By E. Béjar, R. Bussmann, C. Roa and D. Sharon. x + 328 pp., 8” x 11”. Bilingual manuscript,
English-Spanish. Consists of a database of 145 native and cultivated herbs from Southern
Ecuador, including botanical, ecological and geographical field data, images of herbarium
vouchers (black and white), introduction and bibliography.

For nearly a century, medical anthropologists working in native communities in Latin America
have noted that traditional healers have an encyclopedic knowledge of medicinal plants. Since
the 1950’s ethnobotanists and pharmaceutical companies have sporadically documented some of
this lore. But these studies have been hindered by an ethnocentric bias, which assumes that
magical-religious beliefs and practices dominate indigenous knowledge of herbs.

This book takes a more scientific approach. In 1995, an international team of three scholars from
the US, Germany and México, a medical anthropologist, an ethnobotanist and an
ethnopharmacologist, worked closely with a traditional healer in the Southern Andes of Ecuador.
The result is an unprecedented database of 145 herbs, which translate the healer’s knowledge
into scientific framework. Documentation includes botanical description and identification along
with information about plant origin, ecological context (including coordinates and altitude) and
extensive documentation of native uses and admixtures-in Spanish and English.

The first volume of this book is directed to the general public, scientific community and a
burgeoning herbal industry interested in new leads. A second volume would augment the
database with phytochemical and pharmacological information that would provide a more solid
foundation for new product development.

The first volume is ready for publication, while the second would require three to four months of
research support to put into a publishable format. Additional materials available for possible
inclusion are videotapes of fieldwork (collection, identification and preliminary phytochemical
work up), interviews with the healer, color pictures, and an original database in Filemaker Pro
versions for PC and Macintosh.