Ethnopharmacological field studies: A critical assessment of their conceptual basis and methods

Heinrich, Michael; Edwards, Sarah; Moerman, Daniel E.; Leonti, Marco

doi:10.1016/j.jep.2009.03.043

Cited by 306 publications

(234 citation statements)

References 93 publications

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“…However, such a rationale should at least specify why this area or those people are of interest and relevant for the specific research question. Studies should not only be descriptive, but rather address specific research questions and testable hypotheses, and contribute to disciplinary debates and conceptual frameworks that can advance the field and relate to contemporary issues in both scientific and public spheres (see also Heinrich et al, 2009).…”

Section: Why Do Research?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The frequency of citation of a specific remedy, that is, the number of individual use-reports (n ur ) for a type of drug and its therapeutic application, serves to establish the consensus across the respondents. The cultural consensus on healing properties of remedies and drugs can help to inform subsequent laboratory studies that aim at evaluating their efficacy and toxicology (Trotter and Logan, 1986;Berlin and Berlin, 2005;Heinrich et al, 2009).…”

Section: Quantitative Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Also several influential papers have been published on standards in the field of ethnopharmacology (Berlin and Berlin, 2005;McClatchey, 2006;Gertsch, 2009;Heinrich et al, 2009) and many good examples of published field research exist.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Recommended standards for conducting and reporting ethnopharmacological field studies

Weckerle

Boer

Puri

et al. 2018

Journal of Ethnopharmacology

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148

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Ethnopharmacological relevance: What are the minimum methodological and conceptual requirements for an ethnopharmacological field study? How can the results of ethnopharmacological field studies be reported so that researchers with different backgrounds can draw on the results and develop new research questions and projects? And how should these field data be presented to get accepted in a scientific journal such as the Journal of Ethnopharmacology? The objective of this commentary is to create a reference that covers the basic standards necessary during planning, conducting and reporting of field research. Materials and methods: We focus on conducting and reporting ethnopharmacological field studies on medicinal plants or materia medica and associated knowledge of a specific people or region.The article highlights the most frequent problems and pitfalls, and draws on published literature, fieldwork experience, and extensive insights from peer-review of field studies. Results: Research needs to be ethical and legal, and follow local and national regulations. Primary ethnopharmacological field data need to be collected and presented in a transparent and comprehensible way. In short this includes: 1) Relevant and concise research questions, 2) Thorough literature study encompassing all available information on the study site from different disciplines, 3) Appropriate methods to answer the research questions, 4) Proper plant use documentation, unambiguously linked to voucher specimens, and 5) Qualitative and quantitative analyses of the collected data, the latter relying on use-reports as basic units. Conclusion: Although not exhaustive, we provide an overview of the necessary main issues to consider for field research and data reporting including a list of minimal standards and recommendations for best practices. For methodological details and how to correctly apply specific methods, we refer to further reading of suggested textbooks and methods manuals.

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Section: Why Do Research?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Quantitative Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

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Recommended standards for conducting and reporting ethnopharmacological field studies

Weckerle

Boer

Puri

et al. 2018

Journal of Ethnopharmacology

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148

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“…: 223-259). Therefore, the emic perception and categorization of illness has to be understood for the development of meaningful use categories and a culturally appropriate classification system (Heinrich et al, 2009). The emic perspective is generally understood to come from within a culture and is opposed to the etic point of view, which is that of an outsider (e.g., a researcher).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Classifying diseases and remedies in ethnomedicine and ethnopharmacology

Staub

Geck

Weckerle

et al. 2015

Journal of Ethnopharmacology

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162

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ETHNOPHARMACOLOGICAL RELEVANCE: Ethnopharmacology focuses on the understanding of local and indigenous use of medicines and therefore an emic approach is inevitable. Often, however, standard biomedical disease classifications are used to describe and analyse local diseases and remedies. Standard classifications might be a valid tool for cross-cultural comparisons and bioprospecting purposes but are not suitable to understand the local perception of disease and use of remedies. Different standard disease classification system exist but their suitability for cross-cultural comparisons of ethnomedical data has never been assessed. Depending on the research focus, (I) ethnomedical, (II) cross-cultural, and (III) bioprospecting, we provide suggestions for the use of specific classification systems. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We analyse three different standard biomedical classification systems (the International Classification of Diseases (ICD); the Economic Botany Data Collection Standard (EBDCS); and the International Classification of Primary Care (ICPC)), and discuss their value for categorizing diseases of ethnomedical systems and their suitability for cross-cultural research in ethnopharmacology. Moreover, based on the biomedical uses of all approved plant derived biomedical drugs, we propose a biomedical therapy-based classification system as a guide for the discovery of drugs from ethnopharmacological sources. RESULTS: Widely used standards, such as the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) by the WHO and the Economic Botany Data Collection Standard (EBDCS) are either technically challenging due to a categorization system based on clinical examinations, which are usually not possible during field research (ICD) or lack clear biomedical criteria combining disorders and medical effects in an imprecise and confusing way (EBDCS). The International Classification of Primary Care (ICPC), also accepted by the WHO, has more in common with ethnomedical reality than the ICD or the EBDCS, as the categories are designed according to patient's perceptions and are less influenced by clinical medicine. Since diagnostic tools are not required, medical ethnobotanists and ethnopharmacologists can easily classify reported symptoms and complaints with the ICPC in one of the "chapters" based on 17 body systems, psychological and social problems. Also the biomedical uses of plant-derived drugs are classifiable into 17 broad organ-and therapy-based use-categories but can easily be divided into more specific subcategories. CONCLUSIONS: Depending on the research focus (I-III) we propose the following classification systems. This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting galley proof before it is published in its final citable form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could aff...

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“…Establishing minimal methodological standards; 3). Suggesting how the gathered information could be used in experimental research and for applied projects [1]. Field studies are presently concentrated in tropical countries of Africa, America and Asia, and in Mediterranean Region, where a large bank of historical texts on herbal remedies, is also available, in some cases dating back to Greek and Roman medicine.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring the Fourth Dimension: The Role of Ancient Texts and Herbals for the Identification of Unknown Medicinal Plants

Pollio¹

2012

Med Aromat Plants

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The identification of local and traditional uses of medicinal plants is the core of ethno-pharmacological research. Field studies should be carried out following three steps: 1). Developing a conceptual framework and hypothesis testing, 2). Establishing minimal methodological standards; 3). Suggesting how the gathered information could be used in experimental research and for applied projects [1]. Field studies are presently concentrated in tropical countries of Africa, America and Asia, and in Mediterranean Region, where a large bank of historical texts on herbal remedies, is also available, in some cases dating back to Greek and Roman medicine. The approach to the study of these kinds of information is completely different by those adopted for field studies.The studies on ancient texts should be carried out by an interdisciplinary team composed by members of humanistic and scientific disciplines [2], and some important indications on the methodological approach to this kind of studies have been proposed [3]. The critical point lies on the correct botanical identification of the plants cited in the texts. Chinese, Indian, Arabic and Islamic traditional Medicine also rely on a corpus of ancient knowledge, often available from written sources, but frequently the liaison with the ancient medical tradition has been never interrupted. A large number of people of these countries, particularly in rural settlements, still depend on the same herbal remedies used thousand years ago. In this case, it is possible to identify the plant used in the recipes with a relatively high degree of certainty. In Mediterranean, particularly in the European Countries of Region, as well as in Central and Northern Europe, such practices have been almost completely abandoned. The absence of continuity makes more difficult the botanical identification of the plant cited in old medicinal texts, as well as the comprehension of the anthropological context supporting the therapeutic approach to a disease. Only when a detailed description is available, the best if it is accompanied by a good iconography, it is possible to supply a highly reliable botanical identification, but this is very unusual, mainly in the case of ancient texts written many centuries ago. As early stated for the semantics of Greek names of plants "In the modern [Greek] language the same name is often used for different plants and the same plants sometimes has different names in different part of the country. Nor can we doubt that this was also in Ancient Greece" [4]. Generally, it could be advisable to introduce a degree of certainty of identification of a species, indicating also a list of more than one potential candidate to the correct identification. Notwithstanding these limitations, the study of European material medical in historical texts could give very promising results. In a recent, very detailed study it has been reported that the Mediterranean/European medicine has been based on the Dioscoridean tradition (I century of CE), until the 19 th century. From that t...

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Ethnopharmacological field studies: A critical assessment of their conceptual basis and methods

Cited by 306 publications

References 93 publications

Recommended standards for conducting and reporting ethnopharmacological field studies

Recommended standards for conducting and reporting ethnopharmacological field studies

Classifying diseases and remedies in ethnomedicine and ethnopharmacology

Exploring the Fourth Dimension: The Role of Ancient Texts and Herbals for the Identification of Unknown Medicinal Plants

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