An Ethnomedicine Study of Traditional Healers as Joint Pain Therapy in Bantul District, Yogyakarta

Joint pain is a sign of disorders of the musculoskeletal system. In joint pain, there is usually discomfort, swelling, inflammation, and stiffness that cause movement restrictions. Bantul is the district with the lowest prevalence of joint disease in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. It related to the community culture in using traditional herbs to treat the disease. This study aims to determine the types of plants, the process of making traditional herbal medicine, and ways to use herbs to treat joint pain complaints. Traditional knowledge about using local plants was collected through field surveys. The 48 healers from 3 hamlets in Bantul District were found by snowball sampling technique and 47 traditional herbal medicines were recorded as being applied for joint pain treatment. Among traditional herbal medicines are identified that they use 33 plants belonging to 18 families, and the most widely used family is Zingiberaceae. Raw materials were detected to process by washing, boiling, pounding, grinding, pulverizing, and squeezing and used orally and topically (compress). This study showed that most of people in the Bantul District still depend on medicinal plants to treat diseases. Nevertheless, there are only a few traditional healers. There is a great danger that traditional knowledge will soon be lost because the young generation is not concerned about continuing this custom.