A STUDY ON THE INDIGENOUS MEDICINAL PLANTS AND HEALING PRACTICES OF MURONG TRIBE IN KHAGRACHARI DISTRICT (BANGLADESH)

An ethnomedicinal survey was carried out during August 2008 to October 2008 among tribal medicinal practitioners of the Murong tribes. Various Murong tribal practitioners practiced in their localities for treating different kinds of disease of Ramgarh Upazila, Khagrachari districts of Chittagong Hill Tracts Region in Bangladesh. We observed to use 40 plants species belonging to 29 families in the various treatment of disease. This diversity only adds to the uniqueness of the traditional medicinal practices and opens up scientific possibilities of discovering different drugs from different medicinal plants to treat any given ailment. These tribal medicinal plants were mostly used for the treatment of constipation, cough, fever, diarrhoea, dysentery, diuretic, diabetes, eczema, itches, jaundice, skin disease, vomiting, wound, joint pain and worm. The plants were collected and identified botanically along with their scientific name, local name, family name, habit, parts used and medicinal uses. This detailed information will be helpful for the pharmacognosist, botanist and pharmacologist for the collection and identification of the plant for their research work.