Medicine Quest: In Search of Nature's Healing Secrets

A world renowned ethnobotanist combs the far corners of the planet to unveil nature's pharmacy and detail how scientists are harvesting it to conquer devastating diseases

In Medicine Quest, Mark Plotkin goes beyond Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice, his critically acclaimed exploration of the Amazonian jungles that has become a classic of its genre. He transports readers from freezing Arctic wastes to twilit ocean depths to burning jungles, where the race is on to find new medicines for intractable diseases like AIDS, cancer, and diabetes. It is a quest powered by the desperation of the ill and the compassion of those who would cure them.

Plotkin highlights discoveries that are already producing stunning leads in the laboratory: painkillers from the skin of rain-forest frogs, anticoagulants from leech saliva, and antitumor agents from snake venom. This entertaining weave of medicine, ecology, ethnobotany, history, exploration, and adventure will thrill scientists, naturalists, adventurers, and the exploding number of Americans who spend $10 billion a year on medicine in their thirst for nature's healing secrets.