IntroductionBackgroundHistorical PerspectiveCurrent TopicsCatalog of Major African Medicinal Plants (Alphabetical listing)Pharmacognostical Profile of Selected Medicinal Plants (Alphabetical listing)Healing and the African CultureIntroductionHealing, a Gift of the SpiritThe Restless SpiritsSpirit PossessionSymbols and Artifacts in African EthnomedicineIncantations and the Magic Power of the WordTaboo and TotemsThe African Medicine ManTraining of Traditional HealersTypes of Traditional HealersTrephination or CraniotomyThe SpecialistMedicinal Plants and Traditional Healing MethodsDiagnosisMalariaArthritis and Inflammatory DisordersSexually Transmitted Diseases and AIDSGastrointestinal DisordersSnakebitesPsychiatric and Psychosomatic DiseasesConvulsions and EpilepsyHelminthic InfestationCoughsAbortionSterility MedicinesDiabetesSkin Diseases and Cutaneous InfectionsArrow and Ordeal PoisonsAdaptogensIndex of Species, Genera, and FamiliesSubject Index

Handbook of African Medicinal Plants

Medicinal plants in Mexico: healers' consensus and cultural importance.

This paper describes a new, simple, quantitative technique for evaluating the relative usefulness of plants to people. The technique is then compared to the quantitative approaches in ethnobotany that have been developed recently. Our technique is used to calculate the importance of over 600 species of woody plants to non-indigenous mestizo people in Tambopata, Amazonian Peru. Two general classes of hypotheses are formulated and tested statistically, concerning (1) the relative importance of different species, and (2) the importance of different families. The plant families are compared with respect to all uses, and with respect to five broad groups of uses. Palms, Annonaceae, and Lauraceae were found to be the most useful woody plant families. On average, the 20 largest woody plant families are most important to mestizos for subsistence construction materials, followed in descending order by commercial, edible, technological, and medicinal uses.

The useful plants of Tambopata, Peru: I. Statistical hypotheses tests with a new quantitative technique

Tropical forests are becoming increasingly fragmented, threatening the survival of the species that depend on them. Small, isolated forest fragments will lose some of their original species. What is uncertain is how long this process of faunal relaxation will take. We compiled data on birds in five tropical forest frag- ments in Kakamega Forest, Kenya, of known date of isolation. We then predicted the original and eventual species richness of these fragments and, from this difference, the eventual species losses. Expressing the losses to date as a fraction of eventual losses suggests that faunal relaxation approximates an exponential decay with a half-life of approximately 50 years for fragments of roughly 1000 ha. In other words, in the first 50 years after isolation, tropical forest fragments of this size suffer half of the total number of extinctions that they are likely to experience. This result sets the time scale over which humanity must take conservation ac- tion in fragmented tropical forests, may aid efforts to set priorities, and indicates how high the future global extinction rate will be.

Time Lag between Deforestation and Bird Extinction in Tropical Forest Fragments

Giardia lamblia is both the most common intestinal parasite in the United States and a frequent cause of diarrheal illness throughout the world. In spite of its recognition as an important human pathogen, there have been relatively few agents used in therapy. This paper discusses each class of drugs used in treatment, along with their mechanism of action, in vitro and clinical efficacy, and side effects and contraindications. Recommendations are made for the preferred treatment in different clinical situations. The greatest clinical experience is with the nitroimidazole drugs, i.e., metronidazole, tinidazole, and ornidazole, which are highly effective. A 5- to 7-day course of metronidazole can be expected to cure over 90% of individuals, and a single dose of tinidazole or ornidazole will cure a similar number. Quinacrine, which is no longer produced in the United States, has excellent efficacy but may be poorly tolerated, especially in children. Furazolidone is an effective alternative but must be administered four times a day for 7 to 10 days. Paromomycin may be used during early pregnancy, because it is not systematically absorbed, but it is not always effective. Patients who have resistant infection can usually be cured by a prolonged course of treatment with a combination of a nitroimidazole with quinacrine.

/pdf/treatment-of-giardiasis-1cicamizr8.pdf

Treatment of Giardiasis

Medicinal plants of East Africa

Medicinal plants of East Africa. Kenya, Literature Bureau Nairobi

Data based on independent interviews with 45 herbalists of the Luo of Siaya District, Kenya, comprised 1129 remedy reports and related to 330 species of plants. While 49% of the remedies were encountered only once we list here 66 remedies (49 taxa) that were confirmed through independent reports from three or more individuals. A log-linear model was applied to these data in order to establish criteria for evaluating the likely efficacy of specific remedies. A quantitative interaction effect was calculated for each remedy as a measure of its degree of confirmation. The validity of the values derived from the mathematical model is considered in relation to classical criteria for evaluating ethnomedicinal reports.

http://www.ethnopharmacologia.org/prelude/pdf/bibio-hj-02-johns.pdf

John O. Kokwaro

Papers

Medicinal plants of East Africa

Medicinal plants of East Africa. Kenya, Literature Bureau Nairobi

Herbal remedies of the Luo of Siaya District, Kenya: Establishing quantitative criteria for consensus

Herbal remedies of the Luo of Siaya District, Kenya

Ethnobotany of Apocynaceae species in Kenya