Healing and curing: issues in the social history and anthropology of medicine in Africa.

Metaphors of disease, illness and healing, though they operate in different ways in different cultures and historical periods, appear to have a remarkably common currency. This fact presents both problems and opportunities for the medical anthropologist and historian, and raises important issues of interpretation for both disciplines. The problem of defining the field of analysis in this wide-ranging world of health and sickness has led to a variety of solutions. Some have begun with a biological definition of illness; others have started with a cultural definition. No one definition will be appropriate for all purposes and a plurality of approaches is to be welcomed. However, there is a tendency evident in the literature on medicine and healing in Africa which may lead to the drawing of misleading comparisons between African healing practices and scientific medicine. Whilst the former are described in all their cultural complexity, the latter is often described by reference, not to practice, but to this system's theory of itself. Since elements of both the theory and the practices of scientific medicine now form part of many African healing practices, this tendency may obscure the dynamic reality of the world of healing and curing in contemporary Africa.