Medical ethnobotany

Ethnopharmacological relevance: In rural areas of Mexico the impact of modernization has changed healthcare and health seeking behaviour to varying degrees. This has rarely been accounted for when discussing and comparing medicinal floras. The ethnomedical system of the Zoque has never before been systematically studied. Aim of the study: The objective of this study was to document medical practices and medicinal plant knowledge of the Zoque of Chiapas and Oaxaca, the latter being more strongly affected by acculturation. The medicinal floras are compared in order to detect similarities and differences and establishing links to the cultural transformation. Methods: Research was carried out in a total of nine Zoque municipalities, attempting to adequately represent the cultural and ecological diversity of the Zoque territory. Standard anthropological and ethnobotanical methods were used for data collection. The recorded medicinal uses were classified into 17 disease categories according to emic medical concepts. In each category, the recorded taxa were rank-ordered based on number of use-reports and the informant consensus factor was calculated. The characteristics of the disease categories and the most salient taxa were compared across the two field sites. Results and discussion: A total of 6598 use-reports on 544 species have been collected. With the strongly acculturated Zoque of Oaxaca we have documented a considerably less extensive medicinal flora. The ethnopharmacopoeias of the two Zoque groups share 144 species. These species are of over-proportionate salience, accounting for two-thirds of the total use-reports. In both field sites gastrointestinal disorders are of particular importance, followed by women's diseases, respiratory diseases and muscu-loskeletal ailments. Children's and spiritual illnesses seem to have lost their importance in Oaxaca, as the underlying concepts are often considered backwards and superstitious. Conclusion: While it is difficult to establish a quantitative causal relation between acculturation and medicinal plant knowledge, in qualitative terms there are clear indicators for the changes acculturation has brought about in the medical system of the Zoque of Oaxaca. The results suggest the development of an increasingly homogenized pan-Mesoamerican medicinal flora.

El Antiguo Egipto puede ser un campo de estudio para diversas disciplinas científicas con el objeto de establecer las relaciones que existieron entre el hombre y las especies vegetales en esta cultura desaparecida. En el presente artículo se realiza un recorrido por la Fitoterapia de esta rica civilización considerando algunas aportaciones recientes.

Indigenous Ashaninka people from the Peruvian Amazon operate within their communal reserve and autonomous native communities, where biomedical health posts and biomedical practitioners are present. This article analyses how the two systems of knowledge and practice i.e., indigenous medicine and biomedicine, coexist in the Ashaninka territory and how they are articulated in childbirth, birth control and other aspects of reproductive health. Their medicinal cosmology privileges the medicinal plant use and midwifery. At the same time, these practices are compatible with biomedical thinking. The childbirth techniques widely shared by the Ashaninka women and midwifes do not change substantially after biomedical training. Instead, Ashaninka women complementarily add new practices to their own pre-existing array of contraceptive and labour techniques, without shifting their ontological basis. The Ashaninka seem a resilient society, one which is capable of “absorbing” novel biomedical knowledge, practices and technology into their medical landscape, while remaining within their cultural boundaries and thus preserving their specific features.