Local ecological knowledge and folk medicine in historical Estonia, Livonia, Courland, and Galicia, 1805-1905 [version 1; peer review: awaiting peer review]

Background: Historical ethnobotanical data can provide valuable information about past human-nature relationships as well as serve as a basis for diachronic analysis. This data note aims to present a dataset which documented medicinal plant uses, mentioned in a selection of German-language sources from the 19th century covering the historical regions of Estonia, Livonia, Courland, and Galicia. Methods: Data was mainly obtained by systematic manual search in various relevant historical German-language works focused on the medicinal use of plants. Data about plant and non-plant constituents, their usage, the mode of administration, used plant parts, and their German and local names was extracted and collected into a database in the form of Use Reports.


Introduction
Recent studies are underlining the diverse application possibilities of historical ethnobotanical research and the recent value of ethnobotanical data. The analysis of such data can contribute to understanding in which cultural fields plants are important and used, offer a rich basis of information for ethnobotanical and diachronic research, helping to understand better how societies and their folk culture develop and change over time, their dealing with natural resources, their interaction with and influence on ecosystems and the flora, as well as help in understanding modern medicinal practices better and contribute to the approval of new herbal medicines.

Methods
The primary sources included in the presented database were identified through literature research focusing on local medicinal plant use in the historical regions of Estonia, Courland, Livonia, and Galicia. In addition, we included in the sample publications published between 1805 and 1905 solely in the German language as inclusion criteria (Table 1). A range of relevant books and articles were used for extracting the historical indications of medicinal plant taxa which are treated as inclusion criteria (accessible botanical, historical, ethnographic literature describing the use of plants for medicinal purposes). Certain categories of sources are excluded from the dataset because of their non-circulating status (e.g., rare books). Main sources included the online libraries of the Online Catalogue ESTER (Estonian Library Network Consortium), the Biodiversity Heritage Library (Biodiversity Heritage Library), the Baltic Digital Library (Bałtycka Biblioteka Cyfrowa) and google scholar, as well as citations and mentions of other relevant German-speaking authors (searching for documents which possess keywords: "Volksmedizin", "Volksheilmittel", "Heilpflanzen", "Oekonomisch-technische Flora"). The limited geographical and temporal scale allows conducting a comprehensive comparative study to understand the biocultural diversity of medicinal ethnobotany of the region and to create a sound scientific base for future comparisons with current field-work results from the region.
Due to the limited relevant written records in German language, every possible work was considered at first. For analysis purposes, we excluded primary sources that did not fulfil the following criteria: availability of local names and specific historical periods. In the next step, the selected public-domain books were carefully scanned and then was put into a Microsoft Excel 2013 spreadsheet. Thus, data on the local ecological knowledge and folk medicine were compiled from eight German historical ethnobotanical studies conducted in Estonia, Livonia, Courland, and Galicia, published between 1805 and 1905 ( Table 1).
Every independent use in the sources was considered as a use instance (UI) and was entered into a separate row in the spreadsheet. For each usage mentioned, the following information was elicited from the text, if present: If an identification or accurate interpretation of a given constituent or any information of one of the categories stated above was not possible, the respective information was marked with a question mark in brackets '(?)'. Items with such a marking were excluded from the analysis. and wood [WOOD]. If the part used was not stated, then the part was classified as herbs. This categorisation follows the terminology used by the authors contributing to this study. Statements concerning "die Pflanze" (the plant) or "Grünzeug" (greens) were also classified as herbs. Otherwise, the parts stated by the authors were the same in English terms, hence the categorisation. Furthermore, other studies, like Staub et al. (2016) and Spałek et al. (2019), also used this categorisation.
The mode of administration was recorded and divided into either internally (internal ingestion in any manner) or externally (for example, in the form of ointments or compresses) administered.
The Those categories were segmented further into symptoms/ complaints, infections, neoplasms, injuries, congenital anomalies, and other diagnoses. This classification was used for further analysis. This ICPC-2 categorisation was used for further analysis because it will facilitate easier comparison with other studies in the future. Furthermore, the ICPC-2 is less clinical than the ICD, making the classification of reported ailments and symptoms easier and more applicable to the 'ethnomedical reality' (Staub et al., 2015;Staub et al., 2016). The categories 'X -Female Genital' and 'Y -Male Genital' were combined into one group 'Genital' [Geni] because almost no records concerning diseases of male genitalia were made by any of the contributing authors. The category of 'culture bound syndrome' was added to reflect the uses associated with local customs and beliefs not attributable to the specific disease categories.  (2021) and Tutin et al. (1993).
Disclaimer: the database is designed to give a general overview of the sources to the best knowledge of the authors. In case of any need for clarification, consult the original source.