About Us

The Institute for the Preservation of Medical Traditions stems out of the passion of Alain Touwaide and Emanuela Appetiti for the study of the therapeutic lore of ancient and contemporary traditional cultures. Both could not believe, contrary to a widely shared opinion, that ancient and traditional cultures invested energy, time, and resources in preserving formulas for medicines that were not efficacious. Following this intuition and capitalizing on their different yet complementary backgrounds, they patiently and tenaciously scrutinized ancient therapeutic literature, and understood that it encapsulates the results of experiments made by trial and error over centuries. By following the transmission of the ancient body of data all around the Mediterranean area, they threw a new light on its transformations, which result from constant mechanisms of adaptation to different natural and epidemiological environments, and not from scribes’ mistakes and misinterpretations. A realization of Touwaide’s and Appetiti’s life-long passion and dedication, the Institute for the Preservation of Medical Traditions saves and records therapeutic traditions before they are lost, unlocks their information, and makes it available for new research, new applications, and even new strategies, with the firm conviction that today medicine cannot take the risk of ignoring such a wealth of time-tested therapies.