Botanical Museum Leaflets 

 Fall 1986 



Vol. 30, No. 4 



DE PLANUS TOXICARIIS E MUNDO NOVO 

 TROPICALE COMMENTATIONES XXXVII 



MISCELLANEOUS NOTES ON MEDICINAL AND 

 TOXIC PLANTS OF THE NORTHWEST AMAZON 



Richard Evans Schultes 

 and Robert F. Raffauf 



amic plants of the northwest Amazon 



Colombia 



number 



activity— plants deserving of scientific study for the benefit of 



m 



f 



cines, poisons or narcotics that the Indians of the northwest 



mazon have, through millennia 



some 



these plants— rather perhaps than on a random sampling of the 

 80,000 species in the Amazon Valley— that modern phytochem- 



armaco 



With 



7 



the folk-knowledge acquired through hundreds of years by abo- 



me 



must come 



Indians' knowledge of the properties of their ambient vegetation. 

 It is probable that this region of the northwest Amazon has 

 one of the richest ethnopharmacopoeias in tropical America. The 

 region may also be the richest in species of plants of the Amazon 

 Valley, an area slightly larger than the United States. 



amazinglv large num 



more 



region, all of them — at least until the last few years- 

 less dependent on their local flora for "medicinally" useful plants 

 for treatment of their ills. Their knowledge of thp nrnnprti^c nf 



255 



