Cosmic Yoruba writing in This is Africa:
Under colonial rule, traditional healers were deemed backward and outlawed. Little was done to investigate the legitimacy of what these healers actually did. Today the prejudice remains, but our ancestors weren’t stupid. We need to clinically research these remedies.
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...All this will sound strange to anyone who grew up with a familiarity of injections, tablets and pills only. Nonetheless to dismiss traditional medicine or this pre-colonial, indigenous African philosophy as mere superstition would be presumptuous.More here
Our ancestors were not stupid, and while it’s impossible now to know what percentage of their “patients” recovered from their illnesses due to the placebo effect and what as a result of the administered herbs, the herbalists would not have been in business for long if their remedies had been completely ineffective. Yoruba herbalists interviewed by Olugbenga Olagunju insist that in pre-colonial days, people lived long and healthy lives due to this knowledge of herbs and magic. Meanwhile in places like Uganda and Rwanda, colonial European explorers wrote of witnessing local “medicine men” performing caesarean sections with banana wine used as an intoxicant and a cleanser, and the wound sutured with needles and a paste made from roots.
