Traditional Medicine in Twenty-first Spain

Abstract

Many countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America use traditional medicine to solve some of their primary health care needs. There are many examples worldwide, from Africa, where up to 80% of the population employs traditional medicine for primary health care (World Health Organization 2003), to Brazil (Begossi et al. 2002). When people migrate from rural communities, traditional knowledge is maintained in medicine even when it is lost in many other areas (Nesheim et al. 2006). Traditional medicine, mostly based on plants, is one of the main resources employed by humans in many regions, particularly in developing countries. In industrialized countries, adaptations of traditional medicine are termed “Complementary” or “Alternative” Medicine (CAM). In Europe, North America and other industrialized regions, over 50% of the population have used complementary or alternative medicine at least once (World Health Organization 2003). For example, in Germany the sale of herbal medicine is a growth industry; physicians routinely prescribe these products and medical schools are reintroducing lessons on this topic that had been phased out of the medical curriculum (Harrison 1998; Frye et al. 2006). Public health research is currently considering social, cultural, political and economic contexts to maximize the contribution of traditional and complementary and alternative medicine (T/CAM) to health care systems globally (Bodeker and Kronenberg 2002). CAM, however, is not true traditional herbal medicine in a strict sense. Local cultural traditions are the basis of traditional medicine; they are respectful of the environment and local ecology (Jagtenberg and Evans 2003), whereas the global industry of herbal treatments can be considered a threat to biodiversity if it is based on massive plant collection from wild ecosystems. Local traditions of medicinal plants are still practiced in some regions of developed countries, for example in rural Greek areas with typical Mediterranean ecosystems (Malamas and Marselos 1992). The objective of this study was to investigate the current status of the use of traditional medicine in rural settlements of Asturias (North Spain), where access to health services is public and warranted to all citizens. If still preserved and practiced, traditions of herbal medicine will help scientists to understand how to improve conventional medical treatments and sustainably exploit new natural resources.