Traditional phytotherapy and trans-cultural pharmacy among Turkish migrants living in Cologne, Germany

Abstract

This article reports on an ethnopharmaceutical field study carried out among Turkish migrants in Cologne, western Germany, which recorded 79 botanical taxa and 115 plant-based preparations, encompassing 167 folk phytotherapeutical uses, as well as a few other biological (animal and mineral derived) remedies. One-fourth of the recorded remedies were represented by food–medicines. Half of the ingredients quoted came originally from Turkey; only a few plants were gathered from the wild or cultivated in the Cologne area. This article discusses the Turkish migrants’ frequent use of aerial parts of Sideritis species, the fruits of Pistacia terebinthus and the seeds of Peganum harmala from the perspective of modern phytopharmacology, phytotherapy and toxicology. It considers cultural adaptation related to the use of folk pharmaceuticals by analysing the ingredients of the Turkish folk pharmacopoeia and comparing them with those of the Turkish medical ethnobotany and of the phytotherapy of the host country (Germany). Only one third of the remedies mentioned by Turkish migrants living in Cologne are also known in German evidence-based phytotherapy, and less than 10% of the recorded phytotherapeutic uses are common to both pharmacopoeias. This article concludes by suggesting hypotheses on future changes affecting the knowledge and use of medicinal plants within the Turkish community of Cologne.

Introduction

This article presents an analysis of the folk pharmacopoeia currently in use among Turkish migrants in urban areas of Cologne, Germany, following a field study that was conducted within the framework of a broader research project (RUBIA, 2003) involving eight universities and research centres. The project's aim was to compare traditional plant uses in twelve selected circum-Mediterranean sites, and among Mediterranean migrants in Central Europe. An interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approach was chosen for this research (Lawrence and Després, 2004).

The general scientific objectives of this broad research consortium were:

• to create a knowledge database of the vegetable materials which have been or are still used in traditional practices of 12 selected circum-Mediterranean areas;

• to develop an ethnobotanical data base of all the recorded uses and technologies related to these plants for medicine, food and handicrafts;

• to evaluate these traditional vegetable resources under the perspectives of their agronomic feasibility (cultivation of neglected or wild species in arid and semi-arid areas) and the small-scale eco-sustainable production of herbal products/phytotherapeuticals from local medicinal plants;

• to contribute to modern ethnobotanical museology by developing special sections in local botanical gardens and ethnographic museums that illustrate the traditional uses of plants.

In English scientific ethnobotanical literature, most of the field studies conducted in Southern Europe and in the entire Mediterranean basin have been based on the traditional uses of medicinal plants within a single cultural context (examples in the last 4 years include Agelet et al., 2000, Alvarez Arias, 2000, Ertuğ, 2000, Merzouki et al., 2000, Pieroni, 2000, Tuzlacı and Tolon, 2000, Agelet and Valles, 2001, Agelet and Valles, 2003a, Agelet and Valles, 2003b, Ballero et al., 2001, Jouad et al., 2001, Leporatti and Corradi, 2001, Palmese et al., 2001, Sezik et al., 2001, Tuzlacı and Aymaz, 2001, Eddouks et al., 2002, Pieroni et al., 2002a, Pieroni et al., 2003, Pieroni et al., 2004a, Pieroni et al., 2004b, Camejo-Rodrigues et al., 2003, El-Hilaly et al., 2003, Loi et al., 2001, Novais et al., 2004). A few works have primarily addressed the issue of crude drugs traditionally traded in the Near East (Abu-Irmaileh and Afifi, 2003, Afifi and Abu-Irmaileh, 2000, Lev and Amar, 2000, Lev and Amar, 2002, Said et al., 2002, Azaizeh et al., 2003), while others have used a socio-pharmaceutical approach (Ali-Shtayeh et al., 2000). In recent times, only two surveys have been carried out comparing the traditional phytotherapeutic data (in the former study mainly derived from secondary literature) of two European ethnic groups (Leporatti and Ivancheva, 2003, Pieroni and Quave, 2005a, Pieroni and Quave, 2005b).

On other continents, cross-cultural comparative ethnopharmaceutical studies have been carried out only very rarely, the only exception being the recent work of Vandebroek et al. (2004), who focused their attention mainly on the comparison of the medico-botanical floras. Other works (Heinrich et al., 1998, Moerman et al., 1999, Leonti et al., 2003, Janni and Bastien, 2004) only partially addressed the issue of the medical systems, both in terms of cultural concepts of health and diseases, and of ethnopharmacy, e.g. the analysis of the entire local folk Materia Medica/folk pharmacopoeias.

Folk Materia Medicas in the Mediterranean area include a few animal and mineral products, and a relevant number of medicinal foods (e.g. the consumption of weedy and wild greens is often perceived as having a medicinal character [Etkin and Ross, 1982, Johns, 1990, Pieroni, 2000, Pieroni et al., 2002b, Pieroni and Price, 2005]), which have recently received the attention of very arguable research approaches, newly indicated as ethnomics or ethnobotanomics (Rivera and Obón, 2004).

Little is known in Western countries about folk pharmaceutical and medical practices in multi-cultural contexts and among migrant groups (Cheon-Klessig et al., 1988, Kuebel and Tucker, 1988, Brainard and Zaharlick, 1989, Spring, 1989, Stewart, 1994, Stephenson, 1995, Davis, 1997, Griffiths et al., 1997, Pachter et al., 1998, Balick et al., 2000, Boyd et al., 2000, Nabuzoka and Badhadhe, 2000, Corlett et al., 2003, Cappuccio et al., 2001, Warnakulasuriya, 2002, Nguyen, 2003, Reiff et al., 2003, Palmer, 2004). A further minor ethopharmacological work has been carried out on the traditional uses of neglected vegetables within the South-Asian community of Bradford, in northern England (Ansari et al., 2005).

Only one field survey has been carried out in continental Europe so far on the specific topic of migrant ethnobiology: under the perspective of agro-ecology, it was designed to ascertain the potential of migrants’ home-gardens for urban bio-diversity within a small urban setting in the former German capital city of Bonn (Gladis, 2002, Gladis, 2003). Starting from the assumption that ethnopharmacy concerns “the interdisciplinary science that deals with the study of the pharmaceutical means, considered in relation to the cultural determinants which characterize the uses of these means in a given human group” (Pieroni et al., 2002a), and preferring to use this term to “ethnopharmacology” (which is strongly associated instead with the bio-scientific evaluation of traditional remedies, as originally defined by Bruhn and Holmstedt, 1981), this paper focuses specifically on cultural adaptation to social changes, vis-à-vis the management and use of natural ingredients of the folk pharmacopoeia by Turks living in Cologne, Germany; on the hypothetical dynamics and changes of Traditional Pharmaceutical Knowledge (TPhK) within this culture over a period of time.