AFRICAN MEDICINE

        The 21st century has begun with a global health crisis of new and re-emerging diseases spiralling out of control, which coupled with escalating violence and poverty, threatens to cripple entire communities and countries. To tackle this crisis, it is currently essential that the Medical community work to access and harness as many resources and partners as possible. One of the resources often overlooked and underestimated, is the role of traditional medicine and healers, and the potential contributions they can make at many levels of health care delivery.

        One of the most famous traditional medicine being African medicine. Yorubic medicine is native to and widely practiced on the African continent. Yorubic medicine has its roots in the Ifa Corpus, a religious text revealed by the mystic Prophet Orunmila, over 4000 years ago in the ancient city of Ile-Ife, now known as Yorubaland. Within the last 400 years, this healing system has also been practiced in the day to day lives of individuals in the Caribbean, and South America. The traditions were brought over by African slaves arriving in America.

        Orunmila’s teachings were directed at the Yoruba people which centered around the topics of divination, prayer, dance, symbolic gestures, personal and communal elevation, spiritual baths, meditation, and herbal medicine. The purpose of Yoruba is not merely to counteract the negative forces of disease in the human body, but also to achieve spiritual enlightenment and elevation which are the means of freeing the soul. As with all ancient systems of medicine, the ideal of Yoruba herbology is to condition the body in its entirety so that disease will not attack it. In order to understand the system of Yoruba medicine, it is important to have some knowledge of the historical conditions that gave birth to this African art of healing. Many factors and dynamics were involved which influenced the beginnings and the development of this indigenous medicine.

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        The Yoruba history begins with the migration of an East African population across the trans-African route leading from the mid-Nile river area to the mid-Niger.1 Archaeologists, according to M. Omoleya, inform us that the Nigerian region was inhabited more than forty thousand years ago, or as far back as 65,000 B.C.2 During this period, the Nok culture occupied the region. The Nok culture was visited. by the "Yoruba people", between 2000 and 500 B.C. This group of people were led by King Oduduwa, who settled peacefully in the already established Ile-Ife. This time period is known as the Bronze Age, a time ...

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