What is Indigenous Medicine

Leucorrhoea is a common disorder that is prevalent in females. Ethnic communities still treat leucorrhoea with plants that grow in their surroundings due to lack of sufficient medical facilities and/or costly modern treatment. Therefore, the author tried to look for plants used in traditional ethno-medicine and Ayurvedic systems of medicine for treatment of leucorrhoea in India. This review reveals the use of 345 plants by various folk communities and 31 unique plants from Ayurveda, which gives a figure of 376 plant species prevalent in Indian traditional medicine for treatment of leucorrhoea. Further analysis revealed maximum use of roots followed by the leaves and the stem bark of these plants. The chapter indicates 29 highly credible ethnomedicinal plant species with a rating of 5. This review shall prove helpful in screening of potential ethnomedicinal plant species for carrying out further scientific validation studies to assess their efficacy in leucorrhoea, which may contribute to the development of novel phyto-therapeutic molecules for effective treatment.