Healing Knowledge in Atlantic Africa - Medical Encounters, 1500-1850

List of contents

1. Healing (and harming) specialists: plural medicine in Angola and Kongo; 2. Cross-Cultural experiments: the materiality of medicine in West-Central Africa; 3. 'Much better suited than we are, as regards their health care': African botanical expertise and medical knowledge on the Gold Coast; 4. Remedies on the spot: science, agricultural development and botanical knowledge in Sierra Leone ca. 1800; 5. Healers, hospitals and medicines: European medical practice in Angola; 6. Treating their symptoms: limits of humoural medicine; 7. Migrations: medical geography in the Southern Atlantic; 8. Conclusion.

About the author

Kalle Kananoja is a senior researcher at the University of Oulu. He is an expert in early modern Atlantic history and has published articles on Angolan and Afro-Brazilian religious and medical culture. Kananoja is the co-editor of Healers and Empires: Healing as Hybrid and Contested Knowledge in Global History, 1700s–1900s (2019).

Summary

In this ambitious analysis of medical encounters in West Africa during the Atlantic slave trade, Kananoja considers both 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.

Foreword

Kananoja demonstrates how medical interaction in early modern Atlantic Africa was characterised by continuous knowledge exchange between Africans and Europeans.

Product details

• Authors: Kalle Kananoja, Kalle (University of Oulu Kananoja
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press ELT
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 31.12.2022
• EAN: 9781108811781
• ISBN: 978-1-108-81178-1
• No. of pages: 272
• Series: Global Health Histories
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > Modern era up to 1918; Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > Medicine > General; Non-fiction book > History > Miscellaneous; POLITICAL SCIENCE / Colonialism & Post-Colonialism, HISTORY / Africa / General, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Slavery, Colonialism & imperialism, c 1500 onwards to present day, Colonialism and imperialism, African History, Slavery & abolition of slavery, Modern Period, C 1500 Onwards, Slavery and abolition of slavery, African history: pre-colonial period