Reflections on the Human Condition - Api-fellowships.org

The indexers extracted the important keywords from
titles and abstract manually. All these keywords are
standardized using the thesaurus in order to make them
consistent, unified and unambiguous.
A total of 992 unique keywords were collected from
342 articles. The frequency of the keywords was range
between 1-42. Keywords with frequency of one or two
were merged with their broad term. We eliminated the
keywords with frequency one and two that did not have
any broad term. Finally, we had 132 keywords for
co-word analysis.
We calculate the number of times two keywords appear
together in the same publication using software. Then
we had a co-occurrence matrix of 132X132 keywords.
The value of each cell of the matrix was co-occurrence
frequency of x and y. Furthermore we calculated
which topic are core, prominence and emerging level
based on method of Sujit Battarcharja. (Bhattacharya,
Kretschmer, and Meyer, 2003; Bhattacharya, 2001)
Based on the data obtained on this research we
conducted a modification of the method by defining
those levels were as follow:
1. Core level is the co-occurrence frequency of
keywords that contained on more than 5% of total
documents.
Prominence level is the co-occurrence frequency
2. of keywords that contained on 2-5% of total
documents.
Emerging level is the co-occurrence frequency
3. of keywords that contained on 1-2% of total
documents.
THE MEDICINAL PLANTS IN THAILAND:
AN OVERVIEW
Historical background
The land of Thailand is located in tropical region which
covering the area of 200.148 square miles. The country
has a good climate that causes for many kinds of plant to
grow fertile. Therefore, Thailand is well known for her
biodiversity. Because of the abundant of various species
of flora, Thai people recognized the plant as medicines
and become a part of life since centuries ago.
The first evidence indicating the use of medicinal plants
in Thailand was found in the 12 th century, in which the
form of stone tablet in the reign of King Chaiworaman
VII was used as medicine. It was also found the stone at
Prasart Taprom, right now is known as Cambodia area,
which contained the list of material including herbs
CHANGING LIFESTYLES AND HEALTH
209
used as medicine. The Mahayana Sect of Buddhism led
by Phra Bhaisajkuru influenced largely the art of drug
compounding on this period.
Afterwards in Sukhothai Period (1238-1377 AD)
Ramkamhaeng Stone Inscription was found, which
contained evidence about trading of herbal medicine
and transferring of drug compounding technology
between Thailand and her neighboring countries. The
Hinayana Sect of Buddhism influenced the development
of medicinal plants in this period.
Although Burma destroyed much of evidences during
the Great War in Ayuthaya Period (1350-1767 AD), the
evidence of herbal medicine trading between Thailand
and other countries such as Spain, Holland and Britain
was still found in the middle part of that period. In
1782, King Rama I moved the capital from Ayuthaya
to Bangkok. There were only 23 herbals survived from
the great fire in Ayuthaya.
In 1821 in the reign of King Rama III, Thai herbal
medicine reached the peak of the development. In which
many herbal drug formulas were written on inscription
to decorate the temple’s wall. The traditional drug recipes
were compiled from various sources systematically
during this period. The most important temple was
Wat Phra Chetuphon Wimonmangkhalaram (Wat Po)
that contains 1100 drug formulas on its wall.
The manuscript of Thai herbal remedy were reviewed
and revised for almost 42 years became a Thai medical
textbook. This was a first comprehensive manuscript on
Thai herbal medicine. The most drugs used in hospitals
around the country were those derived from medicinal
plants.
The establishment of Siriraj hospital, the first modern
hospital in Thailand, in 1888 had totally changed the
golden era of medicinal use. The number of westerneducated
physician introduced the modern drugs,
especially in government hospitals and health centers.
The modern drugs replaced the herbal medicine
in Thailand. However herbal medicine still played
important role in rural areas, in which the communities
still respected traditional healers and herbalists.
The use of modern drugs in hospitals thoroughly made
the import value of drug soar. This condition influenced
the Royal Thai Government aware of the importance
of Thai medicinal plants. It was also encouraged the
leather of monks in Wat Po to build the School of Thai
Traditional medicine inside the temple. Other temples
in Bangkok and other provinces followed this act.
Ref lections on the Human Condition: Change, Conflict and Modernity
The Work of the 2004/2005 API Fellows