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.