Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
EARTHWATCH INSTITUTE
build a website of ancient plants
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Most of the drugs currently available are derivatives of ancient medica-
tions.
—Irwin Ziment, clinician and author
30 | The famous ancient Greek physician Hippocrates (author of the Hippocratic Oath that
doctors today still take) accumulated a great deal of medical information in his lifetime, but his
findings could not be widely disseminated until some 1,700 years after his death when Johann
Gutenberg invented the printing press (around 1440). Not surprisingly, some of the first books
to be published after the printing press became available were treatises on medicinal plants or
“herbals” spanning the centuries back to classical times.
On this Earthwatch-sponsored expedition called “Behind the Scenes: Medicinal Plants of
Antiquity,” volunteers help record and catalog these ancient books, many of which are the
basis of Western pharmacology. The program recovers therapies that were practiced by physi-
cians from antiquity through the Middle Ages.
Working alongside principal investigator Dr. Alain Touwaide, a historian of sciences at
the Smithsonian Institution (all Earthwatch projects are led by “principal investigators”), you
can help build a website that features hundreds of rare and fragile books. This invaluable body
of knowledge not only protects biodiversity and preserves ancient folklore but also has the po-
tential to open new paths for medical research.
Although your home base will be the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History,
the data you'll be compiling was collected by Touwaide over the course of 30 years' research.
It comes from archaeological sites (such as inscriptions with cures from temples in Corinth,
Greece), historical books (such as the plague of Athens as detailed in a books by historian
Thucydides), and medical and scientific works by such authors as Hippocrates, Galen, and
Pliny. Touwaide has also offered Earthwatch expeditions to Rome, where more than 150 vo-
lunteers inventoried ancient books from the Rare Book Room at the National Library of Rome.
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