The use of plants in traditional veterinarian medicine in sub-saharan Africa. Yesterday, today and tomorrow

Résumé 0

In literature concerning Africa there are few indications concerning veterinarian traditional medicine and they often report only local inquiries of short duration and imply a small number of advisers. Therefore it is difficult to distinguish the medicine issued from a tradition lived by a whole people from the medicine practised by only some individuals.We shall try to summarize the knowledge we have of the traditional veterinarian medicine used in the past in some zones of sub-saharan Africa and to indicate some tendencies which are outlined nowadays.The african breeder uses plants and, or animal substances as pragmatic remedies and magic ingredients. The same substance can indifferently be used for those two purposes. One discovers some indications concerning the use of these substances in scattered publications. All this information is synthetized and published under the shape of a data bank. In some cases analytical statistical methods allow to distinguish plants used in traditional medicine from substances used for ritual or magic purposes.Traditional veterinarian medicine of the past centred as well on rites, magic as on a certain therapeutic efficiency should have disappeared with the progress of modern techniques. However the still accessible plants can help as far a serious selection and as far well tested operating modes are given to the breeders. On this condition the study of the past will not have been useless.