These resources are related to Dr. Mark Plotkin's program entitled “Rainforest Conservation and the Search for New Jungle Medicines” (26 October).

For more information regarding the program visit the Center for Ethics website.

Materials by Dr. Mark Plotkin, on Library Reserve for The Center for Ethics

Plotkin, Mark J. Tales of a shaman's apprentice : an ethnobotanist searches for new medicines in the Amazon rain forest. New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1994.
Main Collection 581.634 P729t

Plotkin, Mark J. Medicine Quest: In Search of Nature’s Healing Secrets. New York: Viking, 2000.
Main Collection 615.321 P729m

The shaman's apprentice. VHS. Directed by Miranda Smith. Oley, PA: Bullfrog Films, 2001.
Videos - Circ Desk 615.882 S528a

Shnayerson, Michael and Mark J. Plotkin. Killers Within: The Deadly Rise of Drug-Resistant Bacteria. Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Co., 2002.
ON ORDER

Reference Works

Duke, James A. and Rodolfo Vasquez. Amazonian ethnobotanical dictionary. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 1994.
Ref. 581.61 D877a

Hyam, R. and R. Pankhurst. Plants and their names : a concise dictionary. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Ref. 581.014 H992p

Levinson, David and Laura Gaccione. Health and illness : a cross-cultural encyclopedia. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 1997.
Ref. 610.3 L665h

Longe, Jacqueline L., ed. Gale encyclopedia of medicine, 2nd ed. Detroit, MI: Gale Group, 2002.
Ref. 616.003 G151e v.1-5

Moerman, Daniel E. Native American ethnobotany. Portland, OR: Timber Press, 1998.
Ref. 581.6097 M694n

Ness, Bryan D., ed. Magill's encyclopedia of science: plant life. Pasadena, CA: Salem Press, 2003.
Ref. 580.3 M194e v. 1-.4

Thoene, Jess G., ed. Physicians' guide to rare diseases, 2nd ed. Montvale, N.J. : Dowden, 1995.
Ref. 616.07 P578g

Turkington, Carol and Bonnie Ashby.Encyclopedia of infectious diseases. New York: Facts on File, 1998.
Ref. 616.903 T939e

Watstein, Sarah and John Jovanovic. Statistical handbook on infectious diseases. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003.
Statistics Ref. 614.0727 W343s

Wiersema, John Harry and Blanca Leon. World economic plants : a standard reference. Boca Raton: CRC Press, 1999.
Ref. 581.6 W927e

Finding Articles: Databases and Indexes

Topical Databases:

Anthropology Plus
This primary database in anthropology can be used for finding articles on medical anthropology and traditional medical practices.

Health Source
Full-text database that is focused on medical, health, and public health information. HealthSource contains both scholarly and popular articles.

PubMed (Medline)
An excellent source for finding articles from the medical field.

Interdisciplinary Databases:

Academic Search Premier
Indexes, Abstracts, Citations and Full text publications covering most disciplines.

Lexis-Nexis Academic
General news magazines, periodicals, international news, etc…

OmniFile (WilsonWeb)
Multidisciplinary database providing the complete content--indexing, abstracts, and full text--from six of Wilson's full-text databases.

Subject Headings

Using these Library of Congress Subject Headings in your searches will help you obtain more relevant information from databases and the library catalog:

Bacterial diseases
Botany, Economic
Communicable diseases
Diseases
Epidemiology
Epidemics
Ethnobotany
Foodborne diseases
Human beings -- Effect of environment on
Human-plant relationships
Indians of South America
Medical anthropology
Paleoethnobotany
Parasitic diseases
Plants and civilization
Psychiatry transcultural
Rare diseases
Traditional medicine
Virus diseases
Social medicine

Note: There are many more disease-related subject headings, especially for specific diseases. Search the library catalog for a disease by keyword (i.e. malaria), and you will be able to find relevant titles and additional subject headings.

Selected Works from the Main Collection

Balick, Michael J., Elaine Elisabetsky, Sarah A. Laird, eds. Medicinal resources of the tropical forest : biodiversity and its importance to human health. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996.
Main Collection 615.320913 B186m

Boik, John. Natural compounds in cancer therapy. Princeton, MN: Oregon Medical Press, 2001.
Main Collection 616.99406 B678n

Ebadi, Manuchair S. Pharmacodynamic basis of herbal medicine. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2002.
Main Collection 615.321 E15p

Lupton, Deborah. Medicine as culture : illness, disease and the body in Western societies, 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2003.
Main Collection 306.461 L366m

Mascie-Taylor, C.G.N., ed. The Anthropology of disease. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Main Collection 306.461 M395a

McElroy, Ann and Patricia K. Townsend. Medical anthropology in ecological perspective, 3rd ed. Boulder, CO: WestviewPress, 1996.
Main Collection 306.461 M141m

Nichter, Mark, ed. Anthropological approaches to the study of ethnomedicine. Philadelphia, PA: Gordon and Breach Science Publishers, 1992.
Main Collection 615.8 N629an

Pelletier, Kenneth R. The best alternative medicine : what works? what does not? New York : Simon & Schuster, 2000.
Main Collection 615.5 P388b

Schultes, Richard Evans and Robert F. Raffauf. Vine of the soul : medicine men, their plants and rituals in the Colombian Amazonia. Oracle, AZ: Synergetic Press, 1992.
Main Collection 581.634 S386v

Schultes, Richard Evans and Siri von Reis, eds. Ethnobotany : evolution of a discipline. Portland, OR: Dioscorides Press, 1995.
Main Collection 581 S386e

Sheehan, Helen E. and Barrett P. Brenton, eds. Global perspectives on complementary and alternative medicine. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, v. 583. Thousand Oaks : Sage Publications, 2002.
Main Collection 305 A512a, v.583

Trafzer, Clifford E. and Diane Weiner, eds. Medicine ways : disease, health, and survival among Native Americans. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2001.
Main Collection 362.108997 T764m

Selected Websites

Governmental and International Organizations

Center for Disease Control
http://www.cdc.gov/

World Health Organization
http://www.who.int/en/

Associations and Centers

Agriculture Research Service: "Dr. Duke's Phytochemical and Ethnobotanical Databases"
http://www.ars-grin.gov/duke/

Amazon Conservation Team
http://ethnobotany.org/

Native American Ethnobotany (University of Michigan-Dearborn)
http://herb.umd.umich.edu/
"A Database of Foods, Drugs, Dyes and Fibers of Native American Peoples, Derived from Plants."

Economic Botany (Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew [UK])
http://www.rbgkew.org.uk/scihort/ecbot.html

Indigenous Knowledge
http://www.nuffic.nl/ik-pages/

Society for Economic Botany
http://www.econbot.org/home.html

Worldwatch Institute: Health and Diseases
http://www.worldwatch.org/topics/people/disease/

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© Muhlenberg College, David M. Oldenkamp
Last modified on 3 September 2004
This document: http://www.muhlenberg.edu/library/guides/libinst/ethics/disease/plotkin.html