In pictures: Rainforest remedy
A Cambridge researcher is hoping to bring a natural remedy to the market as an alternative to synthetic painkillers. Acmella oleracea, commonly known as spilantes, is used to treat ailments like toothache.
The plant is cultivated by members of the indigenous Keshwa Lamas people at the Yakumamay medicinal garden, near Iquitos in Peru, where they are now settled.
Cambridge University medical anthropologist Dr Francoise Barbira Freedman (seen on the right) has lived with and worked alongside the Keshwa Lamas people for more than 30 years, the first Westerner to do so.
The Keshwa Lamas people use the plant on a regular basis for their dental hygiene and semi-cultivate it in this garden, which was started in 1997 a "native pharmacy" and community-run forest reserve.
The garden is partly flooded during the rainy season and villagers often use dug out canoes.
Intense deforestation means that there are now a number of distant forest communities of Keshwa Lama people in western Amazonia.
Dr Freedman first encountered spilantes in 1975 when it was used to treat pain caused by her wisdom teeth. She will channel a percentage of any future profits from the remedy to the Keshwa Lamas.
The remedy is now undergoing clinical trials in Peru and it is hoped to bring the product to market in 2014/15.
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