Author: Kalle Kananoja (University of Oulu, Finland)
Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2021
In this ambitious analysis of medical encounters in Central and West Africa during the era of the Atlantic slave trade, Kalle Kananoja focuses on African and European perceptions of health, disease and healing. Arguing that the period was characterised by continuous knowledge exchange, he shows that indigenous natural medicine was used by locals and non-Africans alike. The mobility and circulation of healing techniques and materials was an important feature of the early modern Black Atlantic world.
African healing specialists not only crossed the Atlantic to the Americas, but also moved within and between African regions to offer their services. At times, patients, Europeans included, travelled relatively long distances in Africa to receive treatment. Highlighting cross-cultural medical exchanges, Kananoja shows that local African knowledge was central to shaping responses to illness, providing a fresh, global perspective on African medicine and vernacular science in the early modern world.
Contents
Introduction
Healing (and Harming) Specialists: Plural Medicine in Angola and Kongo
Cross-Cultural Experiments: The Materiality of Medicine in West-Central Africa
‘Much Better Suited Than We Are, as Regards Their Health Care’: African Botanical Expertise and Medical Knowledge on the Gold Coast
Remedies on the Spot: Science, Agricultural Development and Botanical Knowledge in Sierra Leone ca. 1800
Healers, Hospitals and Medicines: European Medical practice in Angola
Treating their Symptoms: Limits of Humoural Medicine
Migrations: Medical Geography in the Southern Atlantic
Conclusion