BOTANTICAL MUSEUM LEAFLETS VoL. 28, No. | 
MARCH 1980 
RUIZ AS AN ETHNOPHARMACOLOGIST 
IN PERU AND CHILE 
RICHARD EVANS SCHULTES 
One of the regrettable situations in modern botanical research 
is the frequent lack of interest on the part of systematists and 
floristic specialists in native uses of plants. This neglect, some- 
times even disdain, of indigenous knowledge and utilization of 
plants appears to be on the increase at a time when much of the 
world’s native lore hovers on the verge of extinction. 
Field botanists of periods past usually gave more attention to 
the relationship of peoples in primitive societies to their ambient 
vegetation. Yet even these earlier investigators were often so 
engrossed in the study of the general flora that they passed up 
opportunities of outstanding potentialities in tapping native 
understanding of the properties of plants. 
Don Hipolito Ruiz, the Spanish botanist who directed a plant 
collecting expedition to Peru and Chile from 1777 to 1788, 
represents a notable exception to the rule. Ruiz is commonly 
regarded — and quite correctly so — as a systematic and floristic 
botanist, yet his writings indicate that he should be considered 
also as a major ethnobotanist of his period. 
Ruiz was deeply interested in the uses of plants and in 
classification of economic plants. He devoted special attention to 
Cinchona, source of quinine, and wrote extensively on this genus. 
He published monographic studies on specific native medicinal 
plants. Indigenous use of plants is often noted in his descriptions 
of new species. The various published works of Ruiz and his 
colleague, Don José Pavoén, contain many references to native 
uses of the plants of Peru and Chile. This is true especially of their 
Systema Vegetabilium Florae Peruvianae et Chilesis (1798) and 
their Flora Peruviana et Chilensis (1798-1802). 
It is, however, in Ruiz’ Relacion Historica del Viage que Hizoa 
los Reynos del Peru y Chile el Botanico Hipolito Ruiz en el Afio 
de 1777 hasta el de 1788 ..., a kind of diary, that one finds the 
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