the forest peoples of the Amazon to have 

 employed the negatively controlled stud- 

 ies that we deem an absolute necessity for 

 evaluating putative new remedies ade- 

 quately. Such methods did not become 

 standard even in the United States until the 

 1960s. Nevertheless, Plotkin takes it as ax- 

 iomatic that "if a plant is used [by sha- 

 mans] to treat a number of afflictions, it 

 likely contains an active chemical com- 

 pound and merits investigation in the 

 laboratory." 



This astonishingly quixotic statement 

 seems to arise from his assumption that a 

 purported remedy causes reUef of one or 



more symptoms if they disappear follow- 

 ing administration of the remedy. My own 

 studies of the drugs doctors prescribed be- 

 tween 1700 and 1850 suggest that in the 

 absence of a virulent epidemic, about 

 nineteen out of twenty adult patients re- 

 covered regardless of how they were 

 treated, with a wide variety of agents that 

 are now recognized as incapable of any 

 truly beneficial pharmacological effect. 

 These recoveries can best be attributed to 

 what was even then called the healing 

 power of nature — today we recognize that 

 that power lies chiefly in the body's ability 

 to heal itself via the immune and inflam- 



An unforgettable odyssey through 

 the Amazon rain forest 



For 12 years leading ethnobotanist 

 Mark Plotkin studied with the 

 shamans of Amazon rain forest. 

 To learn about the area's plant life 

 and its medicinal resources — 

 before these tribal medicine men 

 and their invaluable knowledge 

 disappear along with the rainforest 

 itself. "Every time a shaman dies," 

 says Plotkin "its as if a library has 

 burned to the ground." 



Now Plotkin takes you along on 

 a wild odyssey — in which he 

 participates in healing rituals; discovers the secret of the 

 poison curare; tries hallucinogenic snuff; and earns the 

 respect of the mysterious shamans as he proves that he 

 shares their endurance and reverence for the rain forest. 



'More than ethnobotany...it's also an adventure 

 story and something of a corker." 



— Men's Journal 



'Reads like a travel adventure. Plotkin has a gift 

 for evoking a sense of place; the characters he 

 meets come alive on the page." 



— Los Angeles Times Book Review 



TALES OF A 

 SHAMAN'S 

 APPRENTICE 



MARK J. PLDTKIN. PH D, 



At bookstores now from Viking 



matory responses to microorganisms and 

 tissue injury. 



Many argue that the world's rain forests 

 should be preserved for their traditional 

 human inhabitants and for the nearly infi- 

 nite variety of plants and animals that live 

 there. (By contrast, the arguments with 

 which missionaries and gold miners, who 

 are Plotkin's villains, support their claims 

 to the same land and its dwellers are per- 

 suasive only to themselves.) But so far, I 

 have found no convincing evidence that 

 untold numbers of valuable medicines 

 await us in the Amazon basin, although 

 they may be there. Plotkin seems to won- 

 der why the headman of Kwamala re- 

 garded the white man's medicine as supe- 

 rior to that of his own tribe; perhaps the 

 village leader was more reaUstic than flie 

 ethnobotanist. 



Almost no other errors mar these splen- 

 did tales (although Linnaeus was Swedish, 

 not Swiss). Unfortunately, however, Plot- 

 kin does not explain the shamans' reasons 

 for choosing, from among the array of 

 plant remedies available to them, those 

 they administer for a given condition. Do 

 the Amazonian witch doctors have a no- 

 tion of body balances analogous to the 

 four humors we inherited from the Greeks 

 or to the more complex system of balances 

 envisioned by the Chinese? Do they have 

 a more static view of the body in health 

 and disease? Or do the shamans that 

 Plotkin studied simply choose their reme- 

 dies on the basis of the tradition that plant 

 X will cure symptom Y? Do other kinds of 

 reasoning associate specific symptoms 

 with specific plants? 



The elucidation of comparable ratio- 

 nales for prescribing remedies in Western 

 medicine's Hippocratic-Galenic tradition 

 has helped us understand the use of histor- 

 ical remedies, such as emetics, strong 

 cathartics, bleeding, and blisters, that 

 would otherwise seem bizarre today. A 

 multitude of written texts helps explain 

 these ancient European treatments; per- 

 haps the shamans, who rely only on orally 

 transmitted traditions, simply did not tell 

 Plotkin why they did what they did. 



Nevertheless, as he demonstrates so 

 well, ethnobotanical research is an inher- 

 enfly interesting and exciting pursuit of 

 knowledge about the world around us. But 

 we should not expect more of the shamans 

 or their forests than they can dehver. 



J. Worth Estes teaches pharmacology at 

 the Boston University School of Medicine. 

 He is the author of many books, including 

 The Medical Skills of Ancient Egypt. 



64 Natural History 3/94 



