Traditional healers of Southern Africa are practitioners of traditional African medicine in Southern Africa. They fulfill different social and political roles in the community, including divination, healing physical, emotional and spiritual illnesses, directing birth or death rituals, finding lost cattle, protecting warriors, counteracting witchcraft, and narrating the history, cosmology, and concepts of their tradition. There are two main types of traditional healers within the Nguni, Sotho-Tswana, and Tsonga societies of Southern Africa: the diviner (sangoma), and the herbalist (inyanga). These healers are effectively South African shamans who are highly revered and respected in a society where illness is thought to be caused by witchcraft, pollution or through neglect of the ancestors. It is estimated that there are as many as 200,000 traditional healers in South Africa compared to 25,000 doctors trained in bio-medical medicine. Traditional healers are consulted by approximately 60% of the South African population, usually in conjunction with modern biomedical services.
Herbal medicine is the study of pharmacognosy and the use of medicinal plants. Plants have been the basis for medical treatments through most of human history, and such traditional medicine is still widely practiced today. Modern medicine makes use of many plant-derived compounds as the basis for evidence-based pharmaceutical drugs. Although herbalism may apply modern standards of effectiveness testing to herbs and medicines derived from natural sources, few high-quality clinical trials and standards for purity or dosage exist. The scope of herbal medicine is sometimes extended to include fungal and bee products, as well as minerals, shells and certain animal parts.
Traditional medicine comprises medical aspects of traditional knowledge that developed over generations within the folk beliefs of various societies before the era of modern medicine. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines traditional medicine as "the sum total of the knowledge, skills, and practices based on the theories, beliefs, and experiences indigenous to different cultures, whether explicable or not, used in the maintenance of health as well as in the prevention, diagnosis, improvement or treatment of physical and mental illness". Traditional medicine is contrasted with scientific medicine.
Medieval medicine in Western Europe was composed of a mixture of pseudoscientific ideas from antiquity. In the Early Middle Ages, following the fall of the Western Roman Empire, standard medical knowledge was based chiefly upon surviving Greek and Roman texts, preserved in monasteries and elsewhere. Medieval medicine is widely misunderstood, thought of as a uniform attitude composed of placing hopes in the church and God to heal all sicknesses, while sickness itself exists as a product of destiny, sin, and astral influences as physical causes. On the other hand, medieval medicine, especially in the second half of the medieval period, became a formal body of theoretical knowledge and was institutionalized in the universities. Medieval medicine attributed illnesses and disease, not to sinful behaviour, but to natural causes, and sin was only connected to illness in a more general sense of the view that disease manifested in humanity as a result of its fallen state from God. Medieval medicine also recognized that illnesses spread from person to person, that certain lifestyles may cause ill health, and some people have a greater predisposition towards bad health than others.
Ethnomedicine is a study or comparison of the traditional medicine based on bioactive compounds in plants and animals and practiced by various ethnic groups, especially those with little access to western medicines, e.g., indigenous peoples. Often these traditions constitute significant interactions with insects as well, in Africa or around the globe. The word ethnomedicine is sometimes used as a synonym for traditional medicine.
The traditional African religions or traditional beliefs and practices of African people are a set of highly diverse beliefs that includes various ethnic religions. Generally, these traditions are oral rather than scriptural and passed down from one generation to another through folk tales, songs and festivals, include belief in an amount of higher and lower gods, sometimes including a supreme creator or force, belief in spirits, veneration of the dead, use of magic and traditional African medicine. Most religions can be described as animistic with various polytheistic and pantheistic aspects. The role of humanity is generally seen as one of harmonizing nature with the supernatural.
Bush medicine comprises traditional medicines used by Indigenous Australians, being Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Indigenous people have been using various components of native Australian flora, and some fauna, as medicine for thousands of years, and many still turn to healers in their communities to dispense medicines and spiritual healing.
A botánica is a religious goods store. The name botánica is Spanish and translates as "botany" or "plant store," referring to these establishments' function as dispensaries of medicinal herbs. Botánicas are common in many Hispanic American countries and Latino communities around the world. Such establishments sell folk medicine, herbs, candles, and statues for Saints and popular gods. They also carry oils, incense, perfumes, and books. Such stores have become increasingly popular in the United States as the Latino communities they serve have grown in that country. A botánica is a site of healing and support, such that one owner says they are a "place of mysteries" due to the metaphysical appreciation of mystery as a synonym for spirit and divinity.
The Hausa are the largest ethnic group in Africa and the second largest language after Arabic in the Afroasiatic family of languages. The Hausa are a diverse but culturally homogeneous people based primarily in the Sahelian and the sparse savanna areas of southern Niger and northern Nigeria respectively, numbering over 70 million people with significant indegenized populations in Benin, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Chad, Sudan, Central African Republic, Republic of the Congo, Togo, Ghana, Eritrea, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Senegal and the Gambia.
Prehistoric medicine is any use of medicine from before the invention of writing and the documented history of medicine. Because the timing of the invention of writing per culture and region, the term "prehistoric medicine" encompasses a wide range of time periods and dates.
Traditional Thai medicine is a system of methods and practices, such as herbal medicine, bodywork practices, and spiritual healing that is indigenous to the region currently known as Thailand. While not all Buddhist medicine is Thai, Thai medicine is considered Buddhist medicine.
Yorùbá medicine, or egbo'gi, is an African system of herbalism practiced primarily in West Africa and the Caribbean.
"African herbal medicine is commonly called Yorubic or Orisha medicine on the African continent. It started from a religious text, called Ifa Corpus. According to tradition, the Ifa Corpus was revealed by the mystic prophet, Orunmilla, around 4,000 years ago in the ancient city of Ile-Ife, now known as major city in Yorùbáland. The last 400 years saw individuals in the Caribbean and South America practice the Yorubic healing system as a token of their past when the first wave of Stolen Africans arrived in the Americas."
Traditional African medicine is a range of traditional medicine disciplines involving indigenous herbalism and African spirituality, typically including diviners, midwives, and herbalists. Practitioners of traditional African medicine claim to be able to cure a variety of diverse conditions including cancer, psychiatric disorders, high blood pressure, cholera, most venereal diseases, epilepsy, asthma, eczema, fever, anxiety, depression, benign prostatic hyperplasia, urinary tract infections, gout, and healing of wounds and burns and even Ebola.
Navajo medicine covers a range of traditional healing practices of the Indigenous American Navajo people. It dates back thousands of years as many Navajo people have relied on traditional medicinal practices as their primary source of healing. However, modern day residents within the Navajo Nation have incorporated contemporary medicine into their society with the establishment of Western hospitals and clinics on the reservation over the last century.
Traditional Vietnamese medicine, also known as Southern Herbology is a traditional medicine practiced by Vietnamese people. It is influenced by traditional Chinese medicine. The other traditional medicine that is also practiced in Vietnam is traditional Chinese medicine, also known as Northern Herbology. Thuốc Nam is one of two kinds of folk remedies known to villagers, the other being the traditional exercise dưỡng sinh.
The history of herbalism is closely tied with the history of medicine from prehistoric times up until the development of the germ theory of disease in the 19th century. Modern medicine from the 19th century to today has been based on evidence gathered using the scientific method. Evidence-based use of pharmaceutical drugs, often derived from medicinal plants, has largely replaced herbal treatments in modern health care. However, many people continue to employ various forms of traditional or alternative medicine. These systems often have a significant herbal component. The history of herbalism also overlaps with food history, as many of the herbs and spices historically used by humans to season food yield useful medicinal compounds, and use of spices with antimicrobial activity in cooking is part of an ancient response to the threat of food-borne pathogens.
Mapuche medicine is the system of medical treatment historically used by the Mapuche people of southern Chile. It is essentially magical-religious in nature, believing disease to be caused by supernatural factors such as spells and curable by treatments based on rituals, thermal waters and herbs. Knowledge of medicinal herbs is one of the best-known elements of Mapuche medicine and is still used today., One of the most striking aspects of historical Mapuche medicine was the use of surgery as a treatment, which was developed to treat wounds and traumas suffered in the frequent battles between tribes. Fractures and dislocations of bones were treated by immobilising and covering the limbs with pastes and ointments made of medicinal herbs. As in Europe, the practice of the bloodletting was also commonplace and used as a treatment for many conditions. In Mapuche culture, it was done by making small cuts with a very sharp stone called a "guincubue" to draw blood, then covering the cut with an astringent or herbal mix. Bloodletting was also used by parents on children to make them lighter, more agile and more capable of working and fighting, as it was thought that their blood was salty and heavy. Hygiene was very important in Mapuche life. They were very clean and tidy, bathing every day in nearby streams or rivers, regardless of weather conditions. The bark of the Quillaja tree, which is very common in the local area, was used as soap.
Hausa animism, "Maguzanci" or Bori is a pre-Islamic traditional religion of the Hausa people of West Africa that involves magic and spirit possession. Most of the adherents of the religion accepted Islam after the 18th century Jihad by the Islamic reformer Usman dan Fodio.
Traditional Cambodian medicine (Khmer:វេជ្ជសាស្រ្តបូរាណខ្មែរ) comprise several traditional medicine systems in Cambodia.
Adodo Anselm Gbenga is a Nigerian scholar who is a pioneer of Alternative medicine in Africa. He is also Benedictine monk and priest of the Roman Catholic Church in Edo state Nigeria. He founded Nigeria’s first Alternative medicine and research laboratory enterprise in Nigeria known as Pax Herbal Clinic and Research Laboratories in 1997.
