Medicinal Plants Classification Biosynthesis and ... - Index of

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Gustavo J. Martínez, Mara Sato and Marta Ojeda
“I prefer to use wild herbs. I sometimes use those (pharmaceutical medicines), for
example if I have a deep wound, a sting… then we put something we know is a
prepared product, a very different chemical”
“Yes, I also send him to the doctor. I check him; for example I see his lungs, but all
the same, if I see that the child has some sort of defect, then I send him to a
psychologist or doctor…depending on what he has.”
A.The use of remedies
The ethnobotanical studies we included in this review describe the use of more than three
hundred medicinal species for the treatment of a wide range of ailments that characterise
peasant ethnomedicine. Moreover, Barboza et al. (2006) estimate that the medicinal flora
available in the province, whether used or not by the local inhabitants, includes over six
hundred species evidencing the great value of these resources. In Section II we provide a
detailed description of some of these species and present the applications with the greatest
consensus between the different regions of the province.
Despite the fact that organotherapy and opotherapy (the use of organs or animal
secretions with therapeutic ends) had acquired importance among the indigenous people of
the region, there is hardly no evidence of the use of remedies of animal origin among the
inhabitants of the Córdoba hills; however, it is popular in the northern and northeast region of
the province, an area that still has scarce records on its pharmacopoeia. Additive and
fragmentary references regarding the use of animal remedies describe the repetitive use of
animal fats for the ―unto sin sal‖ (ointment without salt) –fat from cow or pig abdomen- or
iguana fat (Tupinambus spp.) for treating skin affections (Martínez, 2008b); the use of
―bichos bolitas‖ or ―chanchitos‖ (pill-bugs - Order Isopoda; Crustaceae) and/or worms
(Order Oligochaeta; Annelida) for ear affections; sour lamb bile as a pediculicide; cobwebs
to stop nose bleeds; boiled water with the ―ant-hole flower‖ to treat bone pain; and egg
whites for burns.
References on remedies using minerals are also scarce and mainly limited to the use of
salt; also mentioned is the use of some organic inert secretions and substances like kerosene,
ashes from burnt clothes, brick powder, creolin, shoe polish, among others, the details of
which can be found in the work of Martínez (2003) and Martínez & Planchuelo (2003),
As in many other Latin-American peasant communities, all these therapies using natural
remedies are based on the Hippocratic principal of binary opposition. As the etiology of
different diseases involves an imbalance by excessive cold or heat, the therapeutic
conceptions try to re-establish this imbalance by using ―cold‖ and ―hot‖ plants depending on
the case. We will not extend in the details and lists of afflictions, remedies and therapeutic
practices considered ―fresh‖, ―warm‖ and/or ―cordial‖ according to the representations by the
peasants of the Córdoba hills, which are already extensively discussed in each particular
study (Martínez, 2003, 2005b; Martínez & Planchuelo, 2003).
B. Symbolic and ritualistic aspects of peasant cures
Although an important number of species and uses listed in the catalogue of medicinal
plants of the Córdoba hills are supported by phytochemical and pharmacological studies, it is
only fair to note that for the peasants, the healing capacity of a remedy is not only based on