Documenting Flora Indica: Dysentery, William Roxburgh and medical botany

Abstract

British interest in exploration and documentation of Flora Indica did not originate from the scientific interest in plants, but it was the result of exigencies of running the empire. When the civil and military explorers of the East India Company came from an oceanic climate to tropical region like India, they suffered with dysentery and similar other diseases. Subsequently, the quest for local remedies turned out to be the primary motto of the explorers of the Company. The Company asked their botanists and naturalists to explore Indian local remedies and specific plants for dysentery. In this context, William Roxburgh (1751–1815), the founding father of Indian Botany and the Director of Calcutta Botanical Garden, documented plants with astringent, laxative and purgative qualities as these were considered as the basic ingredients for curing dysentery. However, in the historiography on the relationship between disease and imperial exploration, dysentery has not been studied in detail. Subsequently, the contribution of Roxburgh to the field of medical botany is also ignored. Viewed in this context, the present paper deals with the William Roxburgh’s effort in documentation and search of indigenous plants used in the treatment of dysentery.