Medicine Quest: In Search of Nature’s
Healing Secrets.
2000. Mark J. Plotkin. Viking, New
York. 224 pages, clothbound.
"Microbes
Winning War" was the headline of a front-page story in
The Washington Post on June 13. The story summarized
a World Health Organization (WHO) report on increasing resistance
to all available antibiotics, raising the specter of a return
to the "preantibiotic era" when bacterial infectious
diseases killed people like flies. The headline of WHO’s
own press release warned that resistance could "rob the
world of its opportunity to cure illnesses and stop epidemics."
Reading Medicine Quest: In Search of Nature’s Healing Secrets alleviates some of these fears. As renowned ethnobotanist Mark Plotkins reveals, the natural world is teeming with creatures that might hold the keys to cures for all that ails us. Indeed, the problem is too many potentially useful species.
Fungi, for instance, are the source of many of our antibiotics, including penicillin, the miracle drug that opened the "antibiotic era." But there are probably more than 13 million species of fungi, only about 70,000 of which have been studied in the laboratory, not to mention millions of bacteria, another source of antibiotics, and other, unexpected potential sources like the secretions of frogs’ skins! Where do we start to look for ones that might work?
One way is to look to the pharmacoepia of traditional medicine, which, after all, was the only medicine until the 20th century. Plotkin has devoted his life to this, focusing on uncovering the secrets of the shamans of the Amazon. His best-selling 1993 book, Tales of a Shaman’s Apprentice, introduced the wisdom of these medicine men--his mentors--to the world. In Medicine Quest, Plotkin returns to his rainforest roots to tell a fascinating if frustrating story of his search for a treatment for diabetes. Despite his witnessing a shaman’s successful treatment of a woman dying of diabetes, scientific analysis of the shaman’s plant-based potion so far has come up negative. But in this new book, Plotkin also explores the work of many scientists who are "embarking on a medicine quest in search of new healing compounds from the world around us."
As good a read as any thriller—this is science you can read on the beach--Medicine Quest is rich in colorful writing about amazing, bizarre, and sometimes disgusting stories of medicines from nature. Take the medicinal use of maggots (please!). In a chapter entitled "Hideous Healers," Plotkin writes ". . . maggots of certain species of blowflies consume only putrefying flesh while, at the same time, they promote healing." Applied to wounds, maggots eat bacteria, secrete sterilizing chemicals, and "promote the growth of healthy tissue by stimulation massage as they crawl through the wound."
Leeching has also returned to medical practice. It turns out that the saliva of leeches, like that of other bloodsucking animals including vampire bats, contains various anti-coagulant chemicals useful in dissolving blood clots and treating other blood-related ailments. More directly, leeches are used after microsurgery to reattach a severed body part—an ear or finger, for example. Microsurgeons can reconnect arteries to bring blood into the reattached part but veins taking blood from the area often must be left to heal on their own. The leeches suck the blood from the body part until the veins start working.
Medicine Quest regales the reader with dozens of such stories about potentially healing chemicals in the venom of snakes, spiders, and cone snails, and the secretions of sponges and sea squirts. Nor are plant medicinals ignored. While many herbal treatments are increasingly accepted by consumers, if not by the medical establishment, others have yet to regain their former popularity.
For instance, haven’t you always wondered about the myrrh and frankincense that joined gold in the three Gifts of the Magi? Myrrh, a tree resin, was a rare and valuable medicine—the penicillin of the ancient world. Frankincense is also a resin from a closely related tree. Modern experiments support the old wisdom. These resins are antifungal, anti-inflammatory, relieve pain, kill some bacteria, and more.
Silphium, a species of wild fennel, was used by ancient Greeks and Romans as a safe and effective female contraceptive. Plotkin reports that it was then worth more than its weight in silver. Modern studies of common fennel reveal some contraceptive activity, but we’ll never know just how truly effective silphium was. As Plotkins writes, "Due to insatiable demand for the plant in ancient Greece and Rome, silphium went extinct about fifteen hundred years ago."
The fear that we might lose many, many other cures from nature gives urgency to Plotkin’s and others’ quest. Both species, and the practitioners of traditional medicine who know their uses, are disappearing faster than we can learn their secrets. This fact offers an incentive for conservation to people otherwise unmoved by the disappearance of wildlife and wildlands. Plotkin concludes with this message: "If we deprive ourselves of the weapons needed to combat and defeat diseases that always have threatened us (and always will), we endanger ourselves." After reading Medicine Quest, I’m sure you will agree.
--Susan Lumpkin
ZooGoer 29(4) 2000. Copyright 2000 Friends of the National Zoo. All rights reserved.
