Ethnomedicine of Vizianagaram District

Ethnomedicine is an area of research that deals with medicines derived from plants, animals and minerals. Its knowledge endowed with the aborigines is the resultant of millennia of experience, transmitted from generation to generation by oral tradition. Since the beginning of civilization, people have used plants as medicine and out of thousand of plants used by the tribals to cure ailments hundreds only found their way in all the systems of medicine in vogue today. The investigation is an attempt to explore the ethnomedicinal system of the aboriginals of Vizianagaram district of Andhra Pradesh with the objectives of collection, identification and inventorisation of plant species. A total of 362 species of plants included in 278 genera and 97 families have been recorded in curing different human 136 ailments. About 35 species were employed to treat both human and veterinary ailment and most of the drug preparations are either single or in combination of plant products. The success of medicine depends on standard proportions and intelligent combinations of different plants.