Medicinal use of wild plants in the historic regions of Livonia and Estonia in the 19th century

Abstract

Folk medicinal usage of wild plants is since humans started to treat maladies and pain. Although modern medicine has become the primary mean for treating illnesses today, especially in the western world, popular medicinal plant usage is increasing again as for example doubts in drug efficacy rise.

Ethnobotanical studies of herbals and books and texts about plants can offer a variety of valuable insights. On the one hand, traditional medicinal usages of plants can be used in recent drug research. On the other hand, such texts and books can contain underlying information about people’s relationship to nature or cultural aspects of society like land management, animal treatment or church ceremonies.

Livonia and Estonia have had a long history of changing rulership, war, suppression and assimilation. The Germans strongly influenced society since the crusades in the 13th century. In the 19th century, a lot of herbals and books on plant usages were written, most of them written scientifically sound with the author also having a scientific background. Many of them were written in German language, as it was still the language of science, administration and social higher classes.

The aims of this thesis are to record all the different plant and non-pant usages stated in the books of specifically chosen authors written in German in a database. This database then allows for deeper statistical analysis, evaluation and comparison of the different plants stated, their usages, differences between authors and differences between regions, as well as future data mining. Furthermore, an evaluation and analysis of the approach of Baltic German authors towards and description of local autochthonous people and their life, if present, is attempted. Besides creating a database and giving access to one perspective on folk medicine in the historic Estonia and Livonia, it is expect to highlight the variability of traditional medicine by evaluating, analyzing and comparing the plant usages stated by the selected authors and by doing that demonstrating the constant dynamic evolution of traditional medicine in traditional societies.