Indigenous Medicine And Knowledge In African Society

This book, in contrast to those that rely primarily on either healers or patients, investigates the ways in which healers and indigenous archives of cultural knowledge conceptualize and interpret medicine and healing by focusing on the primary institutional specialists that constitute the core of the indigenous therapeutic system, and proverbial, gold weight, adinkra, and oral narrative domains of cultural knowledge. The experiences, perceptions, and competence levels of healers are not identical, and to use one person as a standard or benchmark is often problematic in the articulation of an 'ethnomedical system' authenticated by few sources that possess equivalent levels of in-depth medicinal knowledge and aptitude. In order to unearth prevailing concepts of medicine, Konadu utilizes in-depth interviews, medicinal samples, material culture, Akan linguistics, and historical and archaeological sources. This groundbreaking study of indigenous knowledge has important implications for the study of medical and knowledge systems in Africa and the African Diaspora worldwide.