Ethno Medicinal Plants Used for the Treatment of Common Diseases by the Deori Community People of Lakhimpur District, Assam

Herbal medicine is currently experiencing a revival in the world, along with other complementary therapies such as traditional Chinese Medicines, Osteopathy and Homeopathy. Many of the pharmaceuticals currently available to physicians have a long history of use as herbal remedies, including opium, aspirin, digitalis, and quinine. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 80% of the world's population presently uses herbal medicine for some aspect of primary health care. Herbal medicine is a major component in all traditional medicine systems, and a common element in Ayurvedic, homeopathic, naturopathic, traditional Chinese medicine, and Native American medicine. The district of Lakhimpur, Assam, situated at the far east corner of North East India is a region of rich biodiversity. Because of its location at the foothills of Arunachal Pradesh, an environment with heavy rainfall and high humidity, conducive for a significant floristic diversity prevails in this region. The native people of this region, the greater Assamese community, therefore depends to a large extent on the varied plant species for food and medicine besides other uses. An attempt has been made to explore and enumerate the potential ethno-medicinal plants used by the people of Lakhimpur district, Assam. The survey was conducted in some remote areas of the district occupied by Deori communities specially restricted to Narayanpur sub-division and a total of 58 medicinal plants comprising of 39 families were recorded. The ethonomedicobotanical exploration is carried out by concerning of the people who are related with making traditional medicine that orally prescribed. Different parts of these plants are used by the local inhabitants for the cure of some common ailments occurring in the areas. The data includes the list of such medicinal plants along with their local names, families, parts used, the method of treatment and the disease cured.


Introduction
Ever since the early times, different plants-whether herbs, shrubs or trees have been utilized by human beings for various purposes. In search of food and the ways to cope up successfully with human suffering, primitive man began to distinguish those plants suitable for nutritional purpose from others with definite pharmacological action [1]. History reveals the extensive use of medicinal plants in different ways by the people of those times in the treatment of even dreadful diseases. Plants have been used as a medicinal agent since ancient times, first only on a folklore basis and later developed on a scientific way into a single agent drug [2]. The present century has witnessed the drastic development of science and technology in all fields. Although people have become habituated to the modern powerful drugs, but even then a large number of people still believe and use the local herbs. Majority of the world's population is still dependent on the traditional herbal medicine for their healthcare [3]. The World Health Organization has estimated that over 80% of the global populations rely chiefly on traditional medicine [4]. Several investigations have been carried out by different workers at times on the use of plants for medicinal purposes by people. It was officially recognized that 2500 plant sp. have medicinal value while over 6000 plants are estimated to be explored in traditional, folk and herbal medicine [5].
Assam offers immense scope for ethno-botanical studies since it is inhabited by numerous aboriginal tribes and the region happens to be the part of Indo-Burma Hot spots of Bio-Diversity [6]. In Assam there are more than 200

Material and Method
A survey was made among the common people of six Villages of Deori community of the District of Lakhimpur during 2017-18 regarding usage of herbal medicine during the treatment of certain commonly occurring disease such as cold, cough, fever, dysentery, worm, irritation, cut injury etc. (Table 1). The survey was on the basis of structured questionnaire to different villagers of the community, both male and female individually and in groups and aimed at to what extent the common people opt for local plants as traditional medicine that are in use from very old days.
The second part of the survey was to enumerate the plant species that are of similar use by all the surveyed villages of the community, during the treatment of some common ailments. Information were collected as suggested by Schultes [24] and Jain [25] on the basis of spot interview with the growers, the head of the village referred to as 'Gaonbura', other senior persons of the locality having wide knowledge of the plant species and their traditional usage, and village medicine men commonly known as 'Bez'. The works of Kanjilal et al. (26), Dutta (27) and Sarma, [28] were referred to during taxonomic identification and medicinal importance of the plant species (Table 2).

Results and Discussion
The present survey was conducted in some villages present in distant areas, where due to lack of good and reliable communication the inhabitants are dependent on the local herbs found in their surroundings. A total of 58 plants under 53 genera and 39 families were enumerated, of these the dominant families were Rutaceae, Asteraceae, Poaceae, Lamiaceae, Leguminosae and Crombetaceae. The genera-Terminalia, Cassia, Clerodendron and Croton contained the greatest number of plants. These ethno medicinal plants are found to be used for the treatment of about 40 diseases, most of them being the common ones like Diarrhoea, Dysentery, Cough and cold, Fever, Skin and stomach diseases etc., while the other rare ones included Nervous diseases, Menorrhagia, Piles, Liver and heart problems, Asthma etc.
The study revealed the application of 14 different plant parts used in various ailments. It was found that the people basically used the leaves for their medicines as found in 30 sp. followed by fruits (9sp.), whole plants (8sp.), seeds (7sp.), bark and stem (6sp.), roots (4sp.), shoots and rhizome (3sp.), latex, flower and leaf base (2sp.) and bulb and tuber (1sp.).
The data containing scientific names, local names, family, part used, method of treatment and the disease cured have been compiled and enlisted in Table 1.
During the collection it was observed that the plants, Asparagus racemosus, Azadirachtaindica, Alliumsativum, Cucurma longa, Houttayniacordata, Abrusprecatoris, and Acoruscalamus were used widely as they were abundant in the study area. The other plants were also found easily in the nearby areas. But among them, few plants were unknowingly conserved by the people as they were harvested just to minimise scarcity. This conservation can be used fruitfully for future investigations and applied in greater areas of research.
The results of the study prove that herbal plants still play a significant role in the lives of these common people who use them for their regular health care.

Conclusion
The biological activity and efficacy of the medicinal herbs is dependent on the time and stage of its collection. There occurs number of changes in the metabolic activities as well as biochemical contents in the senescent phase of plants. So the traditional healers lay much emphasis on the stage (age) of collection of plants for such uses (Sinha and Sinha, 2005).
Herbal medicine today owes its existence much to the skill of the ancient traditional folk healers only. Unfortunately, these very valuable medicinal plants remain largely neglected in the remote areas of the district of Lakhimpur, Assam. It is time for all of us that we should lay much emphasis on the systematic exploration of medicinal plants which had a glorious history in India since the Vedic periods. With proper exploration, scientific preservation and utilization in a planned manner, it is hoped that herbal medicine will find its place and recognition in the society in due course. Sarma, U.K. and Boissya, C.L. 2000. Plants used as [28] ethnomedicine by the Nepalese of Dhemaji District of Assam. Ad. Plant Sci. 13(II): 581-587.