Cure-Alls In Natures

Dispensary

From a Noumea correspondent

A young woman setting up house in Noumea is not likely to be particularly flattered by her mother-in-law’s gift of a croton, with the advice that the sap of this plant helps remove skin blemishes. Mother-in-law may also insist that a certain cactus should be grown abundantly by the back door, its juice to be applied in the case of burns.

She may further warn against the growing of tradescantia creeper in the garden, as this plant, locally known as “misere”, is bound to bring misfortune.

Of course a daughter-in-law may always offer in return some strongly penetrating roots of san sevieria, known as “mother-in-law’s tongue”, or she may take some of these tips seriously, as French scientists and others have done.

In fact, the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) has just established a laboratory for the investigation of the medical properties of plants, in Noumea, while in November the South Pacific Commission (based in Noumea) organised a conference in Tahiti for scientists and local “healers” to discuss medical plants in tropic islands.

The Noumea laboratory is in the charge of young French scien tist Thieerry Sevenet, who has already made extensive excursions through inland New Caledonia, surveying the wide variety of flora which is endemic and thus found exclusively in this territory.

New Caledonia already has one plant extract used commercially for medicinal purposes: this is Gomenol, an essence distilled from the leaves of the “niaouli” paper bark tree (melaleuca leucaden dron). Gomenol is inhaled against colds or applied for rheumatism, the name originated as “oil from the town of Gomen”.

Numerous other Island medi cinal plants and techniques are detailed in two recently-published pamphlets, based on French re search. These works concern Polynesian remedies, published by the South Pacific Commission, and a study of New Caledonian medicinal plants, published by the

French research institute ORS TOM, which has a Noumea branch.

Some six hundred Caledonian plants are detailed in the ORSTOM booklet, with medical applications ranging from the treatment of over-eating to infer tility. Among the most useful pharmaceutical species is the coco nut palm: the pulp from the green nut may be rubbed on the skin to alleviate the effects of sunburn; coconut milk (which some people enjoy with whisky) may also be used with or with out seawater for laxative and anti scurvy effects; finally, the roots act against dysentery, and for those who enjoy chewing, are a means of strengthening the gums.

As far as Tahitian substances are concerned, one researcher has experimented with the extract of a sea anemone from the Bora Bora lagoon. This extract has been used to treat virus cancer in mice.

To promote further research in this field, laboratory studies of medicinal plants are designed to isolate the substances concerned and submit them to chemical an alysis, so as to determine whether their main components can be re produced by man, and to discover whether there are any impediments to their medical usage. If a plant does not have a pharmaceutical use, it is always possible that it may be of interest to manu facturers of perfume and cosmetics.

In New Caledonia, some of the obstacles to the current re search include the fact that much rare local flora is being destroyed by mining and bushfires. Botanists are forced into the most obscure plateaux and mountains to find specimens of species still in exis tence. At the same time, it is often difficult to determine whether the so-called medicinal properties of plants used by local natural “hea lers” are in fact clinically valid, or simply based on faith.

Through the years of research that inevitably lie ahead, the Noumea laboratory will concen trate on plants containing alkaloid substances, which are used as a base to many medicinal drugs.