Category: Medicinal plants

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The Cure of Agues

ResearchBlogging.orgThe Royal Society Digital Journal Archive, dating back to 1665, is freely accessible until 1 February 2009. Enjoy it while it lasts, and read papers by Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday and Stephen Hawking.

In its announcement, the Society mentions a paper representing an applied biodiversity breakthrough: Edward Stone’s discovery that willow bark cured fevers, leading to the discovery of salicylic acid and later the development of aspirin. It is the best substance I have ever used. 1

In his letter to the Royal Society (and they really were letters back in 1763), Stone explains how he did it. After accidentally (no further explanation) tasting willow bark, and noticing its bitterness, he suspected it might have properties similar to that of the Peruvian bark (i.e., of the cinchona tree, containing quinine). That willows grow in swampy areas was also a reason to suspect its usefulness against agues (malaria and other fevers), following “the general maxim that many natural maladies carry their cures along with them.” I suppose that today this maxim could be used for integrated pest management.

Then he applies the scientific method. Literature review: no mention of medicinal properties of the willow. Methods: 5 years, 50 persons, dose, comparisons and mixes with quinine, evaluation of side effects. The only thing missing in the 1760s is a control treatment. But who needs a placebo if the medicine never fails to cure?

Great man, great discovery? Well, willow had been in use for millennia, but perhaps Stone did not know, he did not have wikipedia.

The wikipedians also note that the use of willow “was forgotten by doctors in the middle ages but lived on in folk medicine.” This makes the accidental tasting a bit fishy. Sounds to me like the story of a bio-prospector who took off along a winding path, talked to an old lady, and was too vain to acknowledge her. Pure speculation, and I am glad he did the experiments and wrote that letter.

Stone was a terroirist: “Few vegetables are equal in every place; all have their peculiar soils, where they arrive to a greater perfection than in any other place.” Mustard seed from Durham; saffron from particular spots in Essex and Cambridgeshire; cider apples from Herefordshire; valerian from Oxfordshire and Glocestershire.

He gathered his willow bark from trees in northern Oxfordshire, where “soils are chiefly dry and gravelly”. And thus he suspected that stronger stuff could be found in other – moist and moory – parts of the kingdom. A modern genebank manager could have reasoned the same way.

Any other nuggets on agricultural biodiversity in these archives? We have until February to dig for them. After that: please report on all peculiar tasting substances you encounter, particularly if bitter, and whether ingested by accident or not.

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Nibbles: Acai­, Sauerkraut, Dietary diversity, City gardens, Bananas in the home, Pheasants, Medicinals

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American farmers got stoned a lot

Two articles this morning both point to the widespread use of hallucinogenic plants in ancient South America. National Geographic reports that traces of the mind-altering substance harmine have been found in the hair of Tiwanaku mummies from the coastal Chilean desert dating back to 800-1200 AD. Harmine comes from the Amazonian vine Banisteriopsis caapi, which suggests that an extensive trade network linked the rainforest to the desert. Elaborate sniffing kits have been found in many Tiwanaku tombs and also, as a Times article points out, at the other end of the continent in the Caribbean. Archaeologists have found ceramic bowls and inhaling tubes on the island of Carriacou and have identified them as originating in South America between 100-400 BC. The drug of choice in this case may have been cohoba.

So why was everyone getting high?

Richard Davenport-Hines, a former history lecturer at the London School of Economics and author of The Pursuit of Oblivion, a global history of narcotics, believes humans have been using drugs for thousands of years. “Drug use became widespread in many early agriculture-based societies simply because it was the only way people could cope with spending long hours working in the fields, often in horrible conditions like baking sun,” he said.