This collaboration has created an exceptional photographic essay accompanied by detailed descriptions of the Amazon Indians' use of medicinal and other sacred plant substances. Through over 160 documentary photographs, taken in the '40s and '50s, and their commentaries, the reader is guided on a journey where healing with plants is the norm and where ritual and magic play an essential role in everyday life.Dr. Richard Evans Schultes is acknowledged as a world famous ethnobotanist and one of the greatest Amazon explorers; Dr.Robert F. Raffauf is a leading scientist in the pharmaceutical field and the search for natural sources for medicinal agents. We have here a wonderful integration of ethnobotany, chemistry and photography to produce a book that will long be an important historic record of one of the threatened cultures of the world. Sir Ghillean T. Prance (Foreword)