Ken, applying Karl Polanyi's idea of Tacit Knowledge to ATM seems better able to accommodate what you are asking of it. Those of us who lived in African villages when ATM was more the mainstay of medical practice than were the modern Western clinics and hospitals and who had been patients under traditional medicare or had witnessed its efficacy could attest to this. As Polanyi would put it, we [and the practitioners] knew (and know) more than it was/is possible for us [and the practitioners] to tell!
ATM encloses (existing) bodies of knowledge about specific diseases as well as about disease typology and the practitioners did experiment and they used to pass this on to their students. ATM practitioners also used to travel to learn from other practitioners and would then pass this on to their apprentices – ritually, orally, and hands-on. The orality and the sometimes cultic and ritual framework of the learning and transmission of this knowledge that have carried over into the modern period, I believe, have constituted a great drawback to its efficacy and usefulness. It is not surprising that younger practitioners whose modern social and economic contexts foreclose the length, intensity, and close personal apprenticeship previously required to become expert in the pre-literate pre-modern period have not been able to repeat feats that oral tradition associates with the older generations of ATM practitioners. This has served to discredit ATM in the sight of our Western-educated elite. This suspicion together with the fact of our modern Westernized and "objectivist" mindsets have predisposed our leaders, scholars, and scientists (both religious and non-religious) to dismiss ATM rather than systematically study it, modernize some of its more palpable aspects, and effectively integrate it into our modern healthcare structure.
_________________________
Femi J. Kolapo
History Department * University of Guelph * Ontario * Canada* N1G 2W1
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SPREAD Journals of African Education: African Journal of Teacher Education || Review of Higher Education in Africa || Recreation and Society in Africa, Asia and Latin America
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F. J. Kolapo, Christian Missionary Engagement in Central Nigeria: The Church Missionary Society's All-African Mission on the Upper Niger, (Springer International Publishing, 2019) http://www.palgrave.com/9783030314255
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i thought it was not unusual nowadays for scientific medical knowledge/practitioners to be studying traditional medical practices. i have seen articles on that topic. we aren't back in the benighted colonial days any more. my post had to do broadly with how we might think of traditional practices in this case, as opposed to others where a body of knowledge about a disease and its treatments might have been createdke
kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of englishn
michigan state university
517 803-8839
From: 'Michael Afolayan' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, March 29, 2020 2:02 PM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Africa's traditional practitioners and the war against the coronavirus--Thanks for sharing the good news, Gloria. I sure hope our world will descend its high throne of elitism and pay close attention to our indigenous knowledge. If I recall, your 2016 edited work with Edward Shizha has a nice chapter you wrote on this subject. I should revisit it.
Dr. Ayandele, I would be specially interested in the outcome of your survey. I should also let you know that the oldest work on Yoruba traditional medicine by J. M. Odumosu (written between 1895 and 1910) is fraught with all sorts of herbal (and non-herbal) remedies. Dr. Helen Tilley of Northwestern University, currently on sabbatical at Cambridge University) and I translated it to the English language and is contracted with the University of Wisconsin-Madison Press. Annotation is all we are currently working on now. Hopefully it should be out next year. Stay tuned!
Michael
On Sunday, March 29, 2020, 8:36:39 AM CDT, Sola Ayandele <solaayan@gmail.com> wrote:
Good day Ma/Sir,
We are conducting a study on the outbreak of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19).
Our aim is to understand how knowledge and perceptions of Coronavirus can influence precautionary health behavior.
With your participation, you will be helping your fellow countrymen and women, the government and the entire globe to understand and promote awareness of the pandemic and the most effective ways of curbing it.
To take part in the study, please click on the online survey link:
The survey takes around 10 minutes to complete and it is for persons aged 15 years and older. Your participation is voluntary; you can discontinue participation at any time without consequences. All your responses are anonymous.
Please find a quiet time and place to fill it in and be as honest as possible.
Your responses will be used for academic purposes and treated with the utmost confidentiality.
Help us to share this message with others on your contact.
Thank you.
Lead researchers:Peter O. Olapegba, Ph.D., FNPA, MICMCProfessor of PsychologyDean, Faculty of the Social SciencesUniversity of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria+234 803 318 7531ORCID ID: 0000-0003-1924-1675twitter: @oolapegbaSkype: peter_olapegba
Olusola AYANDELE,The Polytechnic, IbadanORCID ID: 0000-0003-2690-4780
Steven Kator IORFAUniversity of Nigeria, NsukkaORCID ID: 0000-0002-5571-2713
On Sunday, March 29, 2020, Gloria Emeagwali <gloria.emeagwali@gmail.com> wrote:
Africa's traditional medical practitioners are in search of a cure for the corona virus. Let us support them fully.
Practitioners in Mali, Benin and Ethiopia seem to be on the trail, and all eyes should be on them. We wish them success on behalf of humanity.
To that sizable group of skeptics and "doubting Thomases"- who are prone to present a litany of woes and indictments against traditional medicine, there is one question I want to ask:
Where do you think chloroquine came from? For generations, Native American traditional practitioners utilized the bark of the cinchona tree in the fight against malaria, and eventually saved thousands of lives around the globe in the process. The pharmaceutical corporations took note, at some point, creating synthetic versions of the plant, whose molecular structure they deciphered. Trials of chloroquine, for coping with the corona virus is proceeding as we speak.
So is there not another tree bark with parallel or even greater potential, in Africa's local therapeutic and pharmaceutical arsenal?
The search by the local traditional scientists must go on. They need governmental and public support and, thankfully, in some cases seem to be getting that.
--
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