Dietary restrictions in healing among speakers of Iquito, an endangered language of the Peruvian Amazon

The work was carried out in 2009 and 2010 in the Alto Nanay region of Peru. In structured interviews, informants gave explanatory models for illness categories, including etiologies, pathophysiologies, treatments and dietary restrictions necessary for 49 illnesses. Seventeen botanical vouchers for species said to have powerful spirits that require diets were also collected.All restrictions found correspond to some aspect of illness explanatory models. Thirty-five percent match up with specific illness etiologies, 53% correspond to particular pathophysiologies, 18% correspond with overall seriousness of the illness and 18% are only found with particular forms of treatment. Diets based on personalistic reasoning have a significantly higher average number of restrictions than those based on naturalistic reasoning.Dieting plays a central role in healing among Iquito speakers. Specific prohibitions can be explained in terms of specific aspects of illness etiologies, pathophysiologies and treatments. Although the Amazonian literature contains few studies focusing on dietary proscriptions over a wide range of illnesses, some specific restrictions reported here do correspond with trends seen in other Amazonian societies, particularly those related to sympathetic reasoning and for magical and spiritual uses of plants.Dietary restrictions accompanying the healing process have been reported from geographically widespread locations, including Africa [1,2], Europe [3], North America [1], Southeast Asia [4,5], and South America [6-8]. The connection between diet and medicine forms an important part of the classical and modern humoral traditions of India, China, ancient Greece and medieval Europe [9-12]. Some authors [13,14] have also pointed out the importance of dietary context for understanding the physiological effects of medicinal plants from a biomedical perspective. A number of recent review articles [15-17] have also treated dietary taboos in a broader social context.In th