If you want to find a botánica [a native drug store where a person can buy herbal remedies] quickly and easily, there’s no neighborhood like Jackson Heights.

Among the Hispanic neighborhoods of the city, this section of Queens has an especially high concentration of such drug stores, according to a study prepared by the Immigration and Health Initiative (IAHI) of Hunter College’s School of Public Health.

In the borough of Manhattan, Washington Heights is the area with the most botánicas – with around 20, and is followed by El Barrio, said the sociologist and medical anthropologist Anahí Viladrich, director of IAHI.

“Even with ‘gentrification,’ El Barrio is still keeping the botánicas alive,” said Viladrich.

In barrios like Loisaida (the Lower East Side), however, the disappearance of these native drug stores has been marked as rents have risen. The opposite is true in neighborhoods like Coney Island and southeast Brooklyn, where the Hispanic population has been growing and botánicas have been appearing.

IAHI has prepared a map of botánicas as part of a study on alternative health care in Hispanic communities. The group calculated that there are some 350 of these native drug stores in the five boroughs, though Viladrich points out that “we don’t have an exact number, because the botánicas try not to publicize themselves” in the telephone directory in many cases.

“Often they change their names, or do not list themselves as botánicas, but as ‘flower shops’,” said Viladrich. “They’re afraid of the Health Department, afraid of immigration and afraid that what they do will be labeled witchcraft.”

The botánicas are run for the most part by Dominicans and Puerto Ricans, followed by Cubans and Colombians, Viladrich said. Each group has its own peculiarities.

“In general, the Cubans tend to work more in the area of santería than in spiritualism. If the owner is Cuban, you’ll find Orichá botánicas, and santería products. The Puerto Ricans tend to work more with ‘white table’ products,” said Viladrich, but she added that it’s more important to know who buys the native drug store products rather than who sells them. When all is said and done, the oldest botánica in the city belongs to a Guatemalan.

Botánicas do not serve the Spanish-speaking population alone. In New Jersey, many of the clients are Brazilian and others serve Haitians or Jamaicans. Also, “alternative medicine has become fashionable” and there are whites who go to botánicas out of curiosity, said Viladrich.

When she was asked if these drug stores are a second-choice medical service, Viladrich replied that for many who use their services, “they are the first choice, because they are the only choice. They are the only recourse for those who have no access [to medical services], like people who do not speak English, or who live far from a health services facility and who feel there is not a good doctor-patient relationship” or who have no medical coverage, or simply miss the traditional methods of curing of their home countries.

“Where are they going to buy rue, if not in a botánica?” she asked. These clients want “tiger balm made in El Salvador instead of here. They want products made in their own countries, like Vick’s Vaporub from Argentina, not Vicks from here.”

The Immigration and Health Initiative, established a year ago, has been studying botanicas, because, among other things, it wants to incorporate their practices with the general medical community, “to end the suspicions, fears and miscommunications” between the two groups, said Viladrich.

“Our intention is to provide information that will help the medical community and the Latino community to build bridges that will contribute to improving the health and living conditions of our Hispanic population,” Viladrich added. “Understanding popular health practitioners is the first big step in this direction.”

In a nearly sold-out public presentation on November 3 at CUNY Graduate Center, Immigration and Health Initiative also announced a study by Belgian biologist Ina Vanderbroek of the New York Botanical Garden on the use of medicinal plants in the Dominican community. Vanderbroek is planning to create a data base of medicinal plants and, with scientists from the University of Mississippi, to study the extracts from some of these plants in order to test their anti-inflammatory properties.