Roots of Rainforest Medicine

描述(由申请人提供)： 在热带森林砍伐造成的无数伤亡中，没有一个比热带雨林治疗师和他们的植物药典的丧失更令人信服。在纪录片、贸易书籍和好莱坞制作的饮食的支持下，神奇的草药正在不必要地被牺牲的观念已经牢牢地植根于西方的日常智慧中。正如金特里所质疑的那样，“希望热带森林的生物多样性能够通过药用植物拯救世界免于癌症或艾滋病，这是不可能实现的梦想吗？”丰厚的利润和对公共健康的重要贡献--每年大约有3万美国人因从植物中提取的抗癌药物而获救--结合在一起，构成了保护原始热带自然和文化的极具说服力的论点。 这个为期两年的图书项目--《热带雨林医学之根》--挑战了这一叙事的环境基石，即药用植物生活在原始的热带森林中。根据婆罗洲和巴西的理论和实地调查，有人认为干扰栖息地--步道、厨房花园和二次生长的森林--代表着治疗师的首选觅食栖息地。与环保主义者推销的原始天堂不同，治愈栖息地在很大程度上反映了人类对自然的参与，无论是过去还是现在。它们是杂乱无章的地区，杂草丛生，种植者，灌木和藤本植物占主导地位。有人认为，我们对自然治愈属性的看法代表着一种浪漫化的历史和地理人工制品，受到关于赤道纬度之谜的伊甸园信仰的鼓励，并受到只有自然才能控制其产生的医疗疾病的金字塔理论的影响。探讨了这一干扰药典假说对公共卫生的影响，包括农业革命期间人群类疾病的爆炸性增长，随之而来的对药用植物的追求，以及治疗作用的性别划分。药用食品、观赏植物和杂草的历史转移通过殖民来源进行了调查，以及这一过程如何增强和同质化了非洲、亚洲和美洲的热带治愈植物群。以散居在非洲的非洲人为重点，有人认为，栖息地干扰和植物引进对移民治疗传统的传播至关重要。最后，这部作品记录了几个世纪以来的民族医学智慧如何以及为什么会随着这一代长辈的消亡而消亡。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Among the myriad casualties of tropical deforestation, none provides a more compelling narrative than the loss of rainforest healers and their plant pharmacopoeias. Fortified by a diet of documentaries, trade books, and Hollywood productions, the notion that miracle herbal remedies are being sacrificed needlessly has become firmly ensconced in western everyday wisdom. As Gentry queried, "Is it an impossible dream to hope that through medicinal plants the biodiversity of tropical forests might be able to save the world from cancer or AIDS?" Combined with a legacy of hefty profits and crucial contributions to public health-roughly 30,000 American lives are saved each year by anti-cancer drugs derived from plants-the `rainforest medicine narrative' constitutes a highly persuasive argument for protecting pristine tropical nature and culture. This two-year book project-The Roots of Rainforest Medicine-challenges the environmental cornerstone of this narrative, that is, that medicinal drug plants inhabit virgin tropical forests. Drawing on theory and fieldwork in Borneo and Brazil, it is argued that disturbance habitats- trails, kitchen gardens, and second growth forests-represent the preferred foraging habitats of healers. Rather than the pristine parcels of paradise marketed by environmentalists, healing habitats are reflections largely of anthropogenic engagement with nature, past and present. They are messy areas dominated by weeds, cultigens, shrubs and vines. Our perception of the healing properties of nature, it is suggested, represents a romanticized artifact of history and geography, encouraged by Edenic beliefs regarding the mysteries of the equatorial latitudes, and tempered by galenical theories that only nature can rein in the medical maladies it has spawned. The public health implications of this disturbance pharmacopoeia hypothesis are explored, including the explosion of crowd-type diseases during the agricultural revolution, the consequent quest for medicinal plants, and the gendering of healing roles. The historical transference of medicinal foods, ornamentals, and weeds is investigated through colonial sources, as is how this process enhanced and homogenized the tropical healing floras of Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Focusing on the African diaspora, it is argued that habitat disturbance and plant introduction were critical to the diffusion of immigrant healing traditions. Finally, this work documents how and why the legacy of centuries of ethnomedicinal wisdom is dying out with this generation of elders.