mineworkers who had come from all parts of Africa to seek employment in
the rich gold fields of the Witwatersrand, these scientists were able to record
information about the traditional medical uses of plants in their patients’
countries of origin. All information published from about 1800 onwards in
respect of the species’ chemistry, pharmacology, toxicology and ethno-
medical use was included, as was an index of vernacular names in each of
the major languages of southern and eastern Africa. These indices have
proved to be essential tools for the modern pharmacognosist, ethnobotanist
and ethnopharmacologist, while the work itself remains the starting point
for much current ethnomedical research on African plant species. With
remarkable foresight, the authors wrote, in the preface to the second
edition: ‘These remedies are still in common use, but much of the folk medi-
cine of the indigenous peoples of Southern and Eastern Africa is disap-
pearing before the advancing tide of civilization with its synthetic medicines.
There is little doubt that the greater part of it will have disappeared within
measurable time and the recording of it has seemed to us to be not only a
matter of urgency but one of necessity.’
The African Pharmacopoeia
During the period 1900–75 there were several other important contributions
to the documentation of African traditional medicines. This endeavour has, in
the last 30 years, greatly accelerated, at continental, regional, national and
provincial level. Major published works on this topic are listed in Box 5.1. In
1985 the then Organisation of African Unity (OAU), now the African Union
(AU), published Volume 1 of the African Pharmacopoeia,^17 an initiative
financed by the WHO.
90 |Traditional medicine
Box 5.1Major publications since 1940 (chronological order) dealing
with African traditional medicines at continental, regional, national
or provincial level
Githens TS. Drug Plants of Africa. African Handbooks: 8. Philadel-
phia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1948.
Gelfand M. Medicine and Magic of the Mashona. Cape Town, South
Africa: Juta & Co. Ltd, 1956.
Ayensu ES. Medicinal Plants of West Africa. Michigan, OH: Refer-
ence Publications Inc., 1978.
Jansen PCM, Mendes O. Plantas Medicinais: seu uso tradicional em
Moçambique, vols 1 and 2. Maputo, Mozambique: Minerva
Central, 1983.