Do Folk Medicinal Practices of Bangladesh Have any Scientific Value? an Appraisal of Phytotherapeutic Practices of a Rural Folk Medicinal Practitioner

Folk medicine is generally considered as phytotherapy practiced by an individual or a group of individuals, who do not need to obtain any institutional training or approval to practice, and who can practice on a regular basis or as a hobby. In Bangladesh, folk medicinal practitioners (FMPs) are a varied lot using a bewildering variety of plants to treat almost every ailment suffered by human beings. It is the general opinion of allopathic doctors and the affluent section of the Bangladeshi population that FMPs practice nothing but quackery and their main objective is to deceive people. It was the objective of the present study to document the phytotherapeutic practices of a village FMP of Bangladesh and to search through the scientific literature to determine whether the plants used by the FMP had any scientific validation behind their uses. Our Results and Discussions clearly demonstrate that folk medicinal plants have substantial scientific validations, which possibly has come through practice of folk medicine and honing of such practices over thousands of years and transmission of acquired knowledge to successive generations initially orally and then through written methods.

Keywords: Folk medicine; Scientific validation; Phytotherapy; Kushtia; Bangladesh