Chinese medicinal plant (malaria)

Discussion in 'Plants: Science and Cultivation' started by bjo, Oct 7, 2008.

  1. bjo

    bjo Active Member 10 Years

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    A chinese medicinal plant is used to treat malaria in the novel

    "Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress" by Dai Sijie (2000)

    It is described

    " It was a common plant, growing on the banks of a little stream, not far from her village. Bushy, barely thirty centimetres high, it had bright pink flowers with petals resembling outsize peach blossom..... The medicinal properties were concentrated in the angular, spiky leaves shaped like ducks' feet.....It's called "Broken-bowl-shards".....She pounded the leaves...to a thick greenish paste, which she proceeded to smear on Luo's left wrist........Two weeks later [it] proved effective, and Lou's malaria subsided.When he removed the bandage from his wrist he discovered a blister the size of a bird's egg, shiny and transparent.It shrank eventually until there was only a small black scare left and the bouts of fever stopped altogether"

    Any ideas??

    Artemisia is used in Chinese medicine to treat malaria and its efficacy has been recently recognised by western medicine...but the discription does not fit at all.

    To me the description fits a Paeony eg Paeonia lactiflora, which is used widely in chinese medicine to reduce fever, but it is the root that is used.

    Another possibility, I suppose, might be Pulsatilla chinensis [ Anemone chinensis ] which is used specifically to treat malaria, but again it is the root which is used and the description isn't really right.

    Need to find out before global warming allows malaria-causing mosquitoes to recolonize Portugal !!

    So hopefully I have a year or two yet before I need the answer....

    Ciao
    BrianO
     
  2. Michael F

    Michael F Paragon of Plants Forums Moderator 10 Years

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    Can't help with the query, but just to point out that the distribution of malaria and malaria-carrying mosquitoes isn't related to global warming but to quality of medical hygeine. Malaria used to occur throughout most of Europe during the 'Little Ice Age' when the climate was colder than now.
     
  3. Ron B

    Ron B Paragon of Plants 10 Years

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    How were malarial mosquitoes able to live in a cold and frosty Europe? Spread by another vector?
     
  4. bjo

    bjo Active Member 10 Years

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    Michael,

    Point taken. Perhaps it would be correct to say "for malaria to re-establish in Portugal".

    There is real concern here that malaria(s) and dengue fever will re-establish as temperatures increase, as this should increase mosquito populations, mosquito activity and mosquito-human encounters.

    Ciao
    BrianO
     
  5. Michael F

    Michael F Paragon of Plants Forums Moderator 10 Years

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    By overwintering as eggs or aquatic larvae. Several temperate mosquito species are just as able to carry the disease as tropical species can (and in Asia and North America, as well as Europe). The malaria overwintered in human hosts, getting back into the mosquito population in spring. The disease was eradicated in the wealthier parts of the world with the introduction of mosquito nets (to deny mosquitos access to infected patients) and quinine (to cure the infected patients).

    See e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anopheles#Habitat
    Distribution of malaria-carrying Anopheles spp.: http://www.cdc.gov/Malaria/biology/mosquito/map.htm
    Note Aa. atroparvus, freeborni, messeae, quadrimaculatus in the cool temperate Northern Hemisphere.
     
  6. Douglas Justice

    Douglas Justice Well-Known Member UBC Botanical Garden Forums Administrator Forums Moderator VCBF Cherry Scout Maple Society 10 Years

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    Artemisia annua is recognized as an important anti-malarial, I recall.
     

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