JOURNALS

ABSTRACT

Traditional medicine has proved an enigma to the contemporary mind such that the average person views it with suspicion. Scholars sometimes also tend to express divergent views about the nature and value of this phenomenon to compound this confusion. The bone of contention here has been the fact that this system of medicine is believed to be unscientific, yet the history of medicine as a whole started with traditional medicines to which contemporary western medicine owes so much. This paper presented a synopsis of African/ Igbo traditional medicine from what the research has been working on. It therefore uses the participant observer and culture area approaches; interviews and analyses of facts to arrive at some logical conclusions. Starting with origins of African traditional medicine as a being in her worldview and the wholistic nature of life and good health; meaning of medicine in the Africa traditional sense, the medical expert, components of African traditional medicine, this paper discovered found out that in spite of various insinuations to the contrary, African/ Igbo traditional medicine as part and parcel of the people’s religious beliefs and contains elements that make up the psychospiritual and biological sciences that cater for the much needed wholistic health-care needs of the Africans. It’s still yearning for more developments and laboratory certifications in the present global circumstances which most practitions my not be able to afford. It therefore needs support of all and above all the political will of African/ Igbo leaders to eradicate abuses and evolve a medicine that will compete with their current Asian counterparts.