TY - JOUR

T1 - Pathways to plausibility

T2 - when herbs become pills

AU - Wahlberg, Ayo

N1 - Paper id:: doi:10.1017/S1745855208005942

PY - 2008

Y1 - 2008

N2 - Herbal medicine has long been contrasted to modern medicine in terms of a holistic approach to healing, vitalistic theories of health and illness and an emphasis on the body’s innate self-healing capacities. At the same time, since the early 20th century, the cultivation, preparation and mass production of herbal medicines have become increasingly industrialised, scientificised and commercialised. What is more, phytochemical efforts to identify and isolate particular ‘active ingredients’ from whole-plant extracts have intensified, often in response to increasing regulatory scrutiny of the safety and quality of herbal medicinal products. In this paper, I examine whether describing these developments in terms of a biomedical ‘colonisation’ of herbal medicine, as has been common, allows us to sufficiently account for the mundane collaborative efforts of herbalists, botanists, phytochemists, pharmacologists, toxicologists and clinicians to standardise and develop certain herbal remedies. By focusing on recent efforts to industrialise and scientifically develop a ‘western’ (St. John’s Wort) and a Vietnamese (Heantos) herbal remedy, I suggest that herbal medicine has come to be not so much colonised as normalised, with herbalists, phytochemists and pharmacologists working to develop standardised production procedures as well as to identify ‘plausible’ explanations for the efficacy of these remedies.

AB - Herbal medicine has long been contrasted to modern medicine in terms of a holistic approach to healing, vitalistic theories of health and illness and an emphasis on the body’s innate self-healing capacities. At the same time, since the early 20th century, the cultivation, preparation and mass production of herbal medicines have become increasingly industrialised, scientificised and commercialised. What is more, phytochemical efforts to identify and isolate particular ‘active ingredients’ from whole-plant extracts have intensified, often in response to increasing regulatory scrutiny of the safety and quality of herbal medicinal products. In this paper, I examine whether describing these developments in terms of a biomedical ‘colonisation’ of herbal medicine, as has been common, allows us to sufficiently account for the mundane collaborative efforts of herbalists, botanists, phytochemists, pharmacologists, toxicologists and clinicians to standardise and develop certain herbal remedies. By focusing on recent efforts to industrialise and scientifically develop a ‘western’ (St. John’s Wort) and a Vietnamese (Heantos) herbal remedy, I suggest that herbal medicine has come to be not so much colonised as normalised, with herbalists, phytochemists and pharmacologists working to develop standardised production procedures as well as to identify ‘plausible’ explanations for the efficacy of these remedies.

U2 - 10.1017/S1745855208005942

DO - 10.1017/S1745855208005942

M3 - Journal article

VL - 3

SP - 37

EP - 56

JO - BioSocieties

JF - BioSocieties

SN - 1745-8552

IS - 1

ER -