This document provides an overview of contextual analysis for environmental pollution and disease etiology in traditional African medicine. It discusses how in traditional African belief systems, pollution and diseases can be caused by attacks from evil spirits, witchcraft, disobeying taboos, or upsetting natural balances in the body. The document also contrasts personalistic models of disease causation, which attribute illness to intentional acts, with naturalistic models, which view disease as resulting from impersonal natural forces that disrupt equilibrium in the body.

1. CONTEXTUAL ANALYSIS FOR ENVIRONMENTAL POLLUTION AND DISEASE
ETIOLOGY IN TRADITIONAL AFRICAN MEDICINE
BY
EROH JIDE AYANSANWO
MATRIC NO: 170888
INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE AND DEVELOPMENT,
CENTRE FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT,
UNIVERSITY OF IBADAN
FACILITATOR: DR. JEGEDE
COURSE TITLE: THEORY OF TRADITIONAL AFRICAN MEDICINE
COURSE CODE: AFS 761
AUGUST, 2018.

2. Introduction
As human beings we sometimes in one way or another become sick and therefore go for
treatment depending on our choice of treatment (indigenous perspective or Western medical
treatment). Although African traditional religion is not against a Western medical way of
treatment or healing process, its followers believe that there are some diseases that Western
medicine cannot treat, and therefore need spiritual attention.
As there is an African way of understanding God in the same way, there is an African way of
understanding the world, the visible world around us, the cattle, trees, people and cities as well as
the unseen world, the supernatural world of spirits, powers, and diseases’ (Oduro et al. 2008:9).
In spite of the introduction of Western medicine and health care systems in Africa, many African
communities still rely on traditional health care (World Health Organisation [WHO] 2001). The
WHO (2000:1) defines traditional medicine/health care as the total combination of knowledge
and practice, whether explicable or not, used in diagnosing, preventing or eliminating physical,
mental and social diseases. This practice exclusively relies on past experience and observation
handed down from generation to generation verbally or in written form. In the view of Helms
and Cook (1999), indigenous healing refers to the helpful beliefs and practices that originate
within a culture or society, and are designed to treat the inhabitants of a given community. Kofi-
Tsekpo (2004:i–ii) notes that the phrase ‘traditional medicine’ has become a catchword among
the peoples in all countries in Africa. This is partly because the use of herbal remedies has gained
popularity worldwide and the exploitation of these remedies has become a multimillion industry.
He further argues that the term ‘African traditional medicine’ is not synonymous with
‘alternative and complementary medicine’. African traditional medicine is the African
indigenous system of health care and, therefore, cannot be an alternative. In Africa, there is an
important reason why African traditional medicine has become increasingly popular. The high
cost of allopathic medical health care and the expensive pharmaceutical products have become
unavailable to a majority of people.
Despite the major efforts that have made over recent years to clean up the environment, pollution
remains a major problem and poses continuing risks to health, the problems are undoubtedly
greatest in the developing world, where traditional sources of pollution such as industrial

3. emissions, poor sanitation, inadequate waste management, contaminated water supplies and
exposes to indoor air pollution from biomass fuels affect large numbers of people. Even in
developed countries, however, environmental pollution persists, most especially amongst poorer
sectors of society. Environmental pollution can be simply, if somewhat generally, defined as the
presence in the environment of an agent which is potentially damaging to either the environment
or human health. As such, pollutants take many forms. They include not only chemicals, but also
organisms and biological materials, as well as energy in its various forms (noise, radiation, heat).
Environmental Pollution in Traditional African Medicine
The correlation between pollution and health is both a complex and contingent process. For
pollutants to have an effect on health, susceptible individuals must receive doses of the pollutant,
or its decomposition products, sufficient to trigger detectable symptoms. For this to occur, these
individuals must have been exposed to the pollutant, often over relatively long periods of time or
on repeated occasions. Such exposures require that the susceptible individuals and pollutants
shared the same environments at the same time.
Indigenous people of a particular society believe that disease is often caused by attacks from evil
or bad spirits. Some also believe that when the ancestors are not treated well, they could punish
people with disease by polluting the environment with it (Magesa 1997:175; Westerlund
2006:91–95). In the bible, God polluted the environment with plague to afflict the firstborn sons
of the Egyptians because Pharaoh refuses to let His people [The Israelites] go out of Egypt to the
promise land and to protect the Israelites He instructed them to kill a lamb for sacrifice, one
animal for each household (the Bible, Exodus Chapter 11,12&13).
Spell-casting and witchcraft are also other ways one could become sick. There is the view that
people with evil powers could cause other people they see as their enemies or are disrespectful to
them to become sick as a way of punishment (Olupona 2004:113). Furthermore, many traditional
African communities are of the view that certain illnesses which defy scientific treatment can be
transmitted through witchcraft and unforeseen forces; these include barrenness, infertility,
attacks by dangerous animals, snake bites by dangerous snakes, persistent headaches and
repeated miscarriages (Obinna 2012:137–139; Thorpe 1993:25).

4. Many traditional healers and practitioners are of the opinion that disobeying taboos is one of the
ways people could become sick (Gyekye 1995:133). Taboos form an important part of African
traditional religion. They are things, or a way of life, that are forbidden by a community or a
group of people (Isiramen 1998:186). Taboos are also a social or religious custom prohibiting or
restricting a particular practice or forbidding association with a particular person, place or thing
(Westerlund 2006:139). Taboos exist to make sure that the moral structures of the universe
remains undisturbed for the good of humanity (Magesa 1997:76, 148–149). There are food and
meat-related taboos in various Nigerian communities. Disobeying these taboos could lead to
severe illness to the person(s) or community involved.
People around the world have healed the sick with herbal or animal-derived remedies, handed
down through generations. In Africa, 80 percent of the population still uses traditional remedies
rather than modern medicine for primary healthcare. And in developed countries, traditional
medicine is rapidly gaining appeal. Estimates suggest up to 80 percent of the population has tried
a therapy such as acupuncture or homeopathy. And a survey conducted earlier this year found
that 74 percent of US medical students believe that Western medicine would benefit by
integrating traditional or alternative therapies and practices.
The industry is worth big money, in 2005, traditional medicines worth US$14 billion were sold
in China. And in 2007, Brazil saw revenues of US$60 billion. Modern medicine is desperately
short of new treatments. It takes years for a new drug to get through the research and
development pipeline to manufacture and the cost is enormous. And growing drug resistance, in
part caused by the misuse of medications, has rendered several antibiotics and other life-saving
drugs useless. Both these trends mean that scientists and pharmaceutical companies are urgently
looking for new drug sources and are increasingly turning their eyes to traditional medicine. A
few major triumphs have stoked interest in traditional medicine as a source for highly successful
and lucrative drugs. The best known of these is artemisinin used to treat malaria.
Disease Etiology in Traditional African Medicine
The greatest shortcoming of our traditional medical terminology at least within the profession
itself is not that it may denigrate non-Western people, but rather that, by focusing on societal
types it has blinded us to the basic characteristics of the medical systems themselves. There is

5. more than a grain of truth in Freidson’s comments, for many accounts are “grossly descriptive,”
with lists of illnesses and treatments taking precedence over interpretation and synthesis. Glick
(1967:36) gives us the critical lead when he writes that the most important fact about an illness in
most medical systems is not the underlying pathological process but the underlying cause.
This is such a central consideration that most diagnoses prove to be statements about causation,
and most treatments, responses directed against particular causal agents. A casual survey of the
ethno-medical literature tends to confirm Glick’s statement. In account after account we find that
the kinds of curers, the mode of diagnosis, curing techniques, preventive acts, and the
relationship of all these variables to the wider society of which they are a part, derive from
beliefs about illness causality. It is not going too far to say that, if we are given a clear
description of what a people believe to be the causes of illness, we can in broad outline fill in the
other elements in that medical system. It therefore logically follows that the first task of the
anthropologist concerned with medical systems is to find the simplest taxonomy for causality
beliefs. Two basic principles, which is call personalistic and naturalistic, seem to account for
most (but not all) of the etiologies that characterize non-Western medical systems. While the
terms refer specifically to causality concepts, it is believed they can conveniently be used to
speak of entire systems, that is, not only causes, but all of the associated behavior that follows
from these views.
A personalistic medical system is one in which disease is explained as due to the active,
purposeful intervention of an agent, who may be human (a witch or sorcerer), non-human (a
ghost, an ancestor, an evil spirit), or Supernatural (a deity or other very powerful being). The sick
person literally is a victim, the object of aggression or punishment directed specifically against
him, for reasons that concern him alone. Personalistic causality allows little room for accident or
chance; in fact, for some people the statement is made by anthropologists who have studied them
that all illness and death are believed to stem from the acts of the agent.
Personalistic etiologies are illustrated by beliefs found among the Mano of Liberia, recorded by
the physician Harley, who practiced medicine among them for 15 years. Death is unnatural, he
writes, resulting from the intrusion of an outside force usually directed by some magical means
(Harley 1941:7). Similarly, among the Abron of the Ivory Coast, People sick and die because
some power, good or evil, has acted against them. Abron disease theory contains a host of agents

6. which may be responsible for a specific condition. These agents cut across the natural and
supernatural world. Ordinary people, equipped with the proper technical skills, sorcerers, various
supernatural entities, such as ghosts, bush devils, and witches, or the supreme god Nyame, acting
alone or through lesser gods, all cause disease” (Alland 1964:714-715).
In contrast to personalistic systems, naturalistic systems explain illness in impersonal, systemic
terms. Disease is thought to stem, not from the machinations of an angry being, but rather from
such natural forces or conditions as cold, heat, winds, dampness, and above all, by an upset in the
balance of the basic body elements. In naturalistic systems, health conforms to an equilibrium
model: when the humors, the yin and yang, or the Ayurvedic dosha are in the balance appropriate
to the age and condition of the individual in his natural and social environment health results.
Causality concepts explain or account for the upsets in this balance that trigger illness.
Contemporary naturalistic systems resemble each other in an important historical sense: the bulk
of their explanations and practices represent simplified and popularized legacies from the great
traditional medicine of ancient classical civilizations, particularly those of Greece and Rome,
India, and China. Treatment, logically, attempts to restore the proper balance through hot and
cold foods and herbs, and other treatments such as poultices that are thought to withdraw excess
heat or cold from the body.
References
Ackerknecht, Erwin H.Alland, Alexander, Jr. 1971 Medicine and Ethnology: Selected Essays.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press.
Alland, Alexander, Jr. 1964 Native Therapists and Western Medical Practitioners among the
Abron of the Ivory Coast. Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences. Vol. 26. Pp. 714-
725.
Asamoah-Gyadu, J.K., 2014, ‘Therapeutic strategies in African religions: Health, herbal
medicines and indigenous Christian spirituality’, Studies in world Christianity
Beidelman, T. 0. 1963 Witchcraft in Ukaguru. In Witchcraft and Sorcery in East Africa. J.
Middleton and E. H. Winter, eds. Pp. 57-98. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Bible, Exodus Chapter 11,12&13