民族药物学杂志致力于信息的交换和理解人们使用的植物、真菌、动物、微生物和矿物质及其生物和药理作用建立原则的基础上,通过国际公约。人们面对疾病,早期发现大量有用的治疗药物的植物和动物王国。这些药用物质的经验知识和他们的潜在毒性是通过口头传统,有时记录在药物学和草本植物和其他内容。今天的许多有价值的药物(如阿托品、麻黄素、筒箭毒碱、地高辛、利血平)开始使用通过本土的补救措施的研究。化学家继续使用植物的药物(如吗啡、紫杉醇、毒扁豆碱、奎尼丁、吐根碱)作为原型在试图开发更有效和更少的有毒的医药公司。

The Journal of Ethnopharmacology is dedicated to the exchange of information and understandings about people's use of plants, fungi, animals, microorganisms and minerals and their biological and pharmacological effects based on the principles established through international conventions. Early people confronted with illness and disease, discovered a wealth of useful therapeutic agents in the plant and animal kingdoms. The empirical knowledge of these medicinal substances and their toxic potential was passed on by oral tradition and sometimes recorded in herbals and other texts on materia medica. Many valuable drugs of today (e.g., atropine, ephedrine, tubocurarine, digoxin, reserpine) came into use through the study of indigenous remedies. Chemists continue to use plant-derived drugs (e.g., morphine, taxol, physostigmine, quinidine, emetine) as prototypes in their attempts to develop more effective and less toxic medicinals. In recent years the preservation of local knowledge, the promotion of indigenous medical systems in primary health care, and the conservation of biodiversity have become even more of a concern to all scientists working at the interface of social and natural sciences but especially to ethnopharmacologists. Recognizing the sovereign rights of States over their natural resources, ethnopharmacologists are particularly concerned with local people's rights to further use and develop their autochthonous resources. Accordingly, today's ethnopharmacological research embraces the multidisciplinary effort in the: • documentation of indigenous medical knowledge, • scientific study of indigenous medicines in order to contribute in the long-run to improved health care in the regions of study, as well as • search for pharmacologically unique principles from existing indigenous remedies. The Journal of Ethnopharmacology publishes original articles concerned with the observation and experimental investigation of the biological activities of plant and animal substances used in the traditional medicine of past and present cultures. The journal will particularly welcome interdisciplinary papers with an ethnopharmacological, an ethnobotanical or an ethnochemical approach to the study of indigenous drugs. Reports of anthropological and ethnobotanical field studies fall within the journal's scope. Studies involving pharmacological and toxicological mechanisms of action are especially welcome. Clinical studies on efficacy will be considered if contributing to the understanding of specific ethnopharmacological problems. The journal welcomes review articles in the above mentioned fields especially those highlighting the multi-disciplinary nature of ethnopharmacology. Commentaries are by invitation only.