Review of Witch-Doctor's Apprentice: Hunting for Medicinal Plants in the Amazon (Library of the Mystic Arts) (Paperback)

This was a great read for me back in '94 when it was presented as a gift and I have often recommended it. Nicole shares her life story when she is in her 80s. One needs to keep in mind the prevalence of ethnocentricity of our society back in the 50's and 60's. And to her credit she tells the WHOLE story, including all her fumbling bumblings of an imperfect human.As one who has ventured a little into the Bolivian and Belizian jungle her misadventures are only to be expected and provide great humor and reading. An example of her humor is while she is deep in the amazon jungle she relates that she wasn't all that concerned because what self respecting warrior would want a meazly female head for a trophy. Nicole was way ahead of her time in two areas: collecting ethnobotanical information and plants, and fighting multinational corporations in the pharmaceutical industry by bringing information directly to the people. I wonder if anyone has ever discovered what that one plant was that given one tbsp a woman was sterile until given a tbsp of another plant and she was fertile again! One may only be able to realize what an adventuresome and hardy soul she is, if you have taken steps into the amazon jungle yourself.

Product Description
When Nicole Maxwell first visited the Amazon more than forty years ago, she had no idea that she would make a life's work of the people, plants and lore to be found there. Decades before Americans became aware of the riches to be found in the knowledge of plant medicines which native shamans had passed down over thousands of years, Ms. Maxwell, a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, was scouring the Amazon ram forest for clues to this ancient medical tradition.

Now, on the eve of the decade in which mankind will have its last chance to determine the fate of this region and its wealth of traditional knowledge, Citadel Press's Library of the Mystic Arts is proud to bring out a newly revised edition of this classic work. Long hailed as one of the major works of popular ethno-medicine, this book is both an engaging adventure story and an engrossing account of the traditions of plant medicine to be found among the tribes of Amazonia -- and its re-release could not be more timely.

Scientists now fear that one plant species per day is being made extinct by man's ravenous appetite for "progress". Of the plants which are found only in the Amazon rain forest, only a tiny percentage have been tested for their full medical possibilities. Witch-Doctor's Apprentice is an inspiring and amusing plea to modern civilization to save these plants -- and the people who know how to use them -- before they are destroyed forever.

On the occasion of this newly revised edition, Ms. Maxwell has created an appendix which catalogs all of the plants mentioned in the text, with their scientific names, the names by which they are known locally, and their medicinal uses. This edition also includes a newintroduction by the noted ethno-botanist Terence McKenna.

"A spirited and engrossing personal narrative, as much about people and places, discomforts and dangers, the beauty of the jungle and the arc-leap of wordless communication across cultural barriers, as it is about... bringing natu

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