Ethnopharmacy is the interdisciplinary science that investigates the perception and use of pharmaceuticals (especially traditional medicines, but not only), within a given human society.
It deals with the study of the pharmaceutical means considered in relation to the cultural contexts of their use, e.g. the study of the cultural determinants that characterise the uses of these means within a culture.
It involves studies of the:
Ethnopharmacy is often erroneously associated with ethnopharmacology, which is instead "only" focused on the bio-pharmacological evaluation of traditional medicines.
Ethnopharmacy shares instead a common terrain with medical anthropology and anthropology of pharmaceuticals.