Journal of Ethnopharmacology 102 (2005) 336–343 A Swedish collection of medicinal plants from Cameroon Finn Sandberg a,* , Premila Perera-Ivarsson a , Hesham Rushdey El-Seedi a,b,* a Division of Pharmacognosy, Department of Medicinal Chemistry, Biomedical Centre, Uppsala University, Box 574, SE-751 23 Uppsala, Sweden b Chemistry Department, Faculty of Science, El-Menoufia University, Shebin El-Kom, El-Menoufia, Egypt Received 1 December 2003; received in revised form 1 June 2005; accepted 16 June 2005 Available online 10 August 2005 Abstract A collection of 32 botanically identified medicinal plants from the slopes of Mt. Cameroon made by two Swedish settlers in the beginning of the last century is described and the literature is followed up. The drug names were found to be unaltered during the century passed. © 2005 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Plants; Medicinal; Cameroon The Department of Pharmacology of the Caroline Insti- tute (Karolinska Institute), Stockholm, Sweden, previously had a large collection of drugs. When the Institute moved in the late 1940s to new premises in Solna, space was no longer available for the large drug collection in the Department of Pharmacology. One of the authors (F.S.), active at that time at this department, participated in the packing of the drug col- lection in 54 wooden boxes, to be sent to the Department of Pharmacognosy of, at that time, Royal Pharmaceutical Insti- tute in Stockholm. In addition to these boxes, there was a cupboard containing medicinal plants from Cameroon. When F.S. returned to the Royal Pharmaceutical Institute in 1954, the wooden boxes were still in the office and unpacked, and the cupboard was locked. The cupboard (Fig. 1) with its collection of 32 botani- cally identified and some unidentified medicinal plants from Cameroon is the starting point for this paper (Santesson, 1926)(Table 1). This cupboard was donated in 1924 to the drug-museum in the Caroline Institute in honor of Professor Gustav von D¨ uben, specialist on the ethnography of Africa, by two Swedish business men: Knut Knutson and Georg Wal- dau, one of them (G.W.) had been active for more than 40 * Corresponding authors. Tel.: +46 18 38 6042; fax: +46 18 38 6042. E-mail address: Hesham.El-Seedi@fkog.uu.se (H.R. El-Seedi). years on the southwest slopes of Mount Cameroon. These gentlemen have also been mentioned in the polite literature by the Swedish author Per W¨ astberg (W¨ astberg, 1986, 1987). For about one decade this cupboard was unattended in the Department of Pharmacognosy, but when one of the authors (F.S.) traveled in 1965 to Cameroon to collect African Strych- nos species for phytochemical investigation, the interest arose to reinvestigate the drugs of the Knutson–Waldau collection. In this paper, the 32 identified medicinal plants will be dealt with: what was known by Professor Santesson and what is known in 1993, after 80 years, when Professor Lars Bohlin and Professor Finn Sandberg made a revisit in Cameroon. The drug names were found to be unaltered during the cen- tury past. This is in agreement with our findings in other areas in Africa, among others in Central African Republic and in Congo, Brazzaville. The order of the drugs is the same as Professor Santesson has used, i.e., the plants are arranged according to plant families. It should be mentioned that the taxonomic identification of the drug samples was made mainly by Professor Robert Fries (Stockholm) and Pro- fessor J. Milbraed (Berlin, Dahlem). New references mean all references after Professor C.G. Sanderson’s original paper in 1926 (Santesson, 1926). In the drug collection, unidentified drugs nos. 33–42 are not dealt with in this publication. 0378-8741/$ – see front matter © 2005 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jep.2005.06.032