Introduction:
A traditional health care practice of folk people is termed as folk medicine or folk treatment. It is used of the folk, by the
folk and for the folk. Folk medicine refers to the traditional medical wisdom or knowledge or folk education this is known
as ethno-medicine, community medicine, household medicine and any other forms of local medicines. According to World
Health Organization (WHO), the traditional medicine is described in the following way: “the sum total of the knowledge,
skills, and practices based on the theories, beliefs and experiences indigenous to different cultures, whether explicable or
not, used in the maintenance of health as well as in the prevention, diagnosis, improvement or treatment of physical and
mental illness1
”. Generally the knowledge of folk medicines is transmitted from one generation to another through oral
communication or oral traditional culture and it is the outcome of bold experimentation through trial and error method over
hundreds of years. Folk medicine is the mother of all other systems of medicine such as Ayurveda and modern medicine.
The traditional medicine men/women are part and parcel of the folk community and they have gained some traditional
experiences of human health problems from social environment and practical life experiences of human beings. Not only
the health problems but also they acquired some traditional knowledge of human anatomy by the folk education. So, they
are in a better position to deal with their day-to-day health problems. In fact the native healers take care of the common
ailments of the folk in their home setting2
.