Pistacia lentiscus linn. A case study of misappropriation

ABSTRACT

Unani Medicine is based on the principles put forward by Hippocrates and exploited assimilated by the Physicians of Medieval period. Hippocrates was the first person to establish that disease was a natural process, that its symptoms were the reactions of the body to the disease, and that the chief function of the physician was to aid the natural forces of the body. He introduced the method of taking medical histories. Several assets of Unani medicine are available in different global languages i.e. Arabic, Urdu, Persian and other regional languages. These literary assets are easily accessible and thus have been susceptible to misuse across the world. In other words, Classical Unani text is being exploited for bio-prospecting. So it is often misappropriated, because it is assumed that since it is in public domain, communities have given up all claims over it