'Albularyo'

PINOY KASI


‘Albularyo’
By Michael Tan
Inquirer

Last updated 01:31am (Mla time) 03/23/2007

MANILA, Philippines -- Last Sunday the Inquirer had a full-page spread featuring 10 medicinal plants endorsed by the Department of Health. The eye-catching feature, with colored photographs, brought back memories of my own forays into the world of the "albularyo."

When I was still in college, back in the 1970s, I volunteered with the Rural Missionaries, a group of Catholic sisters that organized community-based health programs. As my graduation approached, I asked the sisters if I could continue to work with them after college. I had a feeling they didn’t quite know what to do with a veterinarian and since I couldn’t become a nun either, one of them came up with a brilliant idea: why not get me to research on medicinal plants?

I jumped on the chance, but without any illusions. I was a city creature, through and through, who knew next to nothing about plants. The first time I volunteered for work in a rural area, I gasped at the sight of a tree with wonderful flowers and asked the mayor’s wife what the tree was.

It was her turn to gasp. Really now, how was I to know that mango trees produced flowers?

I had taken botany in college but could barely remember what pistils and stamens were. So to prepare myself for medicinal plants research, I signed up for a course in economic botany. That was a fascinating course, and I’m convinced, to this day, that if we could teach botany by pointing out the uses of different plants, students would probably remember much more of that subject.

‘Plawel’

So, off I went to Mindanao, then to the Visayas, then to Luzon, to interview a few village "albularyo." That term is misleading though; it’s a Spanish-Filipino word that means “herbalist.” It came about because in western countries, most medicinal plants are small herbs. I learned quickly that in a tropical country like the Philippines, our immense biodiversity offers us so many more diverse medicinal plants, from tiny herbs to towering forest trees.

Early on in the research, I realized too it wasn’t just the "albularyo" who had information on medicinal plants. Every household had its own stocks of traditional medicine in their backyard, and generally, the older women knew how to pick out and prepare the plants.

They were also always ready to share what they knew. Within a few weeks, I had two field notebooks bulging with information.

Even back then, I could tell that folk knowledge about many medicinal plants was beginning to disappear. In one Ifugao village, a young student was assigned to accompany me out in the field to identify plants. After a few minutes, I realized she was identifying every other plant as “plawel,” which I dutifully jotted down in my notebook -- until I realized “plawel” was “flower.” I was tempted to point at a mango tree with full blooms to ask her what it was.

After a few months of this kind of work, I realized, sorting through all the different plant names -- whether Cebuano, Tagalog or Ilokano -- there was really a small core of about 20 medicinal plants that were used throughout the country. I went back to Manila and read voraciously to get more information on these plants -- from the classic “Medicinal Plants of the Philippines” (by Eduardo Quisumbing, published in the early 1950s) to Chinese pharmacology books.

I put the information together into a booklet with a rather fancy title: Philippine Medicinal Plants in Common Use: Their Phytochemistry and Pharmacology. It was a rather technical book, but I’d like to think it helped to stimulate more interest in medicinal plants in our health programs. In the 1980s, an American non-profit group, World Neighbors, got me to produce less technical materials, consisting of posters and a slide presentation explaining the uses of medicinal plants.

Demystifying plants

The posters and slides were attempts to demystify the use of medicinal plants. The years of research on medicinal plants had made me realize there was so much of magic involved in using the plants. Take "pito-pito" as an example: That was 7 leaves of 7 plants put together for a general tonic. I’d imagine that if some Chinese-Filipino had developed that decoction, it would have been "walo-walo," given the Chinese love of the number 8.

In recent years, commercial interests have contributed to further mystifying the plants with references to “phytochemicals,” as if these were new discoveries. All that the word means is “plant chemicals,” which scientists have been looking at for decades now.

An example of phytochemicals would be essential oils. A plant with a strong smell will have several of these oils, which can help to clear a congested nose, bring up the phlegm from the lungs, or, externally, help to relieve itchiness or heat. Sounds familiar? Yes, Vicks Vaporub is a mixture of those oils. Yerba Buena (“the good herb”), one of the 10 medicinal plants endorsed by the Department of Health, is an example of a plant rich in essential oils.

The community-based health programs helped people to rediscover the plants, minus the magic. Communities came up with their own products like SLK Cough Syrup, made from "sampalok" [tamarind] leaves, "luya" ]ginger] and "kalamansi" [native citrus]. ABC (avocado, "bayabas" or guava, and "kaimito" or star apple) leaves were used for diarrhea. There was even oil mixed with ginger and "sili" [pepper] leaves and used as a balm for muscle pains, which, I’d advise people tongue-in-cheek, could also be used to season their food.

Nationalism, science

Looking back at those experiences, I do feel we need to go beyond SLK and ABC. I still keep hearing of research that ask the "albularyo" about the plants they’re using, and I think that’s such a waste of time. We know what they’re using; the question is, what are we going to do with all that knowledge.

I squirm whenever I hear officials talking about medicinal plants as “cheap alternatives for the poor.” There’s more to the plants, and neighboring countries, knowing this, encourage local companies to develop medicinal plants. China has the most developed systems for medicinal plants and rich Chinese-Filipinos are known to fly to China, paying thousands of dollars for some of the traditional preparations.

I’m amazed to see Filipinos shelling out a thousand pesos for a bottle of imported mangosteen extract, for example. Or ordering banaba products from the United States for diabetes. Banaba is a tree with purple flowers that you find all over the country. Back in the 1950s, there were already local scientific articles about banaba’s medicinal uses but no one seemed interested in taking them beyond research. Today, banaba isn’t even in the government’s list of endorsed plants.

If we were more nationalistic and more scientific about our medicinal plants, we’d probably have more than those 10 plants to offer. And if we don’t get our act together, foreign companies are going to patent medicines from the plants and sell them back to us in fancy packages, at astronomical prices.