Dr. Alain Touwaide, a research associate at Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History, has been doing inter-disciplinary research on the therapeutic uses of plants for three decades. This spring, the Earthwatch-supported scientist received the prestigious 2003 Award for Behavioral and Social Sciences from the Washington Academy of Sciences (WAS).
An affiliation of scientific societies in the Washington D.C. area, WAS encourages the advancement of science through publications, seminars, debates, and awards recognizing scientific work of high distinction. Touwaide received his award at a WAS ceremony in May, recognizing his continued historical research on medicinal plants from antiquity to the Renaissance.
"I was extremely happy," said Touwaide, principal investigator of Earthwatch's Medicinal Plants of Antiquity project. "Even though this award theoretically recognizes my activity in the Washington area, it is, in fact, a recognition of my entire activity over the past 30 years."
When Touwaide started his research in 1973, the ancient history of pharmacology was not even a defined area of study. It took a huge amount of preparatory work, working with original texts from throughout the ancient world, for Touwaide to make an original contribution. In the process, he has been instrumental in creating a new field of research and methodology, which he calls historical ethnopharmacology.
"Essentially, I have transfered to historical research the methods of ethnopharmacology," said Touwaide, who was originally trained as a Classicist. "To this end I had to do research in a multitude of labs to get acquainted with the scientific methods involved in lab research, pharmacology, botany, and medicine, traveling from one lab to another worldwide. Now, I am able to make a synthesis of all these elements."
With the history of Western pharmacology ranging from classical antiquity through the Arabic world, the Middle Ages, and the Renassance, Touwaide has been faced with many different languages and political and cultural settings. He has consulted original ancient manuscripts conserved in collections all over the world, including the Biblioteca Vaticana, the Bibliotheque Nationale de France, and the Bodleian Library in Oxford.
Touwaide's work with Earthwatch teams at the National Library in Rome is a continuation of this work, contributing to a major reference work he is preparing on plants in ancient Greece and Rome. Working with rare books from the Renaissance period, or 15th and 16th century a.d., volunteers are collecting data on ancient medicinal plant uses and plant identification to add to the growing database.
"Our first season was extremely productive and even exceeded my expectations, analyzing more than 100 Renaissance herbals" said Touwaide. "Inventorying the plant representations in ancient books, which can be more than 1,000 pages, is an extremely time-consuming activity. Volunteers are important for me because they multiply the research effort considerably."
Touwaide has been awarded many grants and prizes over the last three decades, and has published extensively on his travels in Europe and the Americas in search of ancient materials documenting botanical history. His WAS award is further validation of his important contribution to the emerging field of historical ethnopharmacology.
For information on volunteering on the Medicinal Plants of Antiquity project, click here
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