Healing and the African Culture - African Medicinal Plants - page 384

5. There is a tendency to stress, in all forms of art, the quality of significance as a criterion of beauty
and virtue.
6. Stress or importance is attached to group life and to kinship as represented in the institutional form
of the extended family system, irrespective of the differences of descent systems.
7. There is a belief in the existence and influence of lesser gods as agents of the one supreme god and
in fetishes and unseen powers, witchcraft, and a variety of spirits.
8. A strong sense of rhythm is manifested not only in music and dance but also, for example, in the
gait of women and the intuitive, essentially unanalytical, mode of cognition and perception of the
universe. 16 (Adapted from K wesi Wiredu.)
rEFErENCES
1. Williams, S.H. (1994) Fragments of history. In W. Maccaffey and R. Harris (eds.), Astonishment and
Power , National Museum of African Art and the Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC, pp. 11.
2. Kalu, O. (1998) The gods are to blame. Proceedings of the 6th International Congress on Ethnobiology,
Whakatana, New Zealand, 24-26 November 1998.
3. Iwu, M.M. (1986) African Ethnomedicine . USP Press. Enugu. Nigeria p. 106.
4. Jahn, J.(1961) MUNTI—The New African Culture . Grove Press, New York.
5. Finch, C.S. (1982) The African background of medical science. J. Afr. Civilizations 4(1): 8.
6. Tella, A. (1979) Traditional and orthodox medicine. Conflicts and prospects of integration. Ethnomedicine
V(112): 147.
7. Nemec, J. (1980) Rediscovering an ancient resource—a new look at traditional medicine. Contact 58,
Geneva.
8. Ezeanya, S.N. (1977) Healing in traditional African society. West African Religion, University of Nigeria,
Nsukka.
9. Mbiti, J. (1969) African Religions and Philosophy. Heinemann, London.
10. Waite, G.M. (1981) The indigenous medical system in East-Central African history. Ph.D. thesis,
University of California, Los Angeles.
11. Aniakor, C.C. (1986) Artefacts, Cosmology and Traditional Medicine in Nsukka . Monograph.
12. Senghor, L.S. (1965) In Senghor: Prose & Poetry . Edited and Translated By Reed, John and Wake Clive.
Oxford University Press.
13. Anon. (2004) The New Webster's Dictionary of English Language - International Edition. Pub. Lexicon
International - Publishers Guild Group. New York. P. 1006.
14. Freud, S. (1950) Totem and Taboo , translated by James Strachey. Norton, New York.
15. Morris, R.D. (1965) The Washing of the Spears: A History of the Rise of the Zulu Nation under Shaka
and Its Fall in the Zulu War of 1879. New York. Simon and Schuster, A Da Capo Press paperback edition.
Also available. Boston MA. (1998).
16. Kwesi Wiredu (1980) Philosophy and an African Culture. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,
1980.