The Traditional Healer in Tanzania

In: Issue: a journal of opinion, Band 9, Heft 3, S. 2-5

Abstract

I shall deal with a limited number of aspects of the traditional healer in Tanzania. A more expanded treatment will be presented in a larger study on health policy and development in Tanzania since 1930. Traditional medicine has been discussed by anthropologists, sociologists, and geographers in ever increasing numbers in this country, probably because research in their fields brought them into close contact with the rural population. Historians and political scientists have been slow in examining the role of the native doctor in the colonial period and since 1961. This does not mean that material on the existence and activities of the African practitioner of medicine was not available. It was the medical doctor who became aware of the existence of African medicine when he found that his treatment was not accepted or was supplemented by visits to the African medicine man.