Anthropological Study in Traditional Herbal Medicine In Markazi provice (Case study: Mahallat city)

Background and Traditional medicine has been considered a lifestyle since ancient times, having strong roots in every nation’s culture. Traditional medicine is a collection of different sciences which have been orally inherited between generations, helping to prevent, diagnose and cure illnesses. The application of herbal medicine, as a branch of traditional medicine, has attracted tremendous focus since thousands of years before industrial revolution, and the discoveries and inventions era.
Discovering the chemical drugs and starting modern medicine caused to fading the herbal medicine gradually. But then and when the medicine science found that the chemical drugs have side effects and also they’re unable to cure or prevent some types of sicknesses, the traditional medicine became reliable again. Nowadays, the medicinal application of plants needs to comprehensive information regarding their specifications. For this purpose, we can implement indigenous knowledge to harvest its experimental information by classification and delivering it to the experts and even public people. The indigenous knowledge can be trusted because it has rich real practical records about application of plants and their effects on human during many years and through tens of generations. Current research is intending to study the functions of herbal medicine in traditional medicine in Mahallat County anthropologically. Mahallat County has a good variety range of herbal medicine within its special climate territory so that including some varieties which can be found on other regions and some others which are unknown elsewhere. Residents of this region usually use those plants for medical purposes besides the nutrition. Current research’s implementation was field research-documentary method using questioner forms, interactive observation, interviews, books and documents. In the meantime, the data entries about terms of herbal medicine’s gathering and preparation, such as decoctions, balms, infusions, flavor… have been completed via asking questions from local people about each studied plant.
Shall find out that traditional sciences should be kept written compiled enabling it to grow together with modern sciences such as botany science. This science can play major role in human lifestyle, that’s why its importance made that one of the university’s or school’s official courses.