Local ecological knowledge and folk medicine in historical Estonia, Livonia, Courland and Galicia in Northeastern Europe, 1805-1905

Martin Anegg; Julia Prakofjewa; Raivo Kalle; Renata Sõukand

doi:10.12688/openreseurope.14406.2

Local ecological knowledge and folk medicine in historical Estonia, Livonia, Courland and Galicia in Northeastern Europe, 1805-1905

Open Res Eur. 2022 Sep 13:2:30. doi: 10.12688/openreseurope.14406.2. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Martin Anegg¹, Julia Prakofjewa¹, Raivo Kalle², Renata Sõukand¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Environmental Sciences, Informatics and Statistics, Ca' Foscari University of Venice, Mestre, Venezia VE, Via Torino, 155, 30170, Italy.
² University of Gastronomic Sciences, Pollenzo CN, Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II, 9, 12042, Italy.

Abstract

Background: Historical ethnobotanical data can provide valuable information about past human-nature relationships as well as serve as a basis for diachronic analysis. This data note aims to present a dataset which documented medicinal plant uses, mentioned in a selection of German-language sources from the 19 ^th century covering the historical regions of Estonia, Livonia, Courland, and Galicia. Methods: Data was mainly entered by systematic manual search in various ethnobotanical historical German-language works focused on the medicinal use of plants. Data about plant and non-plant constituents, their usage, the mode of administration, used plant parts, and their German and local names was extracted and collected into a database in the form of Use Reports.

Keywords: Baltics; environmental history; ethnomedicine; herbals; historical ethnobotany.

Grants and funding

This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 714874).