medical procedures some curious practices were and in some cases still may be found: for example the belief that treatments are affected by the phases of the moon, or that a worm in the tooth causes the ache. Chapter Five deals with herbal, animal and mineral protective agents from the folk pharmacopoeia, the latter partly used for antiseptic and styptic effects. Her concluding chapter on empir...

Solanum paniculatum L. is a plant species widespread throughout tropical America, especially in the Brazilian Savanna region. It is used in Brazil for culinary purposes and in folk medicine to treat liver and gastric dysfunctions, as well as hangovers. Because of the wide use of this plant as a therapeutic resource and food, the present study aimed at evaluating the mutagenic and cytotoxic effe...

The first crystal structure of human telomeric DNA in complex with the natural alkaloid berberine, produced by different plant families and used in folk medicine for millennia, was solved by X-ray diffraction method. The G-quadruplex unit features all-parallel strands. The overall folding assumed by DNA is the same found in previously reported crystal structures. Similarly to previously reporte...

Coca-Erythroxylum coca Lamarck var. coca-remains one of the most common plants of the folk medicine of Bolivia used as a general stimulant. Aymara and Quechua natives prefer to chew the sweeter coca leaves from the Yungas (tropical mountain forests of the eastern slopes of the Andes) rather than those from the Chapare lowlands. The contents in cocaine and minor constituents of leaf samples cult...

An ethnobotanical field study was conducted among the Croatians living in Cićarija in northern Istria and a very restricted folk pharmacopoeia (of approximately only 30 remedies) was recorded. This finding suggests that a remarkable process of erosion of Traditional Knowledge (TK) may have taken place. The collected data were compared with the ethnobotanical findings of a field study previously...

People with Sami and Norwegian background are frequent users of traditional folk medicine (TM). Traditional healing, such as religious prayers of healing (reading) and the laying on of hands, are examples of commonly used modalities. The global aim of this study is to examine whether health personnel's knowledge, attitudes and experiences of traditional healing affect their clinical practice. S...

BACKGROUND The Caatinga (dry land vegetation) is one of the most characteristic vegetation types in northeastern Brazil. It occupies a large percentage of the semi-arid region there, and generally supports two major types of economic activity: seasonal agriculture and the harvesting of plant products. However, very little information is available concerning the interaction of people with the pl...

Plants are the only source of a well established traditional and modern drugs and phytochemicals. Many plant species are known in folk medicine of different cultures to be used for their hypoglycemic properties and therefore used for treatment of diabetes. The evaluation of these plants and of their active natural principles is logic way of searching for new drugs to treat this disease. The pre...

Over the last several decades, historians of medicine have grown increasingly interested in the coexistence of medical systems, a phenomenon known as medical pluralism. While medical pluralism is not at all uncommon in present-day societies, Robert J€utte remarks that it is relatively recently that medical historiography has shifted the emphasis from renowned doctors and orthodox practitioners ...