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Ethnopharmacology in the 21st Century – Grand Challenges

M. Heinrich

Published 2010 in Front. Pharm.

ABSTRACT

One can argue forever what precise percentage of the world's population use local and traditional medicines. These herbal (or mineral or fungal or occasionally animal) medical products form systems of knowledge and practice that have been transmitted over centuries and which continuously change. However, there can be no doubt that the majority of humans either rely on such products (often due to lack of other alternatives) or that herbal medicines are chosen consciously as an alternative to mainstream medicine. In some cases this knowledge is documented in an extensive historical written body of scholarly and applied writings. Traditions like “Traditional” Chinese, Ayurvedic, Unani, Jamu, Kampo, Iranian, Aztec or various forms of European and Arabic medicine are well known examples. In other regions we rely on the efforts of researchers past and present to document such knowledge and to critically analyze the data. It is now a commonplace that such “traditional knowledge” is disappearing fast, but in fact it is simply changing under the pressures of a globalizing world.

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