Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
has somewhat blunted his or her empirical and objective diagnosis of organic ill health. In a system
where the dividing line between the two aspects of reality is so thin, elements of superstition will
of course seep in; rituals that were merely symbolic lose their original significance and become
endowed with magical powers not originally intended by their originators. There is ritual in the
choice of the ingredients used for the preparation of the herbal potions; most Africans believe that
a drug without the proper ritual observances or even without the proper divine or magical authority
will be ineffective. Methods of preparing certain remedies are carefully preserved as family secrets,
thus preventing cross exchange of ideas that had indeed enriched other aspects of human knowl-
edge. It makes the training of new healers difficult, empirical, and nonsystematized.
The apparent lack of any relationship between cause and effect, between the medicine used or
treatment applied and the health restored, relegates some traditional healing practices to the realm
of superstition. Ezeanya wondered how one could relate the use of dried bones of monkeys and other
animals tied to the neck or waist of a child liable to fits to the cure and prevention of relapses in a
convulsive child.
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It is indeed difficult to rationalize the claimed protective action of various charms
and amulets dispensed by native doctors. It is, however, not possible to dismiss such claims because
the so-called fetishes do have curative powers.
The extreme poor dosage consideration is another factor that condemns traditional medical prac-
tice in Africa. A medicine has to be seen at once to be powerful to be considered effective; serious
side effects abhorred in orthodox Western medicine are accepted by the African as a sure sign of
efficacious treatment. If a potion is able to bring a full-grown adult down on his knees soon after
administration, then the drug is seen as a “strong man's” medicine and will be highly recommended
by the patient when he recovers. This perhaps explains the preference for parenteral injections among
Africans. The efficacy of minute dosage form is still difficult for the native African to understand;
bulk is essential for an effective and quick cure. The native healer often dispenses only one-dose
medications to prevent his or her client, in need of a quick cure, from overdrugging him- or herself.
The varied methods used for the preparation of the remedies make standardization and repro-
ducibility of results extremely difficult. Apart from the “kaolin mold” dosage forms, other prepara-
tions are dependent on subjective estimation by the healer or patient for the determination of doses.
Large doses are often prescribed for acute symptoms, often irrespective of differences in size, sex,
and age of the patient. In their efforts to keep their ingredients secret, traditional healers often
resort to mixing potent herbs with innocuous materials; their progeny are unlikely to differentiate
the active component from the inert substances in the recipe handed down to them. This leads to a
high incidence of both placebo dispensation and overmedication in traditional medicine. One must,
however, admit that these ills are not restricted to traditional medicine alone. Professor Jores, the
director of the University of Hamburg Clinic, made the point when he drew the following parallel:
Even in the field of [modern] medicine, which is striving for objectivity and scientific accuracy, the
magical effect plays an uncontrollable part which is frequently overlooked. We cannot remind ourselves
often enough, that at least 40 per cent of all individuals respond positively to a remedy no matter what
it contains. Only in this way is the ever astonishing number of medicines explicable, as well as the fact
that pharmaceutical industry can live on them. The subtle compounding of many medicaments is prob-
ably “magic” and without any objective value. It is not an exaggeration to assert that the pharmaceutical
industry is really producing placebos in the grand style. (Jahn,
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p. 850)
These shortcomings have by no means obliterated the positive contributions of traditional heal-
ing methods in the overall health care delivery system. More than 60% of the population at present
live outside the vicinity of modern hospitals and rely almost exclusively on traditional medicine men
or women for their treatment. Even for the Western-oriented urban Africans, especially in chronic
illnesses and in cases where the entire faculties of being and self have to be integrated to avert fatal-
ity, recourse is frequently made to the traditional healer.
