ArticleJournal of ethnobiology and ethnomedicine2016
The symbolic efficacy of medicinal plants: practices, knowledge, and religious beliefs amongst the Nalu healers of Guinea-Bissau.
Article in Journal of ethnobiology and ethnomedicine, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed.
- Diversity of wild edible plants of Guinea-Bissau (West Africa): traditional uses and trade.Journal of ethnobiology and ethnomedicine · 2025Article
- Healing with Risks: How Zoonotic Potential Influences the Use of Wild Mammals in Traditional Medicine.Pathogens (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Medical Ethnobotany of the Bissau-Guinean Community of Migrants Living in Northern Italy and Comparison with the Ethnopharmacology of Guinea-Bissau.Plants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Exploring Knowledge about Fang Traditional Medicine: An Informal Health Seeking Behaviour for Medical or Cultural Afflictions in Equatorial Guinea.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Modifiable and Non-modifiable Factors Associated with Low Awareness of Hypertension Treatment in Indonesia: A Cross-Sectional Population-Based National Survey.Global heart · 2022Article
- Advancing urban ethnopharmacology: a modern concept of sustainability, conservation and cross-cultural adaptations of medicinal plant lore in the urban environment.Conservation physiology · 2021Article
- Breaking Through Disciplinary Barriers: Human-Wildlife Interactions and Multispecies Ethnography.International journal of primatology · 2018Article
- Ethnopharmacology and Therapeutic Value of Bridelia micrantha (Hochst.) Baill. in Tropical Africa: A Comprehensive Review.Molecules (Basel, Switzerland) · 2017Review
- Treating infants with frigg: linking disease aetiologies, medicinal plant use and care-seeking behaviour in southern Morocco.Journal of ethnobiology and ethnomedicine · 2017Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundIn attempting to understand how the use of medicinal plants is symbolically valued and transformed according to specific cosmologies, we gain valuable insight into the ethnopharmacologial practices, in terms of the major role played by healers, as custodians of local ethnobotanical knowledge, but also as ritual masters. Thus, the goal of this paper is to understand how medicinal plants are used differently depending on a combination between the healers' field of expertise and personal history on the one hand, and the diversified religious and symbolical frameworks on the other.
methodsThis essay is based on intense ethnographical research carried out amongst the Nalu people of Guinea-Bissau. Methods included participant observation and semi-directed interviews with six locally-renown healers (four men and two women). The progress of their work and the changes operated within the sets of beliefs associated with ethnopharmacological practices were registered by means of repeated field visits.
resultsA total of 98 species and 147 uses are accounted for, as well as a description of the plant parts that were used, as well as the methods of preparation and application according to the different healers' specialized practices. At the same time, this research describes those processes based on pre-Islamic and Muslim cosmologies through which medicinal plants are accorded their value, and treatments are granted their symbolic efficiency.
conclusionsMedicinal plants are valued differently in the pre-Islamic medicine and in the medicine practiced by Islamic masters. The increasing relevance of Islam within this context has affected the symbolic framework of ethnopharmacological practices. Nevertheless, the endurance of those processes by which symbolic efficiency is attributed to local treatments based on plants is explained not only by the syncretic nature of African Islam, but also by the fact that patients adopt different therapeutic pathways simultaneously.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.