Authored by Mohammed Rahmatullah*
Introduction
Plants have possibly been used as drugs by human beings since their very advent. For one, plants are plentiful and were easily available to early hominids; they may have discovered the therapeutic efficacy of plants through trial and error or through watching the behavior of the great apes and monkeys. For instance, wild chimpanzees in Uganda have been reported to ingest plants with bioactive properties including effectiveness against skin infections and intestinal parasites [1]. The same phenomenon has been observed with wooly spider monkeys inhabiting Intervales State Park in Brazil [2]. Many phytochemicals are currently being used as drugs in modern medicine and others are waiting for approval [3]. Some of these phytochemicals are taxol, vinblastine, vincristine, quinine, artemisinin, curcumin, silibinin, ellagic acid, and withaferin A. Traditional medicines can be utilized in the discovery of allopathic drugs. In one study, out of 122 modern drugs, 80% were found to be related to folk medicine and these compounds originated from 94 plant species [4]. However, to learn from traditional medicinal systems one has to visit practitioners of those systems for there are many variants of traditional medicinal systems in various countries. Even in a small country (in area) like Bangladesh, a number of forms of traditional medicinal systems exist, the three most predominant ones being Ayurveda, Unani and homeopathy. Two other forms of traditional medicinal systems also exist in Bangladesh, namely folk medicine and tribal medicine. Although both medicinal systems use plants as their main sources of therapy, selection of plants for any given disease varies widely between individual folk medicinal practitioners (FMPs) and individual tribal medicinal practitioners (TMPs). It is therefore important to document the practices of as many FMPs and TMPs as possible, because neither FMPs nor TMPs follow any fixed text books or manuals and do not need any formal training to practice.Documentation of tribal medicinal practices requires ethnomedicinal survey of TMPs. The same applies to FMPs. Such surveys can not only lead to new drug discoveries, but also aids in the documentation and conservation of medicinal plants. We had been conducting such surveys for a number of years [5-26]. Although work has been done among various tribes of Bangladesh, much still remains to be completed. The Moghs (also known as Marmas) are the second largest tribal community inhabiting various areas of three districts of the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) region in the southeast part of Bangladesh. They reside mainly in hilly forested parts of Bandarban, Khagrachari and Rangamati districts. They are descendants of the Arakanese people who lived in the Arakan region of neighboring Myanmar and settled in Tripura State of India and CHT possibly in the 16th century. The objective of the present survey was to document the phytotherapeutic practices of a Mogh TMP.
Methods
The Mogh tribal healer named Ong Thoai Ching practiced among the Mogh tribal community residing in Bandarban town of Bandarban district and adjoining areas, Bangladesh. Bandarban district is located in between in between 21°11’ and 22°22’ north latitudes and in between 92°04’ and 92°41’ east longitudes with an area of 4479.03 sq km. The TMP was male, around 50 years of age (estimated, he did not mention his age) and practicing by his own admission for over 20 years. The TMP claimed to have arrived in Bangladesh from Myanmar about 30 years ago and decided to settle on the outskirts of Bandarban town where it appeared he was quite well known among both Marma (Mogh) and Bawm tribal communities. Contact was initiated with the TMP through three Mogh and one Bawm community member known to one of the authors (AH). Prior informed consent was initially obtained from the TMP. The TMP was informed as to the nature of our visit and consent obtained to disseminate any information provided including their names both nationally and internationally. Actual interviews were conducted in the Bengali language, which was spoken fluently by the TMP (however with a heavy accent) as well as the interviewers. The interviews were conducted with the help of a semi-structured questionnaire and the guided field-walk method of Martin [27] and Maundu [28]. In this method the TMP took the interviewers to his home garden, where he cultivated a substantial number of medicinal plants for therapeutic purposes. The TMP showed the interviewers a number of plants and described their therapeutic uses. All plant specimens shown by him were collected on the spot, pressed, dried and brought back to Dhaka for identification by a competent botanist. Voucher specimens were deposited with the Medicinal Plant Collection Wing of the University of Development Alternative.To read more about this article...Open access Journal of Pharmacy & Pharmacology Research
Please follow the URL to access more information about this article
https://irispublishers.com/appr/fulltext/tribal-medicinal-plants-documentation-of-medicinal-plants-used-by-a-mogh-tribal-healer.ID.000523.php
To know more about our Journals....Iris Publishers
To know about Open Access Publishers
No comments:
Post a Comment