IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v59y2004i4p837-849.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A comparison of traditional healers' medicinal plant knowledge in the Bolivian Andes and Amazon

Author

Listed:
  • Vandebroek, Ina
  • Van Damme, Patrick
  • Van Puyvelde, Luc
  • Arrazola, Susana
  • De Kimpe, Norbert

Abstract

Medicinal plant knowledge of two groups of traditional healers was thoroughly studied during a 2-year ethnobotanical survey in the Bolivian Andes (Quechua farmers from Apillapampa) and Amazon rainforest (Yuracaré-Trinitario slash-and-burn cultivators from Isiboro-Sécure National Park), respectively. Both areas represent ecologically and culturally diverse zones, differing in floristic diversity, physical accessibility to health care and degree of modernization, the latter evidenced by presence or intensity in use of modern services such as electricity, water distribution, and materials for house construction. It is generally believed that indigenous people have an impressive knowledge of useful plant species and that this knowledge reflects the plant wealth of their living environment. However, the present study shows that healers' knowledge of collected medicinal plants (expressed as percentage of plants known by name and use by the majority of healers) is higher in the Andean area characterised by a long history of anthropogenic activity, than in the biodiversity-rich rainforest (protected since 1965). Therefore, medicinal plant knowledge does not seem to depend on the level of plant diversity, degree of modernization or absence of Western health care infrastructure. Indeed, although Andean healers live in a floristically poorer environment, have adopted more modern services and have easier access to primary health care facilities, they are more knowledgeable about medicinal plants than rainforest healers who live isolated in an environment with considerable floristic/ecological variation and lack of Western health care. It is hypothesised that social factors underlying traditional medical practices (background of extensive family in traditional medicine) play an important role in transmission--and hence survival of knowledge on medicinal plants.

Suggested Citation

  • Vandebroek, Ina & Van Damme, Patrick & Van Puyvelde, Luc & Arrazola, Susana & De Kimpe, Norbert, 2004. "A comparison of traditional healers' medicinal plant knowledge in the Bolivian Andes and Amazon," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 59(4), pages 837-849, August.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:59:y:2004:i:4:p:837-849
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(03)00623-3
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Cotta, Jamie N., 2015. "Contributions of local floodplain resources to livelihoods and household income in the Peruvian Amazon," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 35-46.
    2. Ina Vandebroek & Michael J Balick, 2012. "Globalization and Loss of Plant Knowledge: Challenging the Paradigm," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(5), pages 1-6, May.
    3. Muhammad Zubair & Akash Jamil & Syed Bilal Hussain & Ahsan Ul Haq & Ahmad Hussain & Din Muhammad Zahid & Abeer Hashem & Abdulaziz A. Alqarawi & Elsayed Fathi Abd_Allah, 2021. "Diversity of Medicinal Plants among Different Tree Canopies," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(5), pages 1-13, March.
    4. Mark, Glenis Tabetha & Lyons, Antonia C., 2010. "Maori healers' views on wellbeing: The importance of mind, body, spirit, family and land," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 70(11), pages 1756-1764, June.
    5. Alfredo Saynes-Vásquez & Heike Vibrans & Francisco Vergara-Silva & Javier Caballero, 2016. "Intracultural Differences in Local Botanical Knowledge and Knowledge Loss among the Mexican Isthmus Zapotecs," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(3), pages 1-19, March.
    6. Babis, Deby, 2014. "The role of civil society organizations in the institutionalization of indigenous medicine in Bolivia," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 287-294.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:59:y:2004:i:4:p:837-849. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.