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How does a bird get its picture on the cover of a pharmacists trade journal?
“They do unusual pictures and they’re open to a lot of things,” Greeson said of the magazine’s editorial staff. “They also give a lot of time and
attention to the Association of Natural Medicine Pharmacists.”
Actually the Association of Natural Medicine Pharmacists (ANMP) is the big picture behind the picture Greeson took. Greeson, one of only four licensed natural medicine pharmacists in North Carolina, shot the photo on a trip to Peru with ANMP President Connie Grauds and four other ANMP members. The purpose of the trip was to work with medicine men, from Peruvian rain forests, who held a knowledge that had been passed along through generations about healing powers of certain plants native to the area.
Grauds, a pharmacist in Berkley, Calif., had been in the area before and had befriended some of the medicine men, earning their trust.
“This was the first time these people allowed outsiders to live in the village with them,” Greeson said. “The only reason was that we were accompanied by their shaman or medicine man. It was an honor for the village to host the medicine man and, since he was bringing friends, this was a greater honor.”
The expedition, which took place late in 2004, was the second time Greeson has accompanied a few of her fellow ANMP members to the rain forests of Peru. She described the location of this one as “about seven hours up the Amazon and up a couple of tributaries closer to the Andes, where the mountains are.”
“Before (on her first trip to Peru), I had gone in the other direction, about 15 hours down the Amazon,” she said.
The name of the village where she shot the photo of the exotic bird is Jaldar.
“We had spent the day in the forest with the medicine man and, as we came out, this bird just happened to be sitting in a tree near the edge of the village,” Greeson said. “It’s amazing how close you can get to some of these animals. On this trip, I saw an anaconda for the first time.”
Last year, Greeson sent some of her photos from the trip to JAPhA. Earlier this spring, she was surprised to receive a telephone call from Michael Posey, the magazine’s editor, who said he loved the picture of the bird and had decided to use it as the cover photo for the May-June issue.
Greeson does not know what species of tropical bird it was. Neither does Posey, but in a blurb explaining the cover photo on the magazine’s contents page, he identified it as a “Peruvian Parrot.” In the blurb, he mentioned
Greeson’s trip with Grauds and the other four pharmacists and added “Greeson enjoys her practice of integrative medicine, and she has enjoyed exploring different countries and cultures while learning about their treatments and healing therapies.”
While Greeson is proud to have a photo she took land on the cover of a national magazine, she is even prouder of the work she is doing and the studies she is undertaking as a natural medicine pharmacist.
“Everything behind that counter started from the ground – or from animals or plants,” she said, pointing to the pharmaceutical counter in her store.
“Then we began synthesizing and processing everything, so we haven’t explored half of our world. Less than one-half of one percent of the plants have been studied for their medicinal value, so everything is still out there. We’re not looking like we once did because we’re relying on the laboratories to do that for us.”
With this in mind, Greeson is looking forward to other fact-finding missions to South America.
“Some of us are planning to go to Ecuador in October to study natural medicine treatments there,” she said. “Hopefully, Connie and a few others can go to Bolivia next spring, depending on the political situation. That’s where we’re, hopefully, going to really get things rolling, because we’re just touching the tip of the iceberg.”
The political situation in Bolivia and other parts of South America have been precarious for a number of years now. Furthermore, parts of rural South America have been notorious for road bandits and other violent criminals.
Nonetheless, Greeson has yet to feel threatened by humans or larger jungle animals, for that matter, on any of her excursions south of the equator. The potential danger she has experienced in South America, so far, has come from much smaller critters.
“We worry about malaria and yellow fever from the insect bites because we can’t identify half of the insects down there,” Greeson said. “Some of us got bitten by insects that we had no idea what they were.”
But the risk of insect bites or harm from other beasts, including humans, is more than outweighed, in Greeson’s opinion, by the potential of positive results from the studies that she and her fellow ANMP are in the process of undertaking.
“That’s the way we have to go,” Greeson said about natural medicine. “I think that there’s a cure for everything. It’s a matter of searching, researching and discovering it.”
Staff Writer Kevin Reid can be reached at 472-9500, ext. 230, or at
reid@tvilletimes.com