Diversity of medicinal treatments provided through pica behavior.

1These data represent the distribution of types of medicinal treatments among those substances reported to be used for medicinal purposes. A given substance could be attributed to more than one medicinal use. 2Total pica behavior includes geophagy and other non-foods, excluding amylophagy. These data refer to the frequencies with which respondents identified the use of a given pica substance being attributed to a given medicinal treatment. 3The other category includes the following treatments in order of frequency: medicine for sore throats, for rotten teeth in children, against witchcraft, accidents and bad luck, for fatigue and muscle soreness, for raised and infected inflammations, enlarged testicles and/or bedwetting, anemia, healing the vagina after birth, and to induce an abortion. N.B. We have categorized diarrhea, bloody diarrhea, vomiting, bloating and gaseousness as one category called gastro-intestinal illness.