Johnson Leslie Main
Centre for Work and Community Studies, Athabasca University, 1 University Drive, Athabasca, Alberta, Canada.
J Ethnobiol Ethnomed. 2006 Jun 21;2:29. doi: 10.1186/1746-4269-2-29.
The use of plants for healing by any cultural group is integrally related to local concepts of the nature of disease, the nature of plants, and the world view of the culture. The physical and chemical properties of the plants themselves also bear on their selection by people for medicines, as does the array of plants available for people to choose from. I examine use of medicinal plants from a "biobehavioral" perspective to illuminate cultural selection of plants used for medicine by the Gitksan of northwestern British Columbia, Canada.
Consultant consensus, "intercultural consensus", independent use of the same plants by other cultural groups, and phytochemistry and bioassay results from the literature, were employed in analysis of probable empirical efficacy of plant uses.
70% of 37 Gitksan medicinal plants were used similarly by other cultures where direct diffusion is not known to have occurred; eleven plants, including the eight most frequently mentioned medicinal plants, also show active phytochemicals or bioassays indicating probable physiologically based therapeutic effects.
Analysis of intercultural consensus revealed that the majority of cultures in the British Columbia region within the plant ranges use the same plants, or closely related species, in similar ways. The rigor of this analysis is effected by the lack of consistent data on all taxa of interest for all cultures within the region.
任何文化群体利用植物进行治疗都与当地对疾病本质、植物本质以及文化世界观的概念密切相关。植物本身的物理和化学特性也影响着人们对其作为药物的选择，可供人们选择的植物种类也是如此。我从“生物行为学”的角度研究药用植物的使用，以阐明加拿大不列颠哥伦比亚省西北部吉特桑人用于医学的植物的文化选择。
通过咨询共识、“跨文化共识”、其他文化群体对相同植物的独立使用，以及文献中的植物化学和生物测定结果，来分析植物用途的可能实证疗效。
在37种吉特桑药用植物中，70%在其他文化中也有类似的使用情况，而这些文化之间并无已知的直接传播关系；11种植物，包括8种最常被提及的药用植物，也显示出活性植物化学物质或生物测定结果，表明可能具有基于生理的治疗效果。
对跨文化共识的分析表明，不列颠哥伦比亚地区植物分布范围内的大多数文化以相似的方式使用相同的植物或密切相关的物种。该地区所有文化中所有感兴趣分类群缺乏一致数据，影响了这种分析的严谨性。
