Voodoo Goes Madison Avenue: Ancient Remedies a Big Business in Spice Islands

Ancient medicinal remedies are a booming, multimillion-dollar business in the Spice Islands of Indonesia, where increasingly the potions are manufactured in computerized factories and sold through sophisticated marketing techniques.

Medicine ladies, faith healers and even Western-trained doctors dispense herbal cures for all of life’s miseries--flagging sexual energy, facial wrinkles and just plain aches and pains.

In Jakarta alone at least 3,000 women dressed in traditional sarongs roam the streets, dispensing herbal medicines known as jamu from flagons carried in big baskets on their backs.

But these days, jamu is also sold in slick packages in supermarkets and drugstores and is finding new customers overseas.

‘Very Big Business’

“It’s a very big business in Indonesia, one of the major industries,” a Western health consultant said. “Now they have factories with computer systems and sophisticated marketing techniques.”

Indonesians seek traditional cures for everything from bad breath and boils to venereal disease and nervous disorders.

With new recipes coming out of sophisticated research laboratories, more than 200 different herbal medicines are produced in Indonesia by more than 270 factories.

Sales reached $25 million last year, $7 million more than in 1985, according to Djoko Hargono, director of traditional medicine in the Health Ministry.

$6 Million in Exports

About $6 million worth of the cures are exported annually to the United States, Australia, Europe and Asia.

“We are trying to convince doctors to use jamu for standard medicine,” Hargono said.

About 80% of Jakarta’s people live in rural areas where modern health care is hard to deliver and where the people are too poor to afford it anyway, he said.

However, almost every village has a resident witch doctor who dispenses jamu with a spell or a prayer after meditating over his patient.

‘Secret Ingredients’

One Indonesian doctor, however, said he was reluctant to recommend jamu for anything. “There haven’t been any studies of its long-term effects,” he said. “I think most of this stuff is only good for making people think they are sexually strong.”

Some jamu recipes have “secret ingredients” that give them an extra kick. But the companies stress that they do not use alcohol or banned drugs and that the government regulates the business.

Most jamu consumers are women who use it for birth control, menstrual pains, pregnancy problems or to improve their general health and complexions, Hargono said.

Ani Ridwan, a housewife, said she used it after having a baby to become “slender and tighten up my skin.”

Family Recipes

Family recipes, using various spices, roots, bark, leaves, seeds, fruit, bone and other natural materials, are handed down from generation to generation.

Mooryati Sudibyo, owner of the Mustika Ratu Jamu Co., said that her recipes were given to her family generations ago by a Javanese king.

Sudibyo said she started making jamu at home 30 years ago with primitive equipment but now has a $750,000 factory in Jakarta employing more than 11,000 workers.

Few companies own their own herb farms. “It would deprive too many people of their livelihood,” said Jaya Suprana, owner of Jamu Jago, one of the largest companies. He said the medicines are more effective if the ingredients are gathered in traditional ways by women going into the forests.

Although the jamu industry has been modernized with giant factories and slick packaging, much of it is still delivered by the women street sellers who peddle it for about 20 cents a glass.