Abstract:

Indigenous knowledge is believed to reflect a particular environmental knowledge based in a particular place. It is rooted in the practices, know-how and the interactions in the community through oral communication and demonstrations. Hence, one can safely say that local knowledge is firmly tied to the cultural heritage of a place or a community. It is significant to locate the aspects of health, beliefs and practices relating to health and disease, diagnosis and treatment methods, healers and curers and their recruitment, concepts and organization of medical systems etc in its socio-cultural milieu. More plainly understood, the subject of health culture focuses on the nature of illness, methods and criteria of classification of disease, the causes and cures, types of therapists that seek to alleviate illness and their skills and social roles, preventive measures are all in lines of how the natives conceive these processes.