Potency and Patency of African Medicine
December 26th 2011 01:37
The efficacy of African local herbs are subject of extensive scholarstic arguments
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African Diagnostics
When a person falls ill, a traditional practitioner uses incantations to make a diagnosis. Incantations are thought to give the air of mystical and cosmic connections. Divination is typically used if the illness is not easily identified, otherwise, the sickness may be quickly diagnosed and given a remedy. If divination is required, then the practitioner will advise the patient to consult a diviner who can further give a diagnosis and cure. Contact with the spirit world through divination often requires not only medication, but sacrifices.
Spirituality In Healing
In African cultures, the act of healing is considered a religious act. Therefore, the healing process often attempts to appeal to God because it is ultimately God who can not only inflict sickness, but provide a cure. Africans have a religious world view which makes them aware of the feasibility of divine or spirit intervention in healing with many healers referring to the supreme god as the source of their medical power. For example, the !Kung people of the Kalahari Desert believe that the great God Hishe created all things and, therefore, controls all sickness and death. Hishe, however, bestows mystical powers for curing sickness on certain men. Hishe presents himself to these medicine men in dreams and hallucinations, giving them curative power. Because this god is generous enough to give this power to the medicine men, they are expected to practice healing freely. The !Kung medicine men effect a cure by performing a tribal dance.
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