Human beings are very adept making medicines from plants.
Have you come across the Sacred Science project? (They have made a thought provoking documentary about plants used in healing in the Amazon – you can find it on vimeo, but google sacred science to learn more).
Many, many years ago in the Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh I saw an exhibition of the uses of plants by desert peoples. I’ve never forgotten it. I was so impressed with the market stalls they set up, with one displaying plants used to die clothes beautiful colours, and another one showing plants used to treat a variety of diseases. I remember thinking how on earth did they figure that this particular plant was great for dyeing your clothes purple, but this other is a great cure for diarrhoea?! It was that exhibition which introduced me to the whole field of ethnobotany……the study of Man’s relationship to plants.
A few years later I read that Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of homeopathy, first experimented with Peruvian tree bark (Cinchona). When I read about that medicine, which had been used to treat “swamp fever”, a disease we now know as “malaria”, I remember thinking how did the indigenous peoples of Peru know that this particular plant would treat this particular disease – a truth we confirmed many, many years later when we isolated the chemical, quinine, from this same tree, and found it was a good treatment for malaria.
I don’t know the answers to those old questions, but I am still fascinated by potential benefits we humans can receive from plants.
As I write this I’m watching the last few days of the grape harvest in Charente. Those grapes will be used to make cognac, using processes not that dissimilar to the ones we use in Scotland to make whisky from grain. I’m just learning that the various areas within the cognac-producing region of France produce extremely different flavours – just like the different regions of Scotland produce distinctly different whiskies. In both cases, the specific interactions between people and plants in these countries produce distinct and unique results.
What’s your favourite human-plant interaction?
