The Republic of Suriname (South America) is located on the Guiana Shield, one of the regions with the highest biodiversity and the largest expanse of undisturbed tropical rain forest in the world. The population of almost 570,000 consists of a unique blend of ethnic groups and cultures from all continents. These include Indigenous Amerindians, the original inhabitants; Maroons, the descendants of runaway slaves who had been shipped from Africa between the seventeenth and the nineteenth century; Creoles, a generic term referring to mixed blacks and whites; the descendants from indentured workers from China, India, and Java (Indonesia) who arrived between the second half of the nineteenth and the irst half of the twentieth century; as well as immigrants from various Middle Eastern, European, Caribbean, and South American countries. All these groups have made their own speciic contribution to Suriname's traditional medicine, which has resulted in a myriad of remedies against many disorders, mainly employing a variety of plants. This chapter presents a brief history of Suriname, addresses the ethnopharmacological practices of Maroons and Creoles as well as Hindustanis and Javanese, and concludes with a few remarks on the previsions provided by the country's rich plant-based traditional medicine.

Substances from terrestrial plants and marine organisms have since long been recognized as important sources of bioactive substances. This has led to the development of a large variety of drugs to treat human diseases such as, among others, a number of antihypertensive, hypoglycemic, cardiovascular, antibiotic, and antineoplastic agents. More recently, the amazing biodiversity represented by the myriad of insect species has been realized to produce an equally exceptional source of bioactive chemicals with therapeutic potential. Many of these compounds serve as highly effective defensive and predatory chemicals and have enabled insects to survive for hundreds of millions of years and to diversify to the countless different species known today. As some of these chemicals possess meaningful pharmacological properties, they represent interesting candidates for new drug discovery and development programs. A few examples are substances with microcidal, cytotoxic, cytolytic, apoptotic, anti-angiogenic, or anticoagulant qualities. This paper addresses the significance of bioactive compounds from insects as lead compounds for producing new therapeutics.