African medicine in the Americas

1. Maria G. Mandourari

3. Historical introduction of African
magico-medical systems
 Social and economic factors that
facilitated their survival
 Role of plant geography in their
persistence

4. Questions of:
i. Origin
ii. Ethnomedical typology
iii. Religion
iv. Syncretism
v. Magic and power
vi. Collective medicinal plant knowledge

5. i. Old World and New World
diseases
ii. Ethnomedical systems
iii. Plant-based pharmacopoeias

6. There were two worlds
The
growing
European
population
African
slaves

7. European population
Colonial physicians
medical care then known to Europe
Barbers, surgeons, bleeders, and priests
the needs of the growing European
population

8. African slaves
Neglect by slave owners
the excessive cost of physician services and
pharmaceuticals
tend to their own medical problems
 African priests, herbalists, and magicians
 African-based medicine, magic, and their associated
plant pharmacopoeias

9. ARRIVAL & SURVIVAL
1. Demographics of the slave trade
2. Cultural diffusion from Africa to the
America
3. The religious division between
Protestantism and Roman Catholicism

10. Demographics of the slave trade
where
to what degree
African magico-medical systems diffused
into the New World

11.  Heavy and
extended volume
and duration of
slavery African-
based
ethnomedicine
predominates.
 Brazil: retains
African religious
and medical
systems.
 Old Spanish Main
exhibits magico-
religious systems
scarcely different
from those in Africa
 North
America:
minor survival
of their
ethnomedical
systems

12. Cultural diffusion from Africa to
the Americas
Benign paternalism sadism
Brutal conditions high mortality
constant demand for fresh captives
(priests, magicians, and herbalists)
1. Social hierarchy, shaman class
2.Reinforced the collective knowledge of African
ethnomedicine among the resident black population

13. The religious division between Protestantism in British North
America and Roman Catholicism in Latin America
Protestants:
a). Simpler ritual
conflicted with the
complexities of African
religion
b). African rituals and
deities was not shared by
the Protestant sects.
Policy of non-tolerance
Roman Catholics:
a). Liturgy: some
structural similarities
with African religions
b). Implicit policy of
tolerance toward pagan
rituals and deities

14.  Healing
 Magic
 Religion
cornerstones of African
ethnomedicine persisted
to a greater or lesser
degree throughout the
New World.

15. ETHNOMEDICINE &
RELIGION
Ethnomedical traditions varied over time
African-American healing traditions. These
include theories of:
• causation related to the spiritual realm
• the capacity to identify symptoms
associated with specific diseases,
• the ability to prescribe culturally acceptable
treatments
Illness, it is believed, is a reaction to forces
outside the realm of secular comprehension.

16. Shaman healers: brokers between the material
and spiritual universes
Patients increase their own vulnerability to
health problems:
• straying from the cosmic equilibrium imposed
by the spirit realm
•inadvertent victims of direct intervention by
dead ancestors
•manipulation of the spirit realm by magicians
and sorcerers
No one, regardless of how ritually pure, is
immune to the power of sorcery.

17. Diagnosis:
Divination
Ceremony
Ritual stored in the collective
memory

18. Cures:
Votive offerings to the ancestors and
spirits
Observance of taboos
Fasting and seclusion
Trance
Prescription of medicinal plant

19.  African cosmology and ethnomedical system came
to predominate.
 Attractive alternative to a European social order to
which slaves and their descendants had little or no
access.
 Today:
 Yoruba & Dahomey
 Batuque of southern Brazil;
 Candomble, Shango & Tambor das Minas of north-
eastern Brazil
 Shango of Trinidad
 Vodoun of Haiti
 Santeria of Cuba

20. African Christian Religions
existence of an afterlife
Christianity: emphasizes the topic
African religions: limited connection
between this- world action with after-
world response

21. AFRICAN-AMERICAN PLANT
PHARMACOPOEIA
African ethnomedicine: healing power of
the vegetal realm.
Healing rituals and ceremonies involve:
• Leaves
• roots
• bark
• plant reproductive structures
• New World: alien floristic landscape

22. Learning the medicinal qualities of the
local flora from native herbalists
Trial and error
Newly arrived shamans continued to
employ the species as they had done
in Africa
Transmission of plant knowledge
between African and Indian slaves
Many exotic plants were purposely
transplanted to the Americas, but
most probably arrived as weeds

23. Duration of the slave trade affected the
transmission of plants and plant
knowledge to New World Africans:
 Americas: growth of their exotic flora
 African healers: incorporated species
into their corpus of medicinal herbs
 Plants introduced by Europeans to the
Americas recognized by African healers
as native pharmacopoeia
 Medicinal use of some native American
species, after being naturalized in
Africa, diffused to the New World

24. Many important native African species failed to
invade the New World:
lack of seed dispersal
rigors of interspecific competition
substitution of similar species facilitated by
the bio-geographical similarity of the African
and American tropics

25. Africans and Indians in the
Americas
Africans made contact with Native
Americans from the beginning of the
Spanish conquest
Indians and Africans: mutual enslavement
Highly imbalanced sex ratio among
Africans and Indians

26. Class differentiation whitewashed cross-
cultural alliances
Shared experiences: African-Native
American interaction
Imperial exploitation: pushed groups
into alliances
Colonial New Mexico: exploitation can
foster linkages between marginalized
groups

27. MAGICO-MEDICINE IN THE
CONTEMPORARY LANDSCAPE
 African-based ethnomedical systems and their associated
plant pharmacopoeias, have changed gradually over time
 Scarcely recognisable as African in origin
 Plant-based magic and medicine have expanded to include
European, Asian, and American materia medica
 African-American magic and medicine are widely perceived
as rejected knowledge:
 ignorance and poverty of the lower classes
 little or no meaning in a world dominated by the principles
of Western science
 African-based healing systems have expanded their
geographical range significantly

28.  Divine, R., Guenter L.; Millett, A. R. (1979) "Review:
Revisionism in Reverse". Reviews in American
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 Macionis J. J. , Linda M. Gerber
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Canada
 Novick, Peter. That Noble Dream: The Objectivity
Question and the American Historical profession.
(1988) p. 395