昔から、動物は病気になったら自分でなおすという話は知られており、ヘビやクマなどから教わった植物を薬にしたという伝説が世界各地にある。病気のチンパンジーがある植物を食べて病気がなおったというニュースが世界に流れたのは、1989年のこと。そのころから、科学者による本格的な探求が始まり、「動物薬学」あるいは「動物の自己治療」とよばれる分野が誕生した。本書は、この分野についての世界で初めての書籍。胃腸障害、怪我、虫下しからストレス、感染症、老化・死まで、動物が自然の恵みをじつにうまく使いながら健康管理する方法を描き、文明食生活にどっぷりとひたる人間にも警鐘をならす。
内容（「MARC」データベースより）
野生動物は自然の偉大な治癒力を知っていた。チンパンジーが食べていた葉に薬効を発見、ゾウが岩をかじるわけ、アザラシの「ひなたぼっこ」の意外な効果、酔っぱらうヒヒ…。動物の「自己治療」をめぐる本。
From Publishers Weekly
A timely treatise for a health-obsessed culture, this book takes the idea of "natural remedies" quite literally. Engel, a lecturer in environmental sciences at the U.K. Open University, has compiled a wealth of fascinating laboratory studies and field observations on how animals treat and prevent diseases. Eschewing pseudomystical assertions about the innate wisdom of beasts, the author bases her assertions on scientific premises. For millennia, humans have observed animals in the wild eating plants and minerals and applying naturally occurring topical antitoxins from the same sources to combat infectious wounds, parasites and internal disorders. Herds of elephants risk injury and death in a perilous journey to hidden salt caves where they supplement their sodium deficient diets. Monkeys rub poisonous millipedes on their fur to repel biting, disease-carrying insects. Birds line their nests with parasite-resistant herbs. Engel details a world where nature is the pharmacy and every animal is its own practitioner. The reader also learns about the inbred weaknesses unintentionally visited upon domesticated animals through centuries of faulty genetic tampering by humans. Engel notes that the implications of all this for human health are sadly familiar: our biggest killers today (cancer, heart disease) result from unhealthy eating. Animals in the wild stay remarkably fit because they stick to a diet for which they were adapted, while human beings are ill-equipped to handle our current predilection for dairy, grains and processed foods. Occasionally, Engel lapses into apocalyptic rhetoric about the ravages of technology, which gets in the way of her otherwise clear-sighted and crisp narrative. Nevertheless, this is an engaging book that will enlighten those interested in health, biology, environment and animal behavior. Photos.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
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Book Description
This is the first book on a fascinating new field in biology -- zoopharmacognosy, or animal self-medication -- and its lessons for humans. When Rachel Carson published SILENT SPRING, few people knew the meaning of the word "ecology." Even fewer people today probably know the meaning of "zoopharmacognosy." But that is about to change. In WILD HEALTH, Cindy Engel explores the extraordinary range of ways animals keep themselves healthy, carefully separating scientifically verifiable fact from folklore, hard data from daydreams. As with holistic medicine for humans, there turns out to be more fact in folklore than was previously thought.
How do animals keep themselves healthy? They eat plants that have medicinal properties. They select the right foods for a nutritionally balanced diet, often doing a better job of it than humans do. Animals even seek out psychoactive substances -- they get drunk on fermented fruit, hallucinate on mushrooms, become euphoric with opium poppies. They also manipulate their own reproduction with plant chemistry, using some plants as aphrodisiacs and others to enhance fertility. WILD HEALTH includes scores of remarkable examples of the ways animals medicate themselves.
- Desert tortoises will travel miles to mine and eat the calcium needed to keep their shells strong.
- Monkeys, bears, coatis, and other animals rub citrus oils and pungent resins into their coats as insecticides and antiseptics against insect bites.
- Chimpanzees swallow hairy leaves folded in a certain way to purge their digestive tracts of parasites.
- Birds line their nests with plants that protect their chicks from blood-draining mites and lice.
In other words, animals try to keep themselves healthy in many of the same ways humans do; in fact, much of early human medicine, including many practices being revived today as "alternative medicine," arose through observations of animals. And, as WILD HEALTH, animals still have a lot to teach us. We could use a little more wild health ourselves.
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About the Author
Cindy Engel earned a PhD in animal behaviour from the University of East Anglia. Her fieldwork has followed the habits of rabbits in England and the movements of jaguars in the jungles of southern Mexico. She is an assistant lecturer in the Faculty of Environmental Science at the Open University, and is currently also a consultant in animal behaviour for various commercial organic farms. A freelance radio and television science advisor, she has recently worked on a wildlife series for the National Geographic Channel, and a BBC radio series on the natural history of medicine. Cindy is also a practitioner of holistic medicine, and lives on a smallholding in rural Suffolk with her two children.
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著者略歴 (「BOOK著者紹介情報」より)
エンジェル,シンディ
イースト・アングリア大学で動物行動の研究によってPh.D.取得。イギリスで野生ウサギの習性を、南メキシコのジャングルに住むジャガーの行動を調査研究する。現在、オープン大学環境科学部門で助講師をつとめる一方で、いくつもの有機農場のために動物行動のコンサルタントをしている。また、ラジオやテレビなどの科学番組の制作にフリーランスで協力し、「ナショナル・ジオグラフィック・チャンネル」の野生動物シリーズやBBCラジオの「医学の博物誌」シリーズに携わる。「ホリスティック・メディシン」の医師。指圧師。二人のこどもともに、サフォーク州の田舎で農業を営む
羽田 節子
東京農工大学卒業。昆虫生理学専攻。生物学関係の翻訳執筆にたずさわる。著書に『キャプテン・クックの動物たち』(科学読物賞受賞)など(本データはこの書籍が刊行された当時に掲載されていたものです)
amazon.co.jpより抜粋 [1]
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