The Ethnomedica Project
Ethnomedica 'Remembered Remedies', a volunteer-based collaborative project involving herbalists and ethnobotanists, was formally established in 1999. NIMH was in at the beginning, and we continue to recruit collectors for the project, whose job is to interview people, often from older generations, and elicit their memories of using local plant remedies as simple cures in the past. Working throughout the UK, the project aims to bring tradition and science together in an archive of traditional British plant lore and to make that information as widely available as possible. The information recorded is placed in the national archive at Kew Gardens, and entered into the Ethnomedica database, which will eventually be published on the internet, so that it is available for posterity. Ethnomedica is a non profit-making organisation supported by the National Institute of Medical Herbalists, the Chelsea Physic Garden, the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, the Eden Project, Neals Yard Remedies, the Natural History Museum, and Channel Four.
Herbalists can gain a great deal of insight into their own practice through involvement with this project. If you have an interest in traditional remedies, or you have contacts with older people in your community, you may wish to become a collector. We have also established a NIMH Ethnomedica committee. If you wish to be involved in the next phase of the project, which will enable NIMH herbalists to access the findings of the project in a convenient and meaningful way, we would be delighted to hear from you.
If you would like to send in your own memories of using local plants as simple cures, you may do so by writing to:
Ethnomedica Remembered Remedies
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Richmond Surrey TW9 3AB
Telephone 020 8332 5000
email: ethnomedica@kew.org
You may visit the website at: www.kew.org/ethnomedica
Read more in this article that appeared in The Scotsman:
http://living.scotsman.com/features/Gardens-A-new-project-aims.5926496.jp
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