Healing with Plants in the American Mexican West

Folklore, Annual, 1998 by Gabrielle Hatfield

Healing with Plants in the American and Mexican West. By Margarita Kay. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1996. ISBN O 81651646 4

This is a fascinating and comprehensive study of a subject that has evidently been very thoroughly researched by the author. The presentation is clear, and the division of the book into separate sections on ethnohistory, plant names and actions, and medicinal listing by plant species, increases its usefulness as a work of reference.

The American and Mexican West covers an area influenced by a vast number of different cultures, which makes the author's achievement in collating information from such a wide variety of sources all the more impressive. The author has obviously done a great deal of fieldwork on her own. It is a little disappointing that it is not always clear which data is from secondary sources, and which from her own work. Since her original work has particular value, it would be an advantage to have this distinction made clear; original and secondary sources do not always have the same degree of reliability.

To the British study of ethnobotany, it is of particular interest to read about an area where domestic plant medicine is still in current use among a wide section of the population, and is still evolving alongside orthodox western medicine. Kay cites, for example, changing usage of certain plants in accordance with current medical fashion: the coyote melon (Ibervillea sonorae), recommended in the eighteenth century for healing wounds, is being used in the twentieth century by Mexican Americans to treat cholesterol and diabetes.

A number of interesting and significant ideas are brought out in the introductory sections: the fact that domestic plant medicines normally depend on native, readily available plant species means that people occupying similar habitats in general use similar plants in domestic medicine; incomers, whether conquerors or simply settlers, often bring with them their own knowledge of plant medicines, and in some cases use plants which resemble those used at home. These two themes apply to many areas of the world, including Britain. In the American and Mexican West, early written records of medicinal plants depended largely on the works of missionaries. The sixteenth-century Franciscan, Sahagun, compiled information about native beliefs and interviewed indigenous doctors in their native languages. As the author points out, he must surely rank among the earliest ethnographers.

There are some very interesting points concerning plant nomenclature. The problem of identifying with certainty a plant known by differing local names is discussed; also the fact that differing plants sometimes share a common name. Colonial explorers sending back samples of native North American plants often failed to include information about the local names, and thereby some valuable information was probably lost, since the native plant name often gave an indication as to its use, economic or medicinal. This is as true of British domestic plant medicine as it is of Mexican.

The author's plea for further study in this area could be echoed for many areas of the world. "Little information is available on the native plants of the desert that are used for medicine in the American and Mexican West ... Because new treatments and cures are needed, plants of the desert should be brought to the attention of the pharmaceutical scientists." The same situation holds true for our own British native flora, sadly neglected so far by both ethnobotanists and pharmaceutical scientists.

The book is written primarily for the use of healthcare workers, and the author points out the need for knowledge of plant medication in domestic use, which may in some cases affect the orthodox medical treatment of the patient. Margarita Kay's book is of interest both to students of ethnobotany and to folklorists and anthropologists. It gathers together an enormous body of information from disparate sources and presents it in a very clear and readable form. Moreover, the value of the medicinal plant listings is enhanced by attractive line-drawings and up-to-date pharmacological information from the Napralert database.