An Interactive Annotated World Bibliography of Printed and Digital Works in the History of Medicine and the Life Sciences from Circa 2000 BCE to 2022 by Fielding H. Garrison (1870-1935), Leslie T. Morton (1907-2004), and Jeremy M. Norman (1945- ) Traditionally Known as “Garrison-Morton”

15961 entries, 13944 authors and 1935 subjects. Updated: March 22, 2024

JANZEN, John M.

1 entries
  • 8414

The social basis of health and healing in Africa. Edited by Steven Feierman and John M. Janzen.

Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1992.

The essays in this book concern disease, health and healing practices on the African continent. The contributors all emphasize the social conditions linked to ill health and the development of local healing traditions, from Morocco to South Africa and from the precolonial era to the present. The editors provide introductory overviews explaining why and how health and disease are related to historical, economic and political phenomena. Several chapters illustrate how the most basic facts of everday life encourage the spread of disease and shape the possibilities of survival. Others discuss a variety of healing practices: drums of affliction in Bantu-speaking societies, Muslim humoral medicine and bio-medicine as practiced in hospitals and dispensaries.



Subjects: COUNTRIES, CONTINENTS AND REGIONS › Africa, SOCIAL MEDICINE, Social or Sociopolitical Histories of Medicine & the Life Sciences