A Historical Study of Plant-Based Healing in the Age of Biomedicine

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In recent years, a growing dissatisfaction with biomedicine and rising rates of mental illnesses have led patients to search for therapeutic alternatives. Numerous news reports, best-selling books, television series, and scientific journal articles have increasingly begun to suggest that plant-based healing from Indigenous and folk practices offers a glimpse of hope for those whose suffering has been unaddressed or neglected by biomedicine. Such portraits often reinforce two conventional historical narratives: first, that these plant-based therapies were heralded as medical miracles from the late 1950s to the late 1960s before several scientific and cultural controversies transformed them into social pariahs, effectively ending scientific studies of psilocybin, lysergic acid diethylamide, and ayahuasca; and second, that these Indigenous and folk traditions are static, remaining unchanged over time and space. This doctoral dissertation project, however, shows that these historical narratives are incomplete. By focusing on ayahuasca, a plant-based concoction from the northwestern Amazon, this research offers an important corrective to these historical narratives and joins a growing body of research that emphasizes the dynamic relationship between folk and Indigenous knowledge and biomedicine.This project reconstructs the relationship between scientists, local knowledge practitioners and healers, and ayahuasca from the late nineteenth century to the late twentieth century. Drawing on qualitative data gathered from archival research, oral histories and interviews, museum collections, and published sources, this historical project responds to two main research questions: 1) Why has ayahuasca sustained the attention of generations of multidisciplinary and transnational scientists? Preliminary archival research for this project suggests that scientists leveraged ayahuasca to professionalize their disciplines and develop bioprospecting opportunities with limited success. Folk and Indigenous perspectives are, however, often absent from these sources leading to this project’s second major research question: 2) What were the consequences of ayahuasca research, including humans and non-humans? Findings from this project will contextualize the influence of Indigenous and folk knowledge on modern science as well as the role of non-human actors in knowledge production.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.