Olusola Oni

The Yoruba Medicine of Antiquity Olusola Oni

The fact that the Yoruba of yore survived in an environment that their 18th and 19th century Europeans immigrants found challenging attests to the efficacy of the Yoruba medicine. Therefore, one expected that Yoruba medicine would have contributed something to medicine in general, but this has not been so. This semi-autobiographical book was a search for an explanation for this failure. The search has taken the form of an investigation into the philosophy underpinning the practice of medicine by the ancient Yoruba. The search reveals that academic writers generally portrayed Yoruba medicine as devoid of science and rooted in mysticism, divination and religion. However, a review of supposedly peer-reviewed scientific publications reveal that the authors manipulate their data to suit their own preconceptions about the Yoruba. English translations of indigenous Yoruba accounts reveal translators, despite the cloak of academia, who were totally out of their depth, and who made things up, and as a result caused undeserved damage to the advancement of the Yoruba medicine. The Yoruba technique of Igbere, which is similar to the Chinese acupuncture, is deserving of further study. It intrigues also whether the probabilistic language of the Ifa odu could be used to model patterns of diseases.