The Ethnobotany of Eden: Rethinking the Jungle Medicine Narrative

334 Pages·2018·7.983 MB·English

by  Robert A. Voeks

The Ethnobotany of Eden

The Ethnobotany
of Eden
Rethinking the Jungle Medicine
Narrative
RobeRt A. Voeks
The University of Chicago Press Chicago and London
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2018 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced
in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in
the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews. For more
information, contact the University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th St.,
Chicago, IL 60637.
Published 2018
Printed in the United States of America
27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 1 2 3 4 5
ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 54771- 8 (cloth)
ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 54785- 5 (e- book)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226547855.001.0001
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Voeks, Robert A., 1950– author.
Title: The ethnobotany of Eden : rethinking the jungle medicine
narrative / Robert A. Voeks.
Description: Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, 2018. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017042871 | ISBN 9780226547718 (cloth : alk. paper) |
ISBN 9780226547855 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Ethnobotany—Tropics. | Traditional medicine—Tropics.
Classification: LCC GN476.73 .V64 2018 | DDC 581.6/34—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017042871
♾ This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48– 1992
(Permanence of Paper).
For Kai, Bobby, Owen, and Leif, my favorite forest companions

Contents
Preface ix
Chapter One God’s Medicine Chest 1
The Jungle Medicine Narrative 4
The Biochemical Factory 5
Pharmacy in the Forest 9
The Environmental Claim 16
Chapter twO Terra Mythica 20
Paradise 21
The Sexualized Forest 27
Dark Eden 32
The Illusion of Virginity 35
Cultural Rainforests 39
Footprints in the Forest 47
Chapter three People in the Forest 52
Tropical Monsters 53
New World Natives 58
Noble Savages 66
Are Africans Noble? 74
Environmental Determinism 80
Instinctive Ethnobotanists 85
Chapter FOur Green Gold 87
First, Do No Harm 89
Contents
Ethnobotanical Axioms 101
“The Woods Are Their Apothecaries” 107
Benefit Sharing 113
The Age of Biopiracy 119
The Nutmeg Conspiracy 121
The Fever Tree 127
Chapter Five Weeds in the Garden 137
Disturbance Pharmacopoeias 140
The Palma Christi 153
Food as Medicine 158
Chapter Six Gender and Healing 166
Shamans 168
Sex and Space 171
Women Healers 177
Chapter Seven Immigrant Ethnobotany 183
Candomblé Medicine 186
Botanical Conversations in the Black Atlantic 191
Maroon Magic and Medicine 208
Chapter eight Forgetting the Forest 218
What Is Traditional Plant Knowledge? 220
Ethnobotanical Change 228
Chapter nine Environmental Narratives 241
A Forest of Fables 244
Jungle Medicine Revisited 250
Epilogue 255
Notes 259
References 265
Index 309
viii
Preface
The lands and peoples of the humid tropics have long con-
stituted more myth and metaphor than geographic real-
ity. In the imaginations of the ancient Greeks, the burning
rays of the equatorial Sun spawned boiling seas, scorched
landscapes, and monstrous races of semi- humans. Follow-
ing the Columbian encounter, such armchair scholarship
yielded to direct observations by settlers, scientists, and
men of the cloth. But colonial empiricism in almost every
instance passed through a filter of European prejudice and
preconception. As a consequence, tropical landscapes and
their indigenous forest- dwellers were saddled from the be-
ginning with a collection of culturally constructed and of-
ten romanticized images, pivoting according to the needs
of the narrator from virgin to defiled, sublime to horrific,
and salubrious to disease-r idden. Among these was the idea
that the biblical Garden of Eden, God’s sacred oasis of per-
petual spring, healing leaves, and life everlasting, was hid-
den deep in the primordial rainforest. Although the belief
in a material Paradise proved illusory, the notion that tropi-
cal forests and fields were brimming with nature’s mysteri-
ous medicinal plants has gained almost mythical standing
over the centuries.
In the late twentieth century, as the Western world be-
came aware of the ongoing destruction of the world’s tropi-
cal forests, and as fear of the effects of HIV/AIDS and cancer
peaked, a compelling environmental narrative appeared.
The “jungle medicine narrative” coupled the perceived me-
dicinal value of tropical forests with an array of comple-
mentary cultural, biological, and economic components. The
ix