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.