Plant Folk Medicines (article)

Plant Folk Medicines among the Nicobarese of Katchal Island, India
By H. S. Dagar and J. C. Dagar, for Economic Botany (1991)

First, I am kind of offended by the idiotic point of view that one can stay with an indigenous community for “several days” (115) and in doing so “create confidence in them to reveal” (115) their ancient sacred practices.

That aside, this article details the folk medicinal use of plants naturally occurring on Katchal Island, India, by an indigenous group “living in complete geographical isolation” (115) with an unbroken history of interactions with local plants that date to time before memory.

For information on local use of plants encountered by Mandeville in India, I might refer to the significant list of plant species and usage summaries provided in the article. Given that the article only cites scientific names and I haven’t memorized the Latin for the plants Mandeville encounters, I probably won’t go ahead and do that for the hell of it, but for the record: note to self, this might be a helpful resource.