Summary
No one understands plants better than Dr. Cassandra Quave, and as a person born with multiple congenital defects who nearly lost her life at the age of three due to a staph infection, she has an intimate knowledge of the strengths and failings of modern medicine. In The Plant Hunter, Dr. Quave weaves together science, botany, and memoir to recount her own journey in search of natural compounds, long known to traditional healers, that could help save us all from this looming crisis. Her extraordinary story is filled with grit, tragedy, triumph, and awe.
Author Notes
Cassandra Quave, PhD, is the herbarium curator and an associate professor of dermatology and human health at Emory University, where she leads anti-infective drug discovery research initiatives and teaches courses on medicinal plants, food, and health. She is also the co-founder and CEO/CSO of PhytoTEK LLC, a drug-discovery company dedicated to developing solutions from botanicals for the treatment of recalcitrant antibiotic-resistant infections. Dr. Quave is a fellow of the Explorers Club, a former president of the Society for Economic Botany, and a recipient of the Emory Williams Teaching Award and Charles Heiser, Jr. Mentor Award. She is the co-creator and host of Foodie Pharmacology , a podcast dedicated to exploring the links between food and medicine. A leader in the field of medical botany, she has authored more than 100 scientific publications and has been featured in the New York Times Magazine and BBC Focus, as well as on PBS, NPR and the National Geographic Channel.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Ethnobotanist Quave blends memoir, botany, and anthropology in her spirited, globe-trotting debut. "Since the 1980s no new chemical classes of antibiotics have been discovered and successfully brought to market," Quave writes: "That's where I come in." Born without several bones in her right leg and foot, Quave spent time in and out of hospitals, where she nearly died of a staph infection before antibiotics saved her life. This sparked her interest in medicine, and Quave traces her journeys across the globe in search of plant information: she travels to the Amazon, where she receives an herb bath from a healer and reconsiders her relationship to medicine; to southern Italy where she studies the dietary habits of Albanian immigrants; to a Mediterranean island to collect plants in danger of disappearing, such as "purple flowering" Daphne sericea; and into her labs, where she tests her plants against antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Her survey is packed with facts--readers will learn that they have willow trees to thank for Advil, that the cocoa plant is where numbing medication comes from, and the Madagascar periwinkle is the source for a chemotherapy drug. Nature-minded readers will find themselves immersed in--and inspired by--Quave's poignant tale. Agent: Elias Altman, Massie & McQuilkin. (Oct.)
Library Journal Review
Ever since Quave (host of the podcast Foodie Pharmacology) was in college and then graduate school at Emory (where she now teaches medical ethnobotany and curates the herbarium), she has devoted her time to discovering new plant-based medicines. She has traveled the world, from her native Florida to the Amazon rain forest to Ginestra in southern Italy, to collect and catalogue plant specimens and talk to local healers about the uses of their native flora. With vivid insight and occasional humor, Quave's book combines memoir with science history to discuss her love of nature and her entry into ethnobotany (a field that's dedicated to the exploration of links between food and medicine). Quave also describes her experiences as a woman with disability; she was born with a rare bone disorder, which has led to numerous surgeries and infections requiring treatment. She writes about meeting her husband in Italy, having three children, helping to raise her nephew, and teaching and conducting research all the while. VERDICT Quave's inviting memoir demonstrates grit and determination and explains some of the fascinating and critical uses of plants for healing (including possible uses against antimicrobial resistance and even COVID-19).--Marcia G. Welsh, formerly at Dartmouth Coll. Lib., Hanover, NH
Excerpts
Chapter 1 My Leg and the Wilderness You only live twice: Once when you are born And once when you look death in the face. Ian Fleming, You Only Live Twice, 1964 I'm descended from a long line of Quaves, running all the way back to Juan de Cuevas, born in Alg++mitas, Spain, in 1762, who settled in what is now known as Harrison County, Mississippi. He married into the French Canadian Ladner family that had settled in the region, and they made their home on Cat Island, raising twelve children. To this day, their descendants carry a number of similar surnames-Cuevas, Coueves, Quave, and Queve. The name on my line of the family is pronounced kwave (rhymes with wave). We've always been people of the land. My father, Raymond, grew up on Quave Street in Biloxi, which, at one time, was entirely inhabited by close relatives. Daddy's father, J. L., was a stumper. Back in the 1920s, colossal longleaf pines (Pinus palustris, Pinaceae) throughout the south were clear-cut and used to build the homes and businesses of small towns that popped up along the coastline and interior of Florida. These evergreen trees sport the longest needlelike leaves of any pine in the world and proudly stand between eighty and one hundred feet tall. After trees were felled, the stumps stayed behind. J. L. and his sons used bulldozers to push the stumps out of the ground and then blew them up with dynamite, blasting them into small enough pieces for grinding at the stump mill. The Hercules Powder Company had such a mill located on the Peace River in DeSoto County, Florida. After being washed, the stumps were ground into chips and steamed to extract turpentine and other by-products like nitroglycerin and black powder. Stumping was an essential part of clearing the land following the timber harvest and creation of arable land for agricultural use. It was not easy work. My uncle Tommy lost several fingers playing with a hammer and a dynamite blasting cap as a kid, and another close member of J. L.'s work crew, Bo, died when a chain carrying heavy equipment broke and crushed him in the semitruck cab. Daddy grew up working outdoors, welding together pieces of scrap metal both as an artistic outlet and as a means to repair pieces of the business's bulldozers, tractors, and excavators. After the family moved from Mississippi to Florida, Daddy and his brothers became well known for their wild days of drag racing cars and trying to outrun the police. One of my uncles even served on a chain gang after being caught by a policeman. At the age of twenty in 1969, Daddy made his first trip overseas, trading the swamplands of Florida for those of Vietnam. He served in the First Infantry, Eleventh Brigade, Company B, Third Battalion, Americal Division, Central Highlands. He trekked through miles of jungle recently defoliated by dioxin, or Agent Orange-a powerful herbicide sprayed by US military forces to eliminate forest cover and crops of the North Vietnamese and Vietcong troops. In late July 1970, his machine gun locked and loaded, he was on top of an armored personnel carrier (APC) with four other friends in his squad, their eyes on alert as they surveyed the horizon, sweat dripping down their backs. Six other members of his platoon rode inside the APC. They were positioned in North Vietnam, north of the Quaúng Ng