ABSTRACT
All medical systems rely on natural products as inputs for healing (see selections 6, 13). Consequently, environmental degradation has direct impacts on the ability of people and healers to manage sickness. Modification of the landscape through agriculture, mining, and lumbering, together with industrial and agricultural pollution, contributes to the loss of trees and other vegetation, animals, insects, and microorganisms. Populations who move away from their homeland lose contact with familiar flora and fauna as well as sacred places, revealing another dimension of the impacts of forced settlement described in previous selections (19, 20, 21).
