'We didn know no clinic.' An ethnomedicinal study of plant use in central Mississippi

摘要

Ethnographic consultant interviews, centering in five rural counties of central Mississippi's Alluvial Plain ("Delta") and Upland ("Hills") Loess Hills and North Central Plains regions, were conducted in an effort to identify those plants and non-botanical agents used and/or recalled by people there, and to determine the extent of any regional and racial use differences in these same areas. Regional remedy use differences have been evaluated as minimal, while racial use differences have been interpreted as significant. Those economic and cultural factors which have likely acted to bring about regional convergence, while maintaining important racial use patterns, are discussed. Finally, plant origin and distribution data, together with documented African and Caribbean use patterns which parallel those seen in Mississippi and other regions of the American South, are utilized to hypothesize the transmission of African medicinal plant use traditions to these areas via the colonial slave trade.