Book Abstract

“From the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, Spanish missionaries collected, studied, and made records of Philippine medicinal plants and herbs that Filipino traditional medical practitioners or herbolarios had been prescribing since the precolonial period. Because the herbolarios left no writings about their practices, the missionaries’ works are our primary sources for studying Filipino traditional medicine. Based on these works, Traditional Medicine in the Colonial Philippines gives an intimate and dense portrait of a defined medical tradition, and so, documents an important component of ways of life and epistemologies that Filipinos can recuperate and benefit from.”