitioners living in a single community may have vastly divergent approaches to addressing a patient’s condition, and individuals may address medical concerns with a combination of professional assistance and self-care. Second, health-related ideas evolve over time, adapting to new illnesses, accommodating changing philosophies, and incorporating innovations. Therefore, a regional medicine as practiced now or in the past, though it may be dubbed “traditional,” is not a static entity but rather dynamic. Third, cultural borrowing can lead to a synthesis between local medical knowledge and that appropriated from other people. While some forms of medicine have developed in isolated communities, many indigenous medical practices bear witness to years of commerce and exchange. Many of the world’s major traditional medicines are complex amalgamations of beliefs and techniques, employing pharmaceuticals having originated in different places.

The following sections provide an overview of some of the traditional medical beliefs and practices of East Asia, South Asia, Africa, and the Americas and demonstrate the diverse ways that people have conceptualized health and the role of plant-based treatments in influencing it. The remainder of the discussion follows the European experience in medicine, where, as elsewhere, health was considered to be the product of a balanced physical, mental, and spiritual state. In recent centuries, an approach to medicine emerged in Europe in which the scientific testing of herbs offered new ways to gauge therapeutic activity while rejecting many previous ideas about disease causation. Now widespread, particularly in the industrialized world, this biomedical system of health care coexists with numerous traditional medical systems and countless informal and folk practices that also employ plants as medicines.

TRADITIONAL MEDICINE IN EAST ASIA

Many of the world’s medical traditions developed concepts of health that viewed the person in the context of society, the local environment, and the universe as a whole. In these systems, the body is the beneficiary of natural energies (in the form of food and environment) and supernatural forces (such as spirit powers) that promote proper development. In China, people came to believe that the whole organism is healthy when it is in a state of balance and harmony with the world. In this system, health is considered a state of physical and mental well-being.⁸

Chinese traditional medicine⁹ views the universe as permeated by the qi life force, which constantly flows through heaven, earth, and all living things. Since qi is present in the air, soil, food, and all parts of the environment, it can strongly influence human health. The properties of qi are believed to change according to the time of day and the seasons, and they can vary regionally as well. For example, qi has a warmer quality in the summer and a cooler quality in the winter, darker properties at night and lighter properties during the day. According to Chinese medicine, illness results when an individual is unable to adapt to the changing nature of qi.

These ever-fluctuating features of the universe are the foundation of Chinese medical thought. Chinese medicine recognizes that qi and all matter are endowed with two opposing qualities: yin, the dark and cool property, and yang, the light and warm property. In the body, as in the environment, neither quality should have complete reign. For example, when night falls, the sky becomes quite dark. But in the darkness, there is light in the coming dawn. The cycles of day and night, the four seasons, and the patterns of precipitation and drought are natural processes of a universe at balance. As yin properties increase, yang properties decrease, until the extreme, when yang properties appear again. Because human beings are part of the universe through which qi flows, the yin and yang qualities of the body, changing over time relative to each other, can affect the nature of its qi. As qi is the force for life, so too is it responsible for health and illness.

Chinese medicine views that the body processes qi to derive nutrition and protect itself from illness. Properly extracted from the universe, a type of qi known as orthopathic qi gives the body the means to resist illness. Meanwhile, the illness-causing heteropathic qi assaults the body from the exterior, putting two types of qi in opposition. The ability of orthopathic qi to resist heteropathic qi is considered a state of health. Any overabundance of heteropathic qi activity can lead to illness, as can an excess of orthopathic qi: the healthy state is a balance of these forces. Since qi is influenced by its yin and yang properties, illness is thought to emerge from changes in the environment (disrupting a balance by affecting heteropathic qi) and/or changes in the body (affecting orthopathic qi).

To promote the proper qualities of orthopathic qi (and thereby resist illness), practitioners of Chinese medicine are aware that yin and yang qualities in balance promote health. (This does not mean a balance of equal amounts. In Chinese medicine, the yin–yang relationship in a patient is dynamic and responsive to the state of illness and the environment.) To maintain health, they pay close attention to the emotional state, social activities, diet, and exercise regimen, all of which influence the type and movement of qi in their bodies (figure 1.1).

Belief in the role of qi in health influences lifestyle by encouraging balance in all activities: maintaining an even emotional keel, striving for social harmony, consuming cuisine with an appropriate representation of “warming” and “cooling” ingredients, and undertaking regular physical and mental pursuits. When illness strikes, however, doctors can identify patterns of colors (of face or tongue), temperatures, pulse profiles, and behaviors that indicate to them whether the patient suffers from an overabundance or deficiency of yin or yang qualities.

Medical interventions are developed to strengthen the patient’s internal qi and improve its flow through the body by imparting to it the yin or yang properties that would allow it to promote health and drive out illness.¹⁰ Chinese pharmaceuticals, which are composed of plant material as well as some mineral and animal-based substances, are commonly given in mixtures of several ingredients, often prepared as soups or pills (figure 1.2). When choosing a treatment, doctors look to influence the balance of yin and yang activities. The Chinese herbal pharmacy is extensive, containing thousands of ingredients categorized by their warming or cooling properties and effects on the body’s qi.¹¹ For example, the seed of milkvetch (Astragalus complanatus) is thought to support yang, and the stems and leaves of the dendrobium orchid (Dendrobium spp.) to strengthen yin.¹² Chinese medicine also values herbs that s...

Table of contents

• Cover 
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents 
• Preface
• Note to the Reader
• Introduction
• 1. Concepts of Ethnomedicine
• 2. The Regulation of Drugs
• 3. The Actions of Medicinal Plants
• 4. The Actions of Medicinal Plants on the Nervous System
• 5. Poppy
• 6. Coca
• 7. Peyote
• 8. Wormwood
• 9. Hemp
• 10. Coffee
• 11. Tea
• 12. Cacao
• 13. Tobacco
• 14. Popular Herbs
• 15. The Future of Medicinal Plants
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index