Taking medicine back to nature
Taking medicine back to nature:
by Catherine Madden
Ancient cultures never doubted the healing powers of plants and animals. A sick person turned to their local medicine man, wise woman or witch doctor, who would mix a treatment made from local plants, bark, herbs and perhaps even parts of insects, amphibians, reptiles and birds. For thousands of years before willow bark was used to create aspirin and the opium poppy to make morphine people knew about their pain-relieving properties.
Now phytochemicals are again high on medical science’s priority list. You would have to live at the bottom of the ocean to have missed the glowing reports about the omega-3 fatty acids in fish oil. And don’t be too quick to recoil at early man’s reptile fascination: US scientists are studying the proteins in crocodile and alligator blood for their powerful infection-fighting properties. Curcumin from tumeric, capsaicin from chillies, resveratrol from grapes, quercetin from strawberries and epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) from green tea are among the thousands of compounds being investigated for their powerful therapeutic benefits – and Western Australian scientists are at the forefront of some of this research.