Traditional medical practices therefore
include nonempirical and empirical means to
heal human beings from spiritual, psychological,
social, physical, and political dislocations, and to
restore cosmic balance. The different peoples of
Africa, in varieties of culturally constructed
ways, express their notion and understanding of
the means through which disease and illness are
communicated, diagnosed, and treated. All these
are closely linked to and connected with mythic
narratives and ritual practices, the dimensions
through which the peoples offer explanations for
the causes of disease, prognosticating into the
possible cure and control, and removal or pre-
vention of disease in some ways different from
Western medical practice.
The similarity in their understanding of disease
and illness, and approach to healing notwith-
standing, African medicine provides indigenous
resources for maintaining and restoring of health
by the use of spiritual and material elements that
are available in their different environments. This
entry looks at the African view of disease, its
health and healing practices, the people who
employ them, and the spread of African ideas to
the larger health community.
Disease and African WorldviewThe worldviews of the Africans are wrapped up in
myths describing the vertical (spiritual) and hori-
zontal (social) dimensions of the complex rela-
tionships of human beings to other universal
entities. The origins, causes, diagnosis, prevention,
and cure of disease are embedded and enshrined
in cosmological myths. Diseases or illnesses are
usually attributed to two main agents: the spiri-
tual and social.
SpiritualCausativeAgents
This spiritual dimension explains the African uni-
verse as possessing an array of deities with hierarchi-
cal structures and pervasive vital powers or forces.
Spiritual causative agents, who populate the seen
and unseen, visible and invisible spaces, and the
animate and inanimate, are believed to be actively
instrumental in primordial origin of diseases. These
agents include the Supreme Being, lesser deities,
ancestors and ancestresses, and humans’ personal
spiritual duplicates. By nature and functions, they
could be categorized mainly into two, the benevo-
lent and malevolent, a few of them ambivalent.
Although most African communities hold the
Supreme Being as the creator or source of other
beings, only a few of them ascribe to him the
primary spiritual agency of disease causation as
expressed in the myth of the Akan of Ghana and
the practice of the Lugbara. To the Lugbara, dis-
turbances and virulent diseases resulting from
mental afflictions are believed to be caused by the
Supreme Being. Others attribute the causes of dis-
ease to the weak characters of the first created
deities as we have in the myth of the Edo of
Nigeria; although a few others attribute the cause
to the weakness of the first created human beings,
as expressed in the myth of the Yao, a Bantu-
speaking people of Malawi and Mozambique; and
misbehavior of the first created beings as revealed
in the myths of the Mende of Sierra Leone and
Dinka of southern Sudan, at a primordial time.
The Yoruba, Basoga, and Gisu attribute some
disease to deities who represent the Supreme
Being’s aspect of the wrath and judgment on
human beings who contravene important rituals
or violate communal taboos. Yet several of the
peoples who maintain the joint responsibility of
disease causality by deities and humans offer
destiny or predestination as an explanation.SocialCausativeAgents
Most Africans see human beings as the primary
social agent of disease causation, which concerns
interactions, relationships and activities that result
in disharmony and disturbance in the social
world, and cosmic imbalance. Some human beings
are believed to be capable of assuming extra-
human positions to afflict and harm their alleged
offenders, enemies, and rivals through mystical
means; they often take vengeance on behalf of
those who solicit their assistance. Witches, sorcer-
ers, and evil eyes are in this category. Of particu-
lar note, witches are a commonplace and most
dreaded phenomenon among most African peo-
ples. Misbehavior and other social vices, desecra-
tion of some sacred spaces, a breach or violation
of a community’s taboos, and disregard or con-
tempt for culturally constructed rituals are also
social causes of illness or disease.414 Medicine