Not too long ago traditional medicine was the only type of care available to a large section of the people, but in the last two decades modern medicine has become accessible even to many of the remot village. The more serious diseases are taken to hospitals, common cold, coughs, headaches, fever, stomach upsets and other minor ailments are often treated at home with herbal remedies or by other methods of traditional medicine. Both modern and traditional medicine may be tried, or if one fails the other will be tried – but where modern medicine achieves results, traditional medicine tend to disappear.
There are no schools or formal training for teaching traditional medicine. The methods of care and herbal prescriptions are generally not written down. These skill are passed from one generation to the other through apprenticeship and once forgotten may not be revived again.
Herbal clinics have been established in several countries and in a few clinics other traditional forms of medicine are also practiced.
However, these clinics are not present or established and become popular in Palestine as in other countries.
My purpose in assembling and compiling this research is twofold:
first, to document and preserve the existing knowledge of the use of plants in different social patterns to prevent losing of traditional ways, and second, to emphasize the need for preserving social and culture patterns, herbal medicine and their close relationship with the environment. It is also my hope that the species used regularly, and especially those which are endemic and localized in their distribution, will be investigated for their chemical constituents. They
may possess physiologically active compounds of use to both traditional and modern medical care.
