1 July 2014, Pages 45-65
Department of Botany, Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski, Blvd. Dragan Tsankov 8, Sofia, Bulgaria
Abstract
Located in the heart of the Balkans, Bulgaria
is a country with a rich flora and a crossroads of historical and
sociocultural circumstances. The folk medicine of the ancient Thracians,
the Middle Ages, the Bulgarian Bogomil movement, the period of the
Ottoman Empire and the Bulgarian Renaissance in the late eighteenth
century are the periods that formed the main features of Bulgarian
medical ethnobotany. The main components in written folk remedies are
medicinal plants, followed by animals and animal products such as honey,
eggs, leeches, blood, musk, etc., and mineral elements (S, Hg, Au, Fe).
Through the centuries, traditional medicine has more or less been
integrated into the structure, expression and functions of traditional
rituals. Many of the common names of plants reflect the curative effect
of the plant or its use for a group of symptoms or diseases. The
traditional use of medicinal plants in the past was more precise and
more oriented to the Eastern plants and medicine than the traditional
ideas and attitudes of society. The empirical data of medicinal plants
and traditional herbal drugs
are passed on from one generation to another mostly as oral folklore.
Data from the local people, collected and processed using modern methods
and compared to historical written records, outline significant
continuity and preservation of traditional ethnobotanical knowledge,
which is also affected by the contemporary pressure of information.
These processes cannot be stopped, but they could be opposed to a strong
and attractive process of interest in the traditional plant-based
healing practices. The change in thinking and philosophy of the
contemporary individual towards a life oriented to nature through
recognition of complementary and alternative medicine and the search for
identity in the processes of globalization through the development of
ecotourism are the opportunity given to us for presenting traditional
ethnobotanical knowledge as current, necessary and important in our
contemporary daily life. © 2014 Springer Science+Business Media New
York. All rights reserved.
Author keywords
Bulgaria; Ethnobotany; Folk medicine; Folk traditional knowledge; Herbs; Medicinal plants
ISBN: 978-149391492-0;149391491X;978-149391491-3Source Type: Book
Original language: English
DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4939-1492-0_4Document Type: Book Chapter
Publisher: Springer New York
