Description
The destruction of the Amazon forests continues, and with them an unknown number of plant species and the traditional knowledge of their medicinal uses. Schultes (biology, Harvard U.) and Raffauf (pharmacognosy and medicinal chemistry, Northeastern U.) combine nearly half a century of field research in this least studied part of the Amazonian drainage area to document and describe 1,479 species and variants, representing 596 genera in 145 plant families. Of these, half have had little or no prior investigation of their chemical and pharmacological properties. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.
