Southeast Asia is several traditions rather than one, and the documents here keep them apart: Thai herbal medicine and its massage practice, Indonesian jamu as it is still mixed and sold in Java, Malay practice, and Filipino folk medicine. The plants are largely rhizomes and aromatics - fingerroot, plai, temulawak, kencur, lempuyang - which is why so many of these are drunk as a fresh preparation rather than taken as a dried extract, and why a trial of one is often a trial of a specific product. A few have been studied properly: Kaempferia parviflora, Thai massage and Indonesian cinnamon carry trial evidence; mangosteen, banaba, sambong, kacip fatimah and tongkat ali have smaller or mixed literatures, and the grade on each page says which.
Not every remedy names a tradition. Browse the full A–Z index for all 3,787 remedies, including the 255 with no recorded tradition.
