‘There is a great deal of information to be gained from traditional medical sources that we are not taking advantage of’ Premium

Dr. Spudich, a visiting scholar at National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) in Bengaluru since 2008, who delivered a lecture titled European Records of Botanical Medical Knowledge of Southern India at the Archives at NCBS, last month, speaks about her journey.

Annamma (Anna) Spudich still remembers the Pala tree she would walk past on her way to school as a six-year-old. She would be accompanied by her cousin, then in her teens, remembers Dr. Spudich, who holds a Ph.D. in Cell and Molecular Biology at Stanford University and was a research scientist at Stanford for 25 years. “The tree would produce white flowers at a certain time of the year,” she says, recalling how it fell twirling to the ground, because of the way the petals were positioned.

When she passed the tree in full bloom, however, her cousin would tell her to run, she says. “We were told that when the tree bloomed, you should not walk under it because there was a yakshi in residence,” says Dr. Spudich, who left her career in basic science in 2000 to explore the medical-botanical traditions of Southwest India.

Later, she discovered that the pollen of the Pala flower contains a potent nasal irritant that many people are highly allergic to. “Legends and stories, some of which are considered by modern science to be unrelated and absurd, codify medicinal plants and healing,” says Dr. Spudich, pointing out that storytelling was often an important tool to preserve and disseminate traditional folk medical knowledge.

Dr. Spudich, a visiting scholar at National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) in Bengaluru since 2008, who delivered a lecture titled European Records of Botanical Medical Knowledge of Southern India at the Archives at NCBS, last month, speaks about her journey.