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Nineteenth-Century Asante Medical Practices

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

D. Maier
D. Maier
Affiliation:
University of Texas at Dallas
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Extract

Most of the literature concerning traditional African medical practice has dealt with aspects often deemed ‘irrational,’ such as the role of priests, shrines, magic and religious ritual. M. J. Field's work demonstrates convincingly that these aspects of medical treatment in Ghana are essential in mitigating and curing psychosomatic illnesses as well as controlling neuroses. The emphasis on religious and psychological methods of treatment, however, can often lead to less perceptive conclusions, such as those of U.S. doctors visiting Ghana in 1960 who stated flatly that traditional medical practices there consist solely of ‘ignorance and superstition’ and that ‘witchdoctor … medicine man and native doctor are synonymous terms.

Type
The Practice of Medicine
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , January 1979 , pp. 63 - 81
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1979

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References

Research for this paper was made possible in part by a grant from the Northwestern University Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Science and Technology. I am also grateful to Ivor Wilks of Northwestern University for reading and commenting on an earlier draft of this paper:

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