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A herbal
seller gives a 'jamu' tonic drink to her customer in Jakarta on
January 15,
2010. Many Indonesians take the traditional drink made from
mix of herbs and
roots from excotic plants and believe in its effectiveness
as health tonic
drink while men take it to increase stamina and sexual
power (Romeo Gacad / AFP
/ Getty Images)
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In 1990,
Irish journalist Susan Jane-Beers noticed a herbal medicine clinic in the
corner of a hair salon in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta, her adopted home.
A victim of age-related chronic knee pain that conventional pharmaceuticals
couldn't numb let alone heal, Jane-Beers decided to try jamu -- traditional
Indonesian medicine.
The results
astounded her. After three days of taking only one third of the prescribed dose
of herbal pills, the pain had vanished, making her wonder if she'd found
"the magic bullet of all time."
Jane-Beers
spent the next decade researching the origins, myths, tightly guarded recipes
and commercial applications of herbal medicine in Java, where plants have been
used for medicinal purposes since prehistory. Her 2001 opus Jamu: The Ancient
Art of Herbal Healing remains the only definitive English guide on the subject.
It's also the most widely read outside Indonesia since Herbarium Amboinense, a
catalogue on plants completed by German botanist Georg Rumphius in 1690 -- more
than three centuries beforehand.
A holistic
therapy based on the notion that if disease comes from nature then so must the
cure, jamu covers a dazzling array of teas, tonics, pills, creams and powders
to cure -- and prevent -- every ailment imaginable. The ingredients are by
definition cheap, widely available and simple: nutmeg to treat insomnia, guava
for diarrhea, lime to promote weight loss and basil to counter body odor.
Jamu has
also been used to treat cancer. In her book, Jane-Beers writes of a traditional
healer in the city of Jogjakarta who apparently cured what had been diagnosed
as a terminal case of cervical cancer with a tea made of betel nut, Madagascar
Prewinkle and mysterious 'benala' leaves. Combined with a strict soya bean
diet, the patient was said to have made a full recovery in 18 months.
Sound
farfetched? A 2011 study by Virginia Tech's Department of Food Science and
Technology on the soursop tree (the leaves of which are used to relive gout and
arthritis in Indonesia) found evidence showing extracts from soursop fruit
inhibit the growth of human breast cancer. Vincristine, one of 70 useful
alkaloids identified in Madagascar Prewinkle, radically ups the survival rate
of children with leukemia, while turmeric is being looked at as a treatment for
Alzheimer's.
"Western
medicine tries to destroy cancer but at the same time it destroys elements of the
body. Jamu helps the body produce its own antibodies to fight the cancer by
itself," says Bryan Hoare, manager at MesaStila, a wellness retreat in
central Java that serves jamu shots with breakfast and employs a tabib --
indigenous healer -- for private consultations. "Coming from the earth,
jamu also makes you feel good. When you take it you experience a positive
feeling."
But if jamu
is the magic bullet, why isn't better known in the West, where natural Asian
medicines like India's ayurvedic system and Chinese herbal healing have been
growing in popularity for years?
The answer
can be found on the streets of Indonesia, where jamu is consumed regularly by
49% of the population, according to the country's Ministry of Health. Valued at
$2.7 billion annually, the industry covers an incredibly wide gamut of
products, from homemade tonics sold by street hawkers, to slimming powders, to
cosmetics, to jamu for babies and postnatal care. Yet the bestselling in value
terms are invariably the dodgiest: those claiming to boost sexual performance
and or suppress appetite.
"Indonesians
may well have been amused when Viagra was released in 1998," Jane-Beers
comments on the popularity of brands like Kuat Lekali (Strong Man), Kuku Bima
(Nail of God) and Super Biul Erection Oil. "They have had their own
remedies for years."
Then
there's the association between jamu and white magic. Many indigenous healers
insist on dispensing jamu on auspicious dates or in conjunction with animist
spells that predate the arrival of Islam in the archipelago.
Mbah
Ngatrulin, a Buddhist tabib I met in Ngadas, the highest village in Java, told
me spells are the key and the jamu may as well be "mineral water."
It's the kind of comment that prevents many GPs across Southeast Asia from
endorsing jamu lest patients take them for quacks.
According
to Charles Saerang, head of the Indonesian Jamu Entrepreneurs Association, the
primary impediment to a worldwide jamu craze is that locally jamu products
don't meet international manufacturing standards. That hasn't stopped
entrepreneurs from buying raw herbal materials in Indonesia, processing them in
India and Malaysia and selling them in the U.K. -- a market Indonesian made
jamu products can't access. That's a double whammy for Indonesia, which loses
out on value added by third parties and the chance to promote the jamu brand
name abroad.
It's
impossible to say when, or even if, jamu painkillers will be stocked at
supermarkets and convenience stores in countries like the U.K. Yet inroads are
already being laid by small businesses like the Origin Spa in Melbourne,
Australia. There, highly skilled practitioners apply massage developed by
16th-century Indonesian royalty -- the founders of modern jamu -- with creams
and oils containing turmeric, betel leaves, lives and crushed eggshells.
There's a minimum two-month waiting list for Origin's five-day treatment that
helps women regain their figures quickly, improve lactation and dispel wind,
dizziness and aches and pains.
"It's
surprisingly popular with the Asian mums throughout Australia," says
partner Jessica Koh. "But it's still unfamiliar to most of the
locals."
-- With
reporting by Theo Manday / Ngadas
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