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Plants Used Medically by Indigenous Peoples

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Phytochemical Resources for Medicine and Agriculture

Abstract

Indigenous peoples traditionally use a wide range of plants to maintain their health. Many such plants have been selected empirically for generations, a continuing experimental process still under way. Modern medicine has benefited from anecdotal results of these experiments by selecting needed candidates for a currently inadequate pharmacopeia to treat large numbers of diseases and symptoms. When the rapid destruction of tropical vegetation—where the majority of cultured peoples using traditional medicines still live and where the richness of the flora implies great numbers of medically valuable plants—is considered in relation to the recent upsurge of interest in finding antiviral and antineoplastic agents, there is ample reason to justify learning what plants indigenous peoples are using, how they are using them, and under what circumstances they are proving efficacious. These often ignored ethnobotanical findings set the stage for targeting plant materials which can then be meaningfully analyzed for activity using appropriate bioassays and, when these are significant, for chemical isolation and characterization of active principles.

Supported in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation (BSR-8508075). I thank Jennifer L. Barry who typed the manuscript so efficiently, Ruth Lewis of the biology library who helped with reference materials, and Cathy M. Crandall who assisted in compiling Table 2.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, 63130, USA

    Walter H. Lewis

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  1. The University of Florida, Lake Alfred, Florida, USA

    Herbert N. Nigg

  2. University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois, USA

    David Seigler

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Lewis, W.H. (1992). Plants Used Medically by Indigenous Peoples. In: Nigg, H.N., Seigler, D. (eds) Phytochemical Resources for Medicine and Agriculture. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-2584-8_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-2584-8_3

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