The Aspirin Pill: Schultes's Most Prescient Observation

“In 1967, Schultes said the greatest enemy of ethnopharmacological research was the aspirin pill. He was right. The pill is cheap; the knowledge is not.”

'Perhaps the greatest enemy of ethnopharmacological research is the arrival and cheap availability of the aspirin pill.'

Schultes said this at the NIMH symposium in 1967, and it has become one of the most quoted observations in ethnobotany. Its truth has not diminished.

The mechanism is simple: when aspirin becomes available in a community that previously used plant-based pain relief, the plant-based practices begin to atrophy. The motivation to maintain and transmit the knowledge diminishes when a cheaper, more reliable alternative is available. The apprenticeship is long, the knowledge is complex, and the aspirin pill is easier.

This process has been documented across the world. The young people who might have become traditional healers choose other paths because Western medicine is available and the plants require decades of study.

What is lost with each atrophied knowledge tradition is not replaceable by the archive. Schultes's herbarium specimens are dried plant matter. They preserve the plant's chemistry but not the knowledge of dose, preparation, context, contraindication, and ceremonial integration that makes the plant useful. The knowledge requires a living person who learned it from another living person in a specific ecological and cultural context.

The aspirin pill continues to arrive.

Sources

• Schultes, NIMH Symposium (1967)
• Schultes & Hofmann, Plants of the Gods (1979)