Health Care and Popular Medicine: The Case of the Tai Khamyangs of Assam, India

Health care is intrinsic to the well-being of the people. Diseases and ailments are a universal features of human society and in every society, there are ways to get relief from the same. In traditional society, people mostly depends on natural resources like wild roots, herbs, plants, animal parts to recover from ill health. They have developed an indigenous way of healing to protect their health against various kinds of diseases. This indigenous medicare system or popular medicine/ethnomedicine is prevalent in one form or other in traditional societies in cross-cultural perspective. However, with the establishment of modern Medicare provisions within the rural tribal areas, they avail the benefits of the same along with sticking to their pristine medicare system. In this present endeavor, an attempt has been made to examine the continuity and change of the Health care practices of the Tai Khamyangs, one of the Tai Mongoloid ethnic groups of Upper Assam, India.