Historical and modern medicinal plant uses — the example of the Ch'orti‘ Maya and Ladinos in Eastern Guatemala

Abstract

Local empirical knowledge about medicinal properties of plants is the basis for their use as home remedies. Particularly in developing countries such remedies still are an indispensable resource for everyday health care. They form the basis for numerous studies on drugs from natural sources. Like other indigenous groups across the world, the Ch'orti' Maya in Eastern Guatemala are currently experiencing a phase of dramatic cultural change, with their traditional knowledge about plants being in great danger of disappearing. During 17 months of fieldwork, medicinal plant uses were documented using a semi-quantitative approach and analysed using ethnopharmacological methods. The most important groups of illnesses treated with plants were gastrointestinal complaints and illnesses associated with pain and fever. Field data were compared with mostly unpublished historical data collected in the 1930s by the anthropologist Charles Wisdom. This comparison showed that medicinal plant uses that are more consistent over time are also shared by a larger number of people. A literature search on the most frequently mentioned medicinal plants showed that, even for widely used medicinal species, phytochemical and pharmacological data are insufficient for fully understanding their therapeutic profile. Whereas a few examples of potentially dangerous practices were encountered, the limited amount of information available mostly supports local medicinal plant usage.

The antibacterial and antifungal activity of essential oils extracted from Guatemalan medicinal plants

“…Adams and Hawkins (2007) and Kufer et al (2005) noted that Guatemalan villagers use teas, bath with plant material boiled in water, inhale steam, and use poultices as ways to prepare medicinal plants for external and internal use. For example, leaf and bark tissues from 64 of 81 medicinal plants (79%) used in the community of San Andres are boiled or steeped (Comerford, 1996).…”

Activities of Guatemalan medicinal plants against cancer cell lines and selected microbes: Evidence for their conservation

“…Our study along with Kufer et al (2005) and Comerford (1996) note a wide variety of uses for the medicinal plants selected for this study (Table 1). This suggests that these resources are valuable to rural Guatemalans and need to be conserved.…”

“…These in combination with the evolution of drug resistance (Lambert et al, 2011) contribute to the increased awareness to conserve these valuable plant resources (Siwach et al, 2013;Kingston, 2011). Another concern regarding the primary health care of people in rural communities worldwide is the lack of information on the role of medicinal plants to improve oral hygiene (Colvard et al, 2006), For example, Kufer et al (2005) in their study on the use of medicinal plants in the Ch'orto' area in southeastern Guatemala listed about 41 plants that were used to treat gastrointestinal illnesses, 34 species used for fever and pain, 38 for women's remedies, 25 for respiratory illnesses, but only seven for oral health problems. Of these seven, three were used in prevention and all seven were used for toothaches.…”

In vitro and in vivo evaluation of antitrypanosomal activity of Annona muricata stem bark extracts.

“…A . muricata is known to be rich in flavonoids and tannins amongst others [8,10,[28][29][30]. Furthermore, natural products with trypanocidal activity and belonging to a variety of phytochemical classes have been identified [31][32][33].…”