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Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice: An Ethnobotanist Searches for New Medicines in the Rain Fore
by Mark J Plotkin

Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice: An Ethnobotanist Searches for New Medicines in the Rain Fore Cover

About This Book

ISBN13: 9780140129915
ISBN10: 014012991x
Condition: Standard
All Product Details

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Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

For thousands of years, healers have used plants to cure illness. Aspirin, the world's most widely used drug, is based on compounds originally extracted from the bark of a willow tree, and more than a quarter of medicines found on pharmacy shelves contain plant compounds. Now Western medicine, faced with health crises such as AIDS, Alzheimer's disease, and cancer, has begun to look to the healing plants used by indigenous peoples to develop powerful new medicines. Nowhere is the search more promising than in the Amazon, the world's largest tropical forest, home to a quarter of all botanical species on this planet — as well as hundreds of Indian tribes whose medicinal plants have never been studied by Western scientists. In Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice, ethnobotanist Mark J. Plotkin recounts his travels and studies with some of the most powerful Amazonian shamans, who taught him the plant lore their tribes have spent thousands of years gleaning from the rain forest.

For more than a decade, Dr. Plotkin has raced against time to harvest and record new plants before the rain forests' fragile ecosystems succumb to overdevelopment — and before the Indians abandon their own culture and learning for the seductive appeal of Western material culture. Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice relates nine of the author's quests, taking the reader along on a wild odyssey as he participates in healing rituals; discovers the secret of curare, the lethal arrow poison that kills in minutes; tries the hallucinogenic snuff epena that enables the Indians to speak with their spirit world; and earns the respect and fellowship of the mysterious shamans as he proves that he shares both their endurance and their reverence for the rain forest. Mark Plotkin combines the Darwinian spirit of the great writer-explorers of the nineteenth century — curious, discursive, and rigorously scientific — with a very modern concern for the erosion of our environment and the vanishing culture of native peoples.

Review:

"Plotkin details the alternative medicines he discovered during an apprenticeship to the shamans of the Amazon rainforests." Publishers Weekly

Review:

"Plotkin presented himself as an unlikely student to the Tirio and Wayana shamans, offering in exchange to write down what he was taught, thereby preserving the shamanic lore." Kirkus Reviews

Review:

"A skillful blend of travel adventure, botanical and cultural history, and Amazonian research." Library Journal

Synopsis:

Western medicine is only just beginning to value the curative powers of plants and herbs found in the Amazon rain forests. The story of ethnobotanist Mark Plotkins's apprenticeship with shaman wise men of the area is truly an anthropological adventure, that also vividly clarifies what destruction of the rain forests may ultimately cost humanity.Photos.

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About the Author

Mark J. Plotkin, Ph.D., was born and raised in New Orleans and educated at Harvard, Yale, and Tufts. Trained as an ethnobotanist, he has done extensive research throughout the lowlands of tropical South America. He currently serves as president of the Amazon Conservation Team and research associate at the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of Natural History. His research has been featured in Life, Newsweek, Smithsonian, Time, and the New York Times as well as PBS's Nova and the Academy Award-winning documentary Amazon.
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Product Details

ISBN:
9780140129915
Subtitle:
An Ethnobotanist Searches for New Medicines in the Rain Forest
Author:
Plotkin, Mark J
Author:
Plotkin, Mark J.
Publisher:
Penguin Books
Location:
New York, N.Y. :
Subject:
General
Subject:
Medicine
Subject:
Alternative medicine
Subject:
Botany
Subject:
Native American Studies - Spirituality
Subject:
Indians of south america
Subject:
Botany, medical
Subject:
Amazon River Region
Subject:
Amazon River Region Description and travel.
Subject:
Life Sciences - Botany
Subject:
Ethnic Studies - Native American Studies - Spirituality
Subject:
Plants
Copyright:
c199
Edition Description:
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Series Volume:
195
Publication Date:
August 1994
Binding:
Paperback
Grade Level:
General/trade
Language:
English
Illustrations:
Y
Pages:
352
Dimensions:
7.74x5.06x.68 in. .53 lbs.
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