Moerman, Daniel E. 1941–

(Daniel Ellis Moerman)

PERSONAL: Born July 21, 1941, in Paterson, NJ; son of H. Ellis (an engineer) and Doris (Marti) Moerman; married Marquisa LaVelle Smith (a college professor), December 31, 1969; children: Jennifer Theresa. Education: University of Michigan, A.B., 1963, M.A., 1965, Ph.D., 1974. Politics: "Secular humanist."

ADDRESSES: Home—Ypsilanti, MI. Office—Department of Behavioral Sciences, University of Michigan—Dearborn, 2134 CASL Annex, 4901 Evergreen Rd., Dearborn, MI 48128. E-mail—[email protected]. edu.

CAREER: Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio, instructor in anthropology, 1967–70; University of Michigan—Dearborn, instructor, 1972–73, assistant professor, 1973–78, associate professor of anthropology, 1978—became William E. Stirton Professor of Anthropology.

MEMBER: American Anthropological Association (fellow), Society for Medical Anthropology, Ethnopharmacological Society, Central States Anthropological Association.

AWARDS, HONORS: Annual Literature Award, Council on Botanical and Horticultural Libraries, 2000, for Native American Ethnobotany.

WRITINGS:

American Medical Ethnobotany: A Reference Dictionary, Garland Publishing (New York, NY), 1977.

Geraniums for the Iroquois: A Field Guide to American Indian Medicinal Plants, Reference Publications (Algonac, MI), 1981.

(Editor, with Lola Romanucci-Rose and Lawrence Tancredi) The Anthropology of Medicine, Bergin & Garvey (South Hadley, MA), 1982, 3rd edition, 1997.

Medicinal Plants of Native America, University of Michigan Press (Ann Arbor, MI), 1986.

Native American Ethnobotany, Timber Press (Portland, OR), 1998.

Meaning, Medicine, and the "Placebo Effect," Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 2002.

Contributor to scholarly journals.

SIDELIGHTS: Daniel E. Moerman is the author of a number of scholarly texts concerning biomedicine. Native American Ethnobotany, the culmination of twenty-five years of research, catalogs more than 4,000 plants and their uses by Native Americans, including drugs, foods, and fibers. "The volume is very useful for gaining ready access to a vast amount of data on American Indian plant use," noted Catherine S. Fowler in the Quarterly Review of Biology, "and it should be of particular use to scholars, students, and the general public." Donald J. McGraw, reviewing the work in American Scientist, offered even more effusive praise, calling Native American Ethnobotany "the magnum opus of the field" and stating that Moerman's "work will likely never be surpassed."

In Meaning, Medicine, and the "Placebo Effect," Moerman examines the role of "meaning response" in the treatment of illness, contending that "the placebo effect is too narrow a construct and that it fails to capture the power of context in shaping health outcomes," observed Peter J. Guarnaccia in Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry. According to Ronald C. Simons in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, "Moerman argues convincingly that the effects of meaning are no less present and no less important in biologically efficacious treatments than in treatment with placebos. In both cases, meanings influence outcomes."

Moerman once told CA: "My attraction to medicine came quite by accident, while I was pursuing anthropological research in South Carolina (the Sea Islands) in 1970. Since then, I have pursued native American herbalism and the process of healing in more general terms.

"I have been deliberately interested in writing for only a few years. Most of my earlier work was concerned much more with substance than with style; American Medical Ethnobotany, for instance, is unreadable—it is a dictionary, and a very useful one at that. But such utility is really only appropriate for specialists or true aficionados. Lately I have been trying to reach a broader audience with material that is still solid and informative, but more accessible. It is very hard to take complicated ideas and make them understandable without trivializing them. The only technique I have been able to develop is to set particular goals with deadlines, and then use the pressure this causes as motivation to do it until it works.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Scientist, March-April, 1999, Donald J. McGraw, review of Native American Ethnobotany, p. 176.

Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, June, 2004, Peter J. Guarnaccia, review of Meaning, Medicine, and the "Placebo Effect," pp. 245-248.

Issues in Law & Medicine, summer, 1992, review of The Anthropology of Medicine: From Culture to Method, p. 140.

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, June, 2004, Ronald C. Simons, review of Meaning, Medicine, and the "Placebo Effect," p. 458.

Quarterly Review of Biology, March, 2000, Catherine S. Fowler, review of Native American Ethnobotany, p. 90.

Reviews in Anthropology, April-June, 2005, Elisa J. Sobo, "Anthropology and the Artifacts of Medical Practice," review of Meaning, Medicine, and the "Placebo Effect," pp. 145-156.

Whole Earth, spring, 1999, Dale Pendell, review of Native American Ethnobotany, p. 72.