Amazonian Herbal Healing Guides

The herbalists and healers of the Amazon are among the world´s most revered and respected plant connoisseurs.  Western botanists from Spruce to Schultes to Plotkin have long admired the vast virtual libraries of phytological knowledge held by indigenous Amazonian peoples over thousands of years.  Andrew Revkin reminds us that a quarter of all pharmaceutical drugs were originally derived from Amazonian plants.

 

Like the forests themselves, the natives of the Amazon basin now face unprecedented challenges to ensure their survival.  Cultural erosion races along parallel paths to the ecological invasions sweeping into almost all untouched pockets of the Earth´s greatest remaining rainforest.  Several elder "shamans" and folk healers have been quoted as saying the current generation of herbalists may very well be the last to achieve such profound knowledge of the healing powers of the forest´s many green doctors. 

 

In order to ensure the protection of at least a small fraction of the unique relationships developed between people and plants in the Amazon over the millennia, Camino Verde is beginning a series of medicinal plant guidebooks, each focusing on the knowledge of a specific Amazonian healer.  The first two volumes, on which work began in 2009, will share the wisdom of a simple community "vegetable doctor", our long-time friend and grounds manager, Gregorio Chavez, and one of the Madre de Dios region´s most well-known and respected healers, Ignacio Duri.  Both of these men are in their seventies and both enthusiastically remind us of the importance of recording what they know for the benefit of future generations.