Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
ChaPtEr
6
Medicinal Plants and traditional healing Methods
INtrODUCtION
Edible food plants, spices, and fruits are the dominant ingredients in many African medicinal
remedies. The ordinariness of such ingredients has been a major setback in the search for novel
pharmacologically active compounds from plants used in traditional medicine. Recent develop-
ments in the management of chronic illness and metabolic diseases have shown that such dietary
plants, when used properly, not only prevent diseases but also reverse the degeneration in chronic
and metabolic diseases. Perhaps the objective in prescribing such food plants is to direct the treat-
ment at the cellular level, which presents a different pharmacodynamics than a chemical inhibitor/
agonist approach. The acute diseases treated by herbal medicines are usually diseases of the rural
poor in villages, which include diarrhea, snakebite, pneumonia, parasitic infections, tuberculosis,
and complications in pregnancy, sickle-cell anemia, and rheumatic heart disease. Diseases such as
diabetes, hypertension, and the various types of cancer are considered diseases of affluence, and
the first line of intervention in traditional medicine is to initiate lifestyle changes followed by the
administration of appropriate medicinal plants.
The African medicinal agents consist of two groups: those used for rituals, sacrifices, and other
religious acts, as part of the process of treatment of diseases; and the plant extracts, herbs, seeds,
roots, leaves, juices, liquids, powders, bones, minerals, and other substances that are supposed to
have organic effects directly on the patient. Some of the procedures and rituals, and even the very
plants used, may lack any overt value, but they are psychologically vital and, no doubt, play a great
role in healing the sick and helping the afflicted.
It is also necessary to note that some of the plants can be used only in a prescribed manner and
with the necessary “authority.” The “appropriate structural information” can be obtained from a
medicinal plant only if the plant is handled properly and dispensed by the initiated. The role of body
chemicals (the so-called endochemicals) in these healing processes can never be overemphasized.
In other words, it is difficult to draw a sharp distinction between a true placebo and endochemical
induction in a subjective being. This partly explains the role of several inert additives in the healing
potions. Another remarkable feature in the ethnopharmacopoeia of many African tribes is the use
of food substances as medicinal agents. As has been mentioned, medicines differ from food in the
African setting only in the methods of preparation, whereas in modern orthodox medicine, drugs
are expected to be poisonous and are differentiated from poisons in having limits set on safe dos-
age—exceeding these limits, one arrives at the toxic level. This relationship between medicine and
poison is not well defined in traditional African therapeutics and is the underlying reason behind the
poor dosage considerations indicated previously in this topic.
Furthermore, the drugs are usually expected to act in a gentle manner, over a long period, unlike
Western medication, which is expected to act almost instantly. It is in the attempt to acquire the
drama associated with Western medicine that contemporary traditional doctors give toxic plants to
