Jan Kazimierz Muszyński (1884-1957) prekursorem badań etnobotanicznych na Litwie

Abstrakt

This article is a historical contribution to the knowledge of the use of medicinal plants in the Vilnius area in the early 20th century (then – Poland, now – Lithuania). Thanks to the work of Professor Jan Muszyński, the famous Polish pharmacist and botanist, we can obtain a lot of information about the annual Midsummer Herbal Market, which took place in Vilnius. The articles of Professor Muszyński also provide information on the use of medicinal plants sold in Vilnius. The Vilnius Midsummer market cannot be treated separately from the wider context of various cultural, economic and scientific factors which made it possible for herbal traditions to be kept very strong and diverse, enabling the emergence of the herbal medicine economic sector in Eastern Lithuania in the first half of the 20th century. Meanwhile, the nature of herbal markets may have been strongly affected by lists of pharmacologically-safe species, which in turn affected the tradition itself. Some local healing traditions existed inside the new economic and cultural realities, some – in their shadow. For instance, ethnopsychiatric practices, not reflected in the Midsummer market or the Swenciany factory lists but very popular and widespread of the beginning of the 20 century, along with other phenomena of traditional healing, have been unnoticed or misunderstood by scientists.