Добавил:
Sekretar
kiopkiopkiop18@yandex.ru
t.me/Prokururor I Вовсе не секретарь, но почту проверяю
Опубликованный материал нарушает ваши авторские права? Сообщите нам.
Вуз:
Предмет:
Файл:Ординатура / Хирургия / Библиотека им академика М.И. Перельмана / Книга_5492_Библиотеки_им_академика_М_И_Перельмана
.pdf
92 Chapter 2
During the peak sixty minutes after rat feeding, they tracked various
activities, including “the mean interval separating the intromissions of
a series,” or, in plain language, the average amount of time between rat
sex acts. Incorporating standard procedures for studying arousal in labo-
ratory animals, the scientists developed twelve graphs to indicate differ-
ences between the rats fed water and those fed the two pepper solutions.
The authors included “penile erection index” and “female ano- genital
sniffi ng” as indicators of the enhanced virility of the doctored male rats.
They devoted three graphs to aspects of ejaculation (with frequency and
duration mea sured in seconds) and three to aspects of “mounting.”
By the beginning of the twenty- fi rst century, Cameroonian research-
ers had emerged as leaders in the fi eld of African plant medicine research.
In contrast to scientists in the nearby Demo cratic Republic of Congo,
where protracted civil wars disrupted university life, Cameroonian
scientists enjoyed relative stability under the autocratic rule of long-
term President Paul Biya. They benefi ted from a legacy of European- style
education and linguistic fl exibility in a territory dominated by waves of
German, French, and British rule between the 1880s and in de pen dence
in 1960. Further, they funded their research with international support,
given increasing concern about the biological diversity in the country’s
rainforests.
48
Closer to the University of Yaoundé campus, botanists con-
ducted extensive surveys of medicinal plants available in urban markets.
At a cost of about 135 French francs for 42 kg of plants, such investiga-
tions were relatively inexpensive, yet they produced a wealth of informa-
tion on patterns of plant use. In one study conducted in 2002, Jean Betti
of the Ministry of Environment and Forests worked with Mr. Koufani
at the University herbarium to identify the Latin names for the thirty
main herbs traded in Yaoundé, the po liti cal capital nestled in the rain-
forest region. They found that the majority of plant medicine sellers at
the Elig- Edzoa, Central Post, Mvog- mbi, Nfoundi, Longkak, and Mokolo
markets traced their lineage to the Ewonda ethnic community. The re-
searchers commonly found grains of paradise for sale, at approximately
0.80 French African francs for each gram. The botanists learned that this
plant was integral to treatments for male infertility and impotence. In-
deed, their surveys revealed that plant sellers treated primarily malaria,
back pains, and male sexual dysfunction with their merchandise.
49
In Cameroon, then, people used grains of paradise in pop u lar thera-
pies for male impotence. During the AU survey of traditional medicine
in the country, scientists, healers, and everyday people supplied more
than 1,000 herbal recipes for several hundred ailments.
50
The healer Au-
gustine Engole, for instance, submitted a recipe incorporating the spicy
https://t.me/med1917
Take Grains of Paradise for Love 93
peppers to improve the love life of men: “Chew 2 leaves of Dipcadi sp.
and 9 grains of Aframomum melegueta and swallow. Treat for three days
and repeat if necessary until erection becomes normal.”
51
Other heal-
ers and in for mants provided additional recipes incorporating the barks,
leaves, and roots of twenty- fi ve other plants to treat male sexual impo-
tence. Whether wittingly or not, these plant specialists participated in
the transparent project “to give information to African scientists which
would lead towards the development of new drugs from our abundant
natural resources.”
52
From July 11 to August 18, 1995, the healers participated in a bio-
prospecting initiative whose fi nal aims were unclear. As Assistant Sec-
retary General Chief E. Inoni reiterated on behalf of the offi ce of the
President of Cameroon, “It is also my wish to see African Governments
build on this survey by encouraging scientifi c collaboration between
our traditional medical practitioners and conventional medical scien-
tists so that jointly they can develop and promote the production of
properly standardized and quality- controlled drugs from our medicinal
plants.”
53
The healers codifi ed as the originators of what may have been
common recipes might even fi nd their names immortalized beyond pa-
per in a proposed “continental electronic consultative data bank.”
54
Yet,
beyond name recognition, the healers failed to be assigned clear benefi ts.
They received the usual glib statements, such as “There can be no doubt,
that the economic benefi ts to be derived from such collaborative efforts
would result in a signifi cant reduction in the billions of dollars spent
annually by African governments to import drugs that would otherwise
have been produced on the continent.”
55
As in Cameroon, biologists and chemists in the Republic of Congo
also documented widespread use of grains of paradise. In 1993, the bio-
chemist A. Diafouka observed the peppers for sale in markets of the capital
city Brazzaville, noting that several plants, including grains of paradise,
also circulated in herbal markets in the capital cities of Benin and Zaire
(now the Demo cratic Republic of Congo).
56
In his 1997 PhD thesis com-
pleted at the Free University of Brussels, he addressed the use of grains of
paradise in Republic of Congo for the treatment of impotence.
57
Although some scientists like Diafouka were content to report the
medicinal uses of plants in their countries, others worked to establish
patents overseas and fi nancial gain for private companies. Around the
time that research on grains of paradise was done in Cameroon, Congo-
lese scientists with ties to North America established a patent for the treat-
ment of impotence from various species of Aframomum. Victor Ngoka and
Simon Ossawa, based in Poto- Poto, Republic of Congo, collaborated with
https://t.me/med1917
94 Chapter 2
Michel Ibea and Neil Hartman in Quebec, Canada, for the Canadian di-
etary supplement company Peya Biotech. With the assistance of a French
law fi rm, they received U.S. Patent number 5,879,682 in 1999, and the
World Intellectual Property Or ga ni za tion published WO/2000/035466
the following year.
58
It is important that the inventors explicitly indicated they had dis-
covered not an aphrodisiac but a medical treatment to improve “penile
rigidity” and prevent premature ejaculation in male mammals. They
specifi ed the actions of the pepper’s seeds on humans and animals,
noting that “the pharmaceutical composition of the present invention
is not an aphrodisiac.” In their patent, they provided brief instructions
on how grains of paradise would be reconfi gured into a pharmaceuti-
cal capsule. Basically, the inventors suggested that seeds imported from
Brazzaville should be cleaned, ground, and transferred to a premade cap-
sule purchased from the Baker Company in Maine. Or alternatively, they
claimed that a similar action might be produced with seeds compressed
in a tablet or pill form. To manufacture pills, they suggested combin-
ing milled seeds or seed extracts with a substance— such as tragacanth
mucilage and colloidal silicon dioxide— to thicken the powder or liquid
benzenoids. The Peya Biotech researchers furthermore included the pos-
sibility of combining pro cessed Aframomum seeds with alcoholic bever-
ages or testosterone to improve libido, or with ointments to make a body
lotion (see Figure 2.7).
Although the Yaoundé- based research team used rats as an indicator
of virility, the impotence- treatment inventors based their new medica-
tion on studies in humans. They recruited male volunteers (apparently
with willing female partners) to test their concoction. The Peya Biotech
patents on “Aframomum Seeds for improving penile rigidity” cited one
heteronormative study conducted with fi fteen men between the ages
of twenty- three and forty, nine of whom were coded as Black and six as
White. During the research, ten of the tested volunteers allowed their
blood pressure to be taken before, during, and after consuming capsules
of A. stipulatum, a species of the plant genus. Overall, these men experi-
enced a surge in their blood pressure during the six hours while digesting
the seeds. Further, male and female “testimony” reported above- average
increases in penile rigidity and, in most cases, delay in ejaculation.
The existence of these patents forces the obvious question: did Peya
Biotech really invent a new drug? The company claimed that “[a]ntimi-
crobial activity have also been reported for seed constituents of Aframo-
mum danielli, but no species of the genus has ever been reported . . . to
reestablish erectile function and/or to improve penile rigidity in men.”
https://t.me/med1917
Take Grains of Paradise for Love 95
Lawyers for Peya Biotech concocted a statement that was patently false,
as the Cameroonian healer Engol’s recipe to use A. melegueta “until erec-
tion becomes normal” bears witness. The Peya Biotech inventors fi led
their fi rst patent in the United States by November 24, 1995, and Engol
presumably provided his recipe to the AU team by August 18, 1995; at
least one earlier ethnobotanical survey reported the common use of
the plant for male impotence in Cameroon by 1962.
59
But aside from
these specifi c documents, the account just provided here should make
clear that herbal recipes for treating impotence with A. melegueta (in
association with other plants) proliferated in Morocco, Togo, Benin, Ni-
geria, and Brazil and were documented before the 1995 patent through
publications.
In terms of innovation, a concentrated, ground form of grains of par-
adise seeds is not a major jump from someone quickly chewing through
Figure 2.7 Biovigora. (Photo by author, with permission of
Option Biotech.)
https://t.me/med1917
96 Chapter 2
a whole pepper pod. Perhaps swallowing, rather than chewing, would
allow greater consumption of the fi ery hot seeds. But overall, this simple
drug recapitulates what is a common occurrence in folk- medicine- based
inventions: a pro cess patent that is just a fancy recipe dependent on
preexisting indigenous techniques.
60
The clear capsules fi lled with dried
peppers conceal little that is new. Amazingly, the patents claimed rights
to the use of all known species of Aframomum for the specifi c concern of
erectile dysfunction, premature ejaculation, or both. Moreover, the pat-
ents claimed embodiments of the drug in any number of vague forms,
including capsules, pills, tablets, ointments, and possibly beverages. In
fact, the patent’s territory was so broad that it nearly canceled out the
possibility of pop u lar uses of Aframomum seeds in West Africa, the Ca rib-
be an, North America, or Eu rope.
Women’s Health and Pop u lar Knowledge
Many of those researching new pharmaceuticals from grains of
paradise— whether for impotence or other ailments including HIV/
AIDS— have close family ties to West Africa. This raises questions about
how valuable information is transferred across lines of class and gender
even within ethnic groups. In creating new drugs from grains of para-
dise, male scientists from the Republic of Congo privileged reproductive
health treatments for men in their laboratory investigations. Knowledge
on grains of paradise, although widespread, fl uctuates within regions
and social segments.
When I started studying recipes for grains of paradise in Ghana, I
noticed that impotence remedies were missing. The African Union’s Tra-
ditional Medicine and Pharmacopeia for Ghana published in 2000 listed a
dozen recipes incorporating the pepper, including cures for boils, chest
pains, cough, and fractures— but none for impotence. In fact, grains of
paradise are women’s business in Ghanaian society, given its status as a
spice used mainly to prepare medicines for women and children. Ghana-
ian forester Albert Enti included it in his list of “rejuvenating plants for
women” and explained that it was included “in almost every medicine,
in enema preparations, decoctions, chewed raw, and [used] along with
some rejuvenating plants. It is an important part of all ‘bitters.’ The seed
is ground into a soft paste and this is applied into the vagina as a bacteri-
cide to treat various infections.”
61
It was after a conversation with my mother, a U.S. food sociologist
who had noticed a surge of interest in grains of paradise in the United
States as a rediscovered gourmet spice, that I realized that grains of
https://t.me/med1917
Take Grains of Paradise for Love 97
paradise were so ubiquitous in my earlier research that they had basi-
cally become invisible. In returning to Ghana to do fi eldwork, I began to
ask people specifi cally about this plant. Suddenly, I noticed older woman
strolling along the lanes of urban centers with trays of dried plants in-
cluding fam wisa. The shriveled, darkened pods were at times encased
in the fi lm of a plastic bag. Other times they were loose, for the perusal
of the buyer. To allow for closer inspection, the women would split the
pods open with the edge of their fi ngernails and pop out the tiny red-
dish seeds that lay on pillows of fl uff inside. Placing a few on my tongue
promised to provide a bright, burning sensation and a hunt for some-
thing to drink. Alternatively, open air markets offered removed seeds
stuffed into repurposed glass bottles. They were sold alongside jars of
black peppercorns, soro wisa (Capsicum annuum). I bought bottles of
each, and packets of the full pods, not exactly sure how I would use
them but aware that they were going to be important to my research
(see Figure 2.8).
But, what exactly were people using fam wisa for? And how wide-
spread was pop u lar knowledge of the pepper? I asked my husband’s
grandmother over tea. She was by then in her eighties and had outlived
her husband, both of my grandparents, and my husband’s paternal set of
Figure 2.8 Fam wisa, freshly dried. (Photo by author.)
https://t.me/med1917
98 Chapter 2
grandparents as well. By that point, I had interviewed close to a hundred
healers in Ghana, many of them in their seventies and beyond. But for
some reason I had failed to see the signifi cance of the plant and never
included it in my questions. “Da, what is the purpose of this plant?” She
seemed coy and looked away from my husband and me, sipping from
her cup. “I’m forgetting many things.” She fi ngered the pods, splitting
them open to reveal the seeds and offering them to us for a taste. “I’m
forgetting many things. Ask Monica when she comes back for lunch.” I
was surprised that Da didn’t know what the peppers were for; she seemed
to be hiding her knowledge. Did they remind her of the “fetish” priests,
the witch- fi nders of the village from which she had carefully shielded
her children? After all, according to a psychic healer in her hometown,
my husband’s mother had been slated to be an apprentice at a shrine, not
a journalist. We assumed Grandma was reluctant to divulge her under-
standing of a pepper closely associated in her mind with occult practices.
When her nurse returned from her classes to prepare the midday
meal, I asked her if she knew what the peppers were for. She grabbed
a few and pulled me into the kitchen. “Why, are you sick?” She looked
concerned and started to giggle ner vous ly. “No, I just want to know how
these are used for my research.” She looked into the hall to make sure my
husband was safely seated beside his grandmother. She offered a possible
recipe for their use, explaining afterward that she did not do it anymore,
as she was trying to stop using alcohol in keeping with the directions of
her pastor. “When you have your menses, grind a small handful of the
seeds and steep in a bottle of gin. Then take shots of it, and you will sleep
and your pains will disappear. The gin will become very, very red.” Later,
the family cook offered to buy me some fam wisa seeds so that I could use
them in my recipes back in the United States. I asked her if she had ever
used them in medicines. “No, but they are good for spicing meats. Well,
you can add them to a lot of dishes, and grind them with other spices.”
I was surprised to learn that the peppers were important in treating
“women’s sickness,” as at this point I had mostly read of their centrality
to curing impotence. One of the few studies of pop u lar knowledge of
herbal remedies in Ghana, conducted during the 1970s, found wide-
spread knowledge of plants women used to stimulate miscarriages when
a pregnancy was unwanted. Grains of paradise were among the medici-
nal plants included in an extensive list of more than fi fty abortifacients.
During a focus- group discussion in a suburb of Accra, with women food
merchants and their clients, I learned more.
Akosua Agyewaa, a fruit and vegetable seller in Kwabenya, a suburb of
Accra, explained that fam wisa is cultivated from seeds: “Farmers grow it
https://t.me/med1917
Take Grains of Paradise for Love 99
for three to four months. And then, they dig holes and put the seedlings
inside. Until the plants are mature, if you taste the seeds, they aren’t hot,
they don’t burn. But when it is fully matured and you taste the seeds of
a fam wisa, they are very, very, very hot. Like a [chili] pepper.” She sold
dried pods at her pop u lar food stand, explaining that people bought
them to heal stomach aches and to make enemas and various medicinal
drinks, including the alcoholic beverage akpeteshi.
62
I asked a bystander, Michael Kofi Yeboah, if it was used for male
medicines for man power (obarima aduru) (see Figure 2.9). “Oh, no. It is
only for illnesses of the chest. Men crush it and add it to gin and drink
it.” I confi rmed, “So, it’s not man power? In the United States, they use it
for Viagra.” He got quite interested then and seemed genuinely surprised,
“Really? Here, if you go to work, and you feel pains in your chest, you
can drink the gin with fam wisa.” I then mentioned other places where
people used it for impotence. Pointing to my chest, I verifi ed again, “So
in Ghana, it is mostly for this part, it’s not for this part, down here. In Ni-
geria it is for the down, in Ghana for the up.” He nodded in agreement.
63
A number of Ghanaian botanists have examined the trade in grains
of paradise in the country, fi nding that it is controlled by women farm-
ers and merchants in the Ashanti, Brong Ahafo, and Western regions.
64
I
traveled to one area where women cultivated grains of paradise for their
own use in the shade of fruit trees, with a small surplus to sell. In Pebase,
a small enclave near Asankrangwa in the Western Region near the Ivory
Coast border, families had migrated from across Ghana to work in the
colonial forestry system as loggers. Now, a cosmopolitan assemblage of
Akan, Ga, and Nzima speakers farmed cocoa, oranges, kola, rubber, and
occasionally grains of paradise in forest enclaves. On the compound of a
village chief just off the highway to Asankrangwa, I engaged his several
Figure 2.9 Plant seller’s signboard, Ghana. (Photo by Linda Nadeau.)
https://t.me/med1917
100 Chapter 2
wives in conversation on the many uses of the peppers. They confi rmed
that they favored the dried pepper, rather than the fresh red pods, and
that they mostly used grains of paradise to treat themselves and their
children. Chief Armah explained, “We cultivate it ourselves. If you use
the seeds, it will be at least six months before they germinate. So instead,
we use the roots, the rhizomes. In that case, you have new plants within
two weeks.” Several women on the compound interjected that “anybody
can plant it, but normally it is the women who plant it. For us, it is an
additional source of income, together with ginger.”
65
The women provided me with several recipes, including techniques
to grind the seeds of dried grains of paradise to treat boils, vaginal prob-
lems, body aches, and runny noses. In contrast, Armah emphasized how
he would use the peppers in combination with other dried barks and
herbs to treat a variety of ailments, including impotence:
Without fam wisa, none of these other herbal treatments can work.
These herbs here are for hernia, but unless you strengthen them with
fam wisa, you can’t drink them. These are for waist pains, and these for
low sperm counts or for those whose erection can’t go up. To fi nish the
preparation, you strengthen it with fam wisa. We call fam wisa chief;
without it, all these other herbs can’t work.
Quarm, a healer and environmentalist, facilitated our conversations and
confi rmed that sick patients frequently visited the Chief’s compound for
care. They were attended to by women, with Quarm observing, “Any-
thing we want the patient to take, we tell the women and give it to them.
So the women tend to know more about the medicines used to cure. They
nurse the men and gather more knowledge.” Men and women sustained
different recipes for treating diseases with grains of paradise, including
therapies for male and female reproductive concerns (see Figure 2.10).
Herbal knowledge in contemporary West Africa is a rich terrain open
to extensive investigation. There are differences in personal knowledge
based on class, age, occupation, and gender. And there seems to be some
regional variation, as indicated in the maps of geographic distribution.
Conversations with ten individuals in Ghana pointed to a variety of pop-
u lar uses for grains of paradise. This account of discussions with family,
friends, and in for mants may seem casual and ad hoc. But it mimics
the practices of African scientists who discussed their bioprospecting
activities with me. Ivan Addae- Mensah, a leading biochemist in Ghana,
received explanations on plant uses from his mother. A biochemist
in Madagascar discussed possible plants for experimentation with his
https://t.me/med1917
Take Grains of Paradise for Love 101
brother, who had started using an herbal preparation to treat his diabe-
tes. These are informal conversations where individuals go person to per-
son sourcing data from those with different levels of knowledge. There
is not always such a strong divide in African bioprospecting between the
one embodying the knowledge and the researcher.
66
Perhaps it was partly my status as a married woman or an investiga-
tor with foreign ties that prevented me from hearing personal recipes
for treating impotence in Ghanaian men. Maybe it was so common in
impotence tonics that plant specialists had not emphasized its impor-
tance for the AU survey in Ghana. On more than one occasion an el der ly
man would take one of my research assistants (either male or female) off
to the side to describe a recipe that I was not allowed to hear or record.
When I showed the pepper pods to my brother, an architect practicing in
Ghana, he laughed. “I’ve seen those. After a long day’s work, the builders
on my site in Tema like to go to a small bar near the main road. In the
back of the shop, there are always bottles with those peppers steeped in
strong alcohol. The liquid is a dark red. I’ve never tried it, but the guys
always wink and say it will make you strong if you take it.”
Figure 2.10 Collection points in Africa of medicinal recipes using grains of paradise to improve
reproductive health. Key: circle = recipes for women; triangle = recipes for men. (Source: Author’s research.)
https://t.me/med1917
Соседние файлы в папке Библиотека им академика М.И. Перельмана