Introduction

Traditional ethnobotanical healing systems the world over form a vital dimension of indigenous knowledge. Such striking and complex systems provide a locus-point for outsiders to encounter a society’s understanding of itself as a whole, its individuals, and its environment. This paper will ask and attempt to answer the following questions: What chemical knowledge is held within traditional healing systems and their practitioners? What is the nature of this knowledge, given the multi-component formulae of nearly all herbal remedies? Can traditionally “Western” pharmacokinetic/ pharmacodynamic analysis be used to investigate this fundamentally synergic information and elucidate patterns that may give a clearer picture of just how comprehensive this medical knowledge is? Knowledge of the human body in its healthy and diseased forms that leads to successful diagnoses, paralleled with accurate and thorough knowledge of plants that enables appropriate and effective treatment, is essentially the outward form of a coherent understanding of human physiology and phytochemistry and most importantly, their relationships to each other. It is the claim of this paper that essentially synergistic ethnopharmacological information can be translated into a chemical and pharmacological language accessible cross-culturally. The results of such an investigation would lead to further  validation of the ethno-directed approach in bioprospecting, potentially new ways of looking at human physiology and its relationship to phytochemistry, and most pertinently to a finer understanding of the ethnochemical rationale applied in exploiting mechanisms of herbal synergy.    

All plants manufacture a basic set of constitutive compounds to remain alive- defended, nourished, and procreating. Beyond such a foundational matrix of primary metabolites, all species and sub-species produce secondary metabolite molecules, unique to themselves in structure, function, concentration, and potential bioactivity. It is from this second level that traditional medicine selects and formulates its remedies. The majority of herbal remedies are not administered as isolated compounds. Even in the cases of single-herb preparations, the number of available and potentially active components present can be extremely high. Multi-herb preparations are thus even more complex. Increasingly, in the pursuit of profitable silver-bullet pharmaceuticals, isolated compounds from crude extracts disappoint, and have diminished, low, or are totally lacking in bioactivity. A compound showing enhanced activity at lower than expected concentrations, strictly while in the presence of other compounds, is a hallmark of synergy. So, while it may be obvious that synergy is at work, techniques for studying such exponentially complex interactions are slow to evolve, and slow to transfer from pharmacology to ethnopharmacology and concurrent use of metabolomic profiling.

Detail of Tibetan Medicine Buddha holding Myrobalan Plant

Ethnobotanical systems of healing are well embedded within their respective societies. In most cases, locally available traditional herbal healthcare has already been integrated into the newer western medical treatments. Often, as in the case of Kampo in < namespace="" prefix="st1" ns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" xml="true">Japan, doctors feel free to administer either or both forms of treatment and both are covered in national healthcare infrastructure.[i] In the case of TRx in Myanmar, the Department of health has a Director of Traditional Medicine, and all traditional health practitioners (THP) must belong to the national THP association, which meets annually in December for a weeklong symposium. Nurses are trained in the herbal remedies that are used by the tribal people with whom they will be working.[ii] Other forms are already well globalized out of their context of origin, like Ayurveda and Chinese herbal medicine. In still other cultures, the two remain quite disparate. Jamu in Indonesia, which is specific to the people of the island of Java, has evolved over the years from a cottage industry level into booming pharmaceutical company weight enterprises. Yet it is still distinct from any western treatments available, and Jamu women still sit on the roadside during the morning and evening commutes dispensing customer requested remedies.[iii] In less developed areas, still dense and overgrown with forest, more isolated peoples naturally depend entirely on plants.

The level and availability of education available to those interested in learning any of these systems also varies. For example, just as any western medical school, a foundation in Tibetan medicine takes a full four years of training, ideally only once a foundation of monkhood has already been established.[iv] Institutes and Universities do exist, but upon graduation your credentials and ability to practice, depends on the country in which you live. Anthropology, ethnobotany and biomedical anthropology could be considered the ground up approach to understanding traditional medicine, while phytochemistry, metabolomics and pharmacognosy, the study of drug discovery from natural products, would be the top-down approach. Where they meet is in the field of ethnopharmacology. But what exactly is all this ethnopharmacological knowledge? What is an ethnobotanical knowledge system? For quite a large portion of humanity, the external world is largely composed of plant life. Over many centuries of interacting with the same group of species, learning to cultivate them, eat or not eat them, build with them, knowledge accumulates over the years from experiences. Not all groups of people use the same plant for the same purpose, or may not even use it all. Thus, ethnobotanical knowledge is the knowledge associated with plant life that is specific to a particular culture.

[i] Matsumoto, M., et al., 1999, Integrating traditional medicine in Japan: the case of Kampo medicines, Complementary Therapies In Medicine, Vol. 7, pp. 254-255