Medical lore of the Azande people.
I wanted to give an insight into folk medicine this time.
The man didn’t regard death and disease as natural phenomena. Common maladies such as cold and cough were accepted as part of existence and were dealt with by means of herbal remedies that were available.
People in primitive times thought that disease might be due to a spell that was cast upon the victim by an enemy, visitation by a malevolent demon or the work of an offended god.
The treatment was then applied to lure the errant soul back to its proper habitat within the body, to extract the evil intruder – dart, demon, by counterspells, incantations, potions, suction, etc.
The Azande People:
The most important people in the valley of the Uelle river in the Zande. On the north, it reaches far into the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan and French Congo. On the east, it extends up to Faradje.
These people don’t build large villages. Instead, they’re scattered over the country in isolated dwellings, family by family. The great majority of these family settlements consists merely of mud store and grain store.
A typical Zande home has plantain trees, a little courtyard and two or more straw-roofed houses.
Their way of battling with disease and infections is by the exposure of deceptions and barbarity – witch-doctors (what!) and native medical men. Witch-doctors killed more people and scattered more villages than did the slave-traders. These are often set by the chiefs.
A man will be robbed of his wife and possessions by a covetous thief sorry chief, and then decreed to die by witch-craft. To go into detail here would involve a long tease on secret societies, superstitious practises rites, customs and a lot of loathsome, depressing, heartbreaking reading which is better left unsaid.
When a plague hits out in the tribe, people begin to die. The witch-doctors start their wild orgies, dances and superstitious practices. In fortunate situations, a missionary surgeon arrives on the scene, which has actually happened and treats patients to recovery. Things like this don’t come by chance.
Even worse, people stone these missionaries, mock them at Athens, hound them at Jerusalem and jail them at home.
continued in next post!
Note: The cover photo doesn't depict the Azandes.
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