Resgate e valorização do conhecimento popular das benzedeiras: um guia fotográfico de plantas medicinas

Abstract

The objective of this research was to evaluate the use of medicinal plants of the municipality of Dois Vizinhos, Paraná, as well as to preserve the intangible cultural heritage of Brazil. Along with this, build a guide of medicinal plants to help the visual identification of plants for medicinal purposes, in this way, rescue the popular and scientific knowledge. The research was fulfilled with three healers, of 51, 64 and 84 years old, all catholics, located at the choice of the local population, in which semistructured interviews were conducted, questioning them about their life, about the benzation and the relation with medicinal plants, such as the popular name, use and application. Also, fulfilled the collect of botanical material to deposit in the herbarium of the Federal University of Technology of Paraná, Dois Vizinhos campus, and to assist in the taxonomic identification of the same, and photographic record for the preparation of the guide. The results indicate the identification of 55 species of plants, distributed in 24 botanical families, being the most frequent the families Asteraceae, Myrtaceae and Lamiaceae, consecutively. This indicates that they are very representative for medicinal purposes, because of their active principles. It draws attention to the number of native species in relation to exotic species, where the latter occur in 48% of all material, a factor that may be related to community migratory and management processes by the community. In relation to the most used part of the plant, the leaves stand out, followed by the branches. Perhaps this is related to the fact that they are available all year and also because they are easy for management. As for the preparation of the plants, the most frequent form is in the bottles, which consists of a mixture of different herbs according to the type of disease to be treated. After the bottle comes the decoction, which is the boil of the plant to then ingest. The indications were distributed in 11 groups according to human body systems and more specific applications. The most important are the digestive system, with more number of diseases by medicinal plants, then the immune system, cardiovascular and nervous, with the same number of mentions. It can be concluded that the results were very significant and satisfactory, presenting data of the traditional knowledge and realizing the scientific rescue of the same ones.