Ethno-medicine is a sub-field of medical anthropology and deals with the cultural interpretations of health, disease and illness and also addresses the health care seeking process and healing. The knowledge and use of medicinal plant species by the traditional healers as well as by the community members was investigated in a Santal village of Orissa. On the basis of the ethnographic fieldwork with the help of standard anthropological methods it has been revealed that although the Santal's concept of disease and treatment is centered on religious beliefs and practices but they are regularly dependent on herbal medicines along with modern allopathic treatment. The present paper is an attempt to explore the repository of herbal medicines used by the Santals of a particular village of Orissa. The paper also attempts to explore the source and method of collection of the medicinal plants by the villagers from their surrounding environment.
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