ABSTRACT
Work over the last several decades in the emerging field of ethnobiology, and research in medical ethnobotany in particular, has demonstrated that the ethnobiological knowledge of traditional peoples conforms in many respects to basic scientific principles (Berlin 1973,1978, 1992; Berlin, Breedlove, and Raven 1974; Raven, Berlin, and Breedlove 1971; Quiros et al. 1990; Toledo 1988) and that the curative properties of certain plants is not simply unsubstantiated folklore (Schultes 1984; Sofowara 1982; Elizabetsky 1986; Farnsworth and Pezzuto 1983).
