Markku Hokkanen, Kalle Kananoja - Healers and Empires in Global History - Healing As Hybrid and Contested Knowledge-Palgrave Macmillan (2019)

Healers and Empires
in Global History
Healing as Hybrid and
Contested Knowledge
Edited by Markku Hokkanen · Kalle Kananoja
Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies
Series
Series Editors
Richard Drayton
Department of History
King’s College London
London, UK
Saul Dubow
Magdalene College
University of Cambridge
Cambridge, UK
The Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies series is a collection
of studies on empires in world history and on the societies and cultures
which emerged from colonialism. It includes both transnational, compar-
ative and connective studies, and studies which address where particu-
lar regions or nations participate in global phenomena. While in the past
the series focused on the British Empire and Commonwealth, in its cur-
rent incarnation there is no imperial system, period of human history or
part of the world which lies outside of its compass. While we particularly
welcome the first monographs of young researchers, we also seek major
studies by more senior scholars, and welcome collections of essays with
a strong thematic focus. The series includes work on politics, econom-
ics, culture, literature, science, art, medicine, and war. Our aim is to col-
lect the most exciting new scholarship on world history with an imperial
theme.
More information about this series at

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Markku Hokkanen · Kalle Kananoja
Editors
Healers and Empires

in Global History
Healing as Hybrid and Contested Knowledge
Editors
Markku Hokkanen Kalle Kananoja
Department of History African Studies
University of Oulu University of Helsinki
Oulu, Finland Helsinki, Finland
Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series

ISBN 978-3-030-15490-5 ISBN 978-3-030-15491-2 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15491-2
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Acknowledgements
The editors acknowledge with gratitude the support of the Helsinki

Collegium of Advanced Studies and the Department of History,
University of Oulu. They are also very grateful to Jari Eilola, Antti
Hernesniemi, Marja-Liisa Honkasalo, Tuomas Laine-Frigren, and Marja
Tiilikainen for discussing an earlier version of the introduction; and to
Molly Beck and Maeve Sinnott of Palgrave Macmillan for guiding this
project to the end. Markku would like to thank the Academy of Finland
(project no.121514), the Emil Aaltonen Foundation, the Department
of History, Chancellor College, University of Malawi, Wapulumuka
Mulwafu, Kings M. Phiri, Harvey C. Chidoba Banda, Anne Digby, Timo
Särkkä, Anssi Halmesvirta, Heini Hakosalo, Harri Englund and Liz
Eastcott. Kalle would like to thank Dorit Brixius, Hugh Cagle, Jonna
Katto, Lauri Tähtinen, Case Watkins, and Holger Weiss for inspiration
and support.
v
Contents
1 Healers and Empires in Global History: Healing

as Hybrid and Contested Knowledge 1
Markku Hokkanen and Kalle Kananoja
2 Traditional Arctic Healing and Medicines of

Modernisation in Finnish and Swedish Lapland 27
Ritva Kylli
3 Reports on Encounters of Medical Cultures:

Two Physicians in Sweden’s Medical and Colonial
Connections in the Late Eighteenth Century 55
Saara-Maija Kontturi
4 Tibetan Medicine and Buddhism in the Soviet Union:

Research, Repression, and Revival, 1922–1991 81
Ivan Sablin
5 Contestation, Redefinition and Healers’ Tactics

in Colonial Southern Africa 115
Markku Hokkanen
vii
viii Contents
6 Complicating Hybrid Medical Practices in the Tropics:

Examining the Case of São Tomé and Príncipe,
1850–1926 149
Rafaela Jobbitt
7 Doctors, Healers and Charlatans in Brazil: A Short

History of Ideas, c. 1650–1950 179
Kalle Kananoja
8 Risking Obeah: A Spiritual Infrastructure in the Danish

West Indies, c. 1800–1848 203
Gunvor Simonsen
9 Toward a Typology of Nineteenth-Century Lakota

Magico-Medico-Ritual Specialists 239
David C. Posthumus
Index 273
List of Contributors
Markku Hokkanen Department of History, University of Oulu, Oulu,

Finland
Rafaela Jobbitt Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, ON, Canada
Kalle Kananoja University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
Saara-Maija Kontturi University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland
Ritva Kylli University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland
David C. Posthumus University of South Dakota, Vermillion, SD, USA
Ivan Sablin University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany
Gunvor Simonsen University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
ix
List of Figures
Fig. 8.1 Spiritual experts and their clients. Charte over

den Danske Øe St. Croix i America, by P.L. Oxholm, 1794
(Courtesy of the Royal Danish Library) 225
Fig. 9.1 Holy men and medicine men 257
Fig. 9.2 Holy men, conjurors, and medicine men 262
xi
CHAPTER 1
Healers and Empires in Global History:

Healing as Hybrid and Contested
Knowledge
Markku Hokkanen and Kalle Kananoja
Introduction
The great-great-uncle of one of the editors of this collection would now
probably be called a ‘traditional healer’. He was also a farmer in what
is now Russian Karelia—in his lifetime, in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, he was a subject of both the Russian Empire and
the independent Republic of Finland. Family history has it that uncle
Pekka knew, among other things, how to stop bleeding by saying cer-
tain words. He would have passed his skills on, but his nephew, a devout
Orthodox Christian, refused to learn what was increasingly considered
pagan superstition.1
M. Hokkanen
Department of History, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland
e-mail: markku.hokkanen@oulu.fi
K. Kananoja (*)
University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
e-mail: kalle.kananoja@helsinki.fi
© The Author(s) 2019 1

M. Hokkanen and K. Kananoja (eds.), Healers and Empires
in Global History, Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial
Studies Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15491-2_1
2 M. HOKKANEN AND K. KANANOJA
By the time our parents were born in the 1940s, the everyday medical
world in Finland was rapidly changing, and the world of healers seemed
to be fast becoming a thing of the past in large parts of the world. While
many people of Pekka’s generation never saw a registered medical prac-
titioner in their lives, by the 1940s and 1950s Finnish children were
increasingly born in hospitals and grew up under the scrutiny, supervi-
sion and treatment of an increasingly powerful public health system and
biomedicine. Vaccinations and antibiotics, among other effective cures,
and prophylaxes, together with improved hygiene, ensured that their
generation was healthier and lived longer than any of their predeces-
sors. Child mortality rates dropped radically in post-war Finland, which
was rapidly catching up to other Nordic, European and Western coun-
tries. This pattern was to an extent global. By the 1950s, the world was
increasingly witnessing an unprecedented triumphant advance of mod-
ern biomedicine, which was often called ‘Western medicine’ outside ‘the
West’.2
In the longue durée history of global healing, this was quite excep-
tional. While various medical systems have at times held strong, even
hegemonic positions locally and regionally, no medical system had, at
least ideologically, permeated the world so successfully. Most countries
in Asia, Africa and the Americas looked to modern medicine, science and
pharmaceuticals as highly desirable things to improve the health of their
populations, just like Finnish, Soviet or US governments. In practice,
of course, there were huge discrepancies in terms of what was possible
or available, as modern medicine and its infrastructure—hospitals and
clinics, educated doctors and nurses—was also becoming increasingly
expensive.3
While this ‘triumph of biomedicine’ was never uncontested, and argu-
ably never entirely complete anywhere (even before the growing criticism
of and disappointment with medicine in the West in the 1960s),4 it was
remarkable and pervasive. Between 1900 and 1950, the world of medi-
cine and healing changed fundamentally, and in many ways that became
interconnected and interdependent across the globe.
The chapters in this book consist of case studies of cross-cultural
medical interaction (within an imperial or colonial framework). Broadly
speaking, cross-cultural medical encounters can develop in two main (but
not mutually exclusive) directions:
1 HEALERS AND EMPIRES IN GLOBAL HISTORY … 3
1.
Different healing systems can engage in mutually fruitful inter-
action, in which all parties more or less openly share medical
knowledge and try to learn from each other. This, in turn, leads
to the hybridisation of healing practices, or at least to mimesis, as
healers selectively adopt elements from different systems.
2.
Practitioners of different healing systems can be drawn into an
open conflict, in which both sides question the legitimacy of the
other. However, conflict and contestation do not necessarily con-
cern the effectiveness of healing. Moral, religious and political
arguments have often been just as central in conflicts over the
authority of healers as any medical or scientific reasoning.
Contestation and hybridisation are not, it should be emphasised, mutu-

ally exclusive. Rather, in many cases both developments can often be
detected in one way or another. However, it is also possible that differ-
ent healing systems can exist in parallel in a ‘laissez-faire’ medical culture,
largely ignoring one another. In colonial and imperial settings, conflict
and hybridisation have been configured spatially and temporally in a myr-
iad of ways, with multiple nexuses between healing and political power.
Generally, contests, conflicts and debates tend to be more visible in his-
tory than untroubled co-existence, as they generate more source material
and attract more attention by contemporaries and later scholars. It must
also be acknowledged that cultural encounters do not necessarily have
to take place between two, or more, foreign cultures. Encounters with
implications for the medical culture can also occur between so-called
folk and learned cultures. Furthermore, patients and their kin, religious
and political authorities, as well as various intellectuals, all have stakes in
cross-cultural medical encounters and exchanges.
When we look back into the past worlds of healing, our view tends
to be framed, or dominated, by an apparatus of ‘biomedicine trium-
phant’, either as a narrative of progress to be celebrated or as a structure
of power/knowledge to be criticised and deconstructed. These perspec-
tives, as valuable as they are, tend to obscure the longer-term, more
every-day, and less teleological perspectives within the histories of heal-
ing. This book aims to bring such perspectives, of healers and patients,
of people and institutions of power, into new focus and to consider the
methodological possibilities of expanding historical inquiry. It brings
together histories of healing from Africa, Asia, the Americas and Europe
from the seventeenth century to the late twentieth century. The chapters
all question and complement the major narratives of the history of med-
icine in the era of biomedical triumphs by reminding readers that what
could be called ‘alternative’ or ‘traditional’ medical systems, traditions
and cultures did not disappear, but underwent considerable changes
during this time.5 To an important extent, these changes took place in
response to the development and expansion of biomedicine, modernisa-
tion, colonialism, industrialisation and ‘globalisation’. These intertwined
histories, in turn, influenced the ways in which millions of people lived,
suffered, experienced healing and died.
The Triumph of Modern Medical Science

and Counterreactions
In his controversial book Bad Medicine, David Wootton has argued that,
prior to Joseph Lister’s pioneering use of antiseptics in 1865, Western
medicine was by and large harmful to patients. However, it was not until
the advent of penicillin in the 1940s that biomedicine became undoubt-
edly effective.6 Wootton’s work can be criticised as a problematic simpli-
fication. By focusing on ‘doctors doing harm’, he turns the success story
of Western medicine on its head and highlights again the ‘heroes and
villains’ of medicine. However, there is no doubt that at the turn of the
twentieth century, European doctors and intellectual elites thought that
they could finally prove the superiority of medical science when com-
pared to other forms of healing.7 This had a decisive effect on the slow
but steady marginalisation of folk and popular medicine.
In studying healing in global history, we emphasise spatial connec-
tions between geographical regions. The worldwide movements of peo-
ple, commodities, ideas and institutions affect regional and national
dynamics. This leads to simultaneous, interconnected developments and
to the circulation of knowledge between different continents, regions
and localities. Global historical interpretation recognises the problems
and limitations of a Eurocentric approach.8 When focusing on the his-
tory of medicine, a global approach is not unprecedented; for example,
William McNeill’s classic Plagues and Peoples (1976) demonstrated that
placing Europe in the margins can open important new perspectives
on world history.9 The contributions in this volume challenge not only
Eurocentric ideas, but also complement the largely Anglophone histo-
riography of medicine and healing that focuses solely on the British
Empire.10 The social history of medicine is a significant subfield for

probing the global turn in historical research. For large parts of the
world, and for the majority of its peoples, Western medicine has been a
marginal and a late newcomer in medical culture.11
Scholars have used the concept of alternative medicine to refer to
healing systems that deviate from Western biomedicine. However, from
a global historical perspective alternative medicine is a problematic term,
because before the breakthrough and hegemonisation of biomedicine in
the twentieth century, Western university medicine was just an alterna-
tive among many other medical systems.12 It was often a marginal and
an exclusively urban form of healing. Roberta Bivins has argued that
conceptually, Western humoral theory was not far from South Asian and
Chinese healing traditions. These premodern medical systems were glob-
ally unified by a view of the human body as a microcosm of the universe.
Healers with different cultural backgrounds were able to benefit from
the thinking of others; linguistic boundaries put more limits on the shar-
ing of ideas than did the differences between medical systems.13
The term alternative medicine also hides the processes of hybridisation
that were part and parcel of medical interaction. These processes took
place in cross-cultural contexts, but also in settings where ‘high’ and
‘low’, or academic and folk medicine, interacted.14 The contemporary
usage of the term alternative medicine also demonstrates that the hegem-
ony of biomedicine is far from complete. Complementary and alternative
medicine continues to exist in the margins of the medical marketplace.
It points to the limits of biomedicine in treating chronic illness, which
leads patients to try out different cures. Historically, medical conditions
causing chronic pain have perhaps been the major reason for patients to
seek out healers using different methods.15 While experience and exper-
iment may have guided patient choices, trying out new cures has often
been a response to chronic pain rather than an adventurous choice. The
availability of alternative cures is another important factor: in rural set-
tings, bonesetters and herbalists were often the only available options.
When repetitious treatment by a bonesetter could not relieve painful
conditions, an itinerant charlatan peddling ‘miracle’ drugs might have
presented a cure worth trying.
Medical systems are socially and culturally constructed, complex and
dynamic phenomena. They contain the thinking, actions and interactions
between patients and healers. Medical culture, in turn, is a broader con-
cept than medical system. We use the term medical culture to refer to the
cultural field containing several medical systems.16 The cultural approach

to the social history of medicine, advocated by Ludmilla Jordanova,
emphasises the social processes within medical cultures. This approach
is useful for highlighting the relations between medicine and religious
or judicial systems.17 This book falls naturally into such a research tra-
dition. As discussed in the chapters on African healers in the Caribbean
and Brazil, questions related to the legitimacy and acceptability of heal-
ing are intimately related to its credibility. The rhetoric of healers and
patients, as well as the explanations given for illness and curing, are
central aspects of studying past and present forms of healing.18 Healers
employing unsuccessful, suspicious or otherwise strange methods have
often been defined as quacks, charlatans, witches, criminals or even
insane. However, it is difficult to assess which healers have been delib-
erate ‘fraudsters’; whether such healers believed in their own methods is
often impossible to assess.19
In recent decades, medical pluralism has emerged as a significant
theme in the social history of medicine. In part, this is due to medical
anthropologists who have been analysing healing systems and medical
cultures in different locations since at least the 1960s. Interest in med-
ical pluralism has been fuelled in part by the contemporary emphasis on
patients as consumers in the globalising medical market place, but also
on the continued existence of alternative healing systems in medical
culture. As Waltraud Ernst has pointed out, medical pluralism is both a
liberating and a problematic concept. A focus on medical pluralism effec-
tively questions the dichotomisation and homogenisation of medical
systems. A simple definition of medical pluralism is that medical systems
exist side by side, competing but also complementing each other. Yet,
medical pluralism, or plural medicine, can be defined not only as a plural-
ity of systems, but also as the internal pluralism of a medical system. The
latter definition points to the healers’ and patients’ multiple and creative
choices as well as to hybrid influences on healing.20 It is also important
to note that an uncritical pluralistic approach can lead to the ignoring
of power relations or else to the rather naive view of a world in which
everyone has similar options to choose from.21
As the case studies in this volume for their part point out, medical
pluralism is not a recent phenomenon: it can be found in different his-
torical eras and societies. Neither is it simply a growing phenomenon,
although globalisation and especially the Internet have sped up the
spreading of both modern and traditional medicines. The recent interest
in pluralism needs to be understood in the broader context of cultural

development, as part of the interplay between tradition and modernity as
well as an issue related to national identities and globalisation. In global
history, it is worth noting that different healing traditions or ostensibly
unified medical systems have been created and legitimised by various
groups in complex processes of negotiation and contestation. The cir-
culation of medical knowledge from local societies to global encounters
led to cross-cultural interaction, in which power and resistance, negotia-
tion and reconfiguration were central aspects.22 Mainstream medicine as
well as traditional healing have expanded as a result of creative histori-
cal processes of pluralistic interaction in different constellations of time
and space.23 Even medical systems codified in writing, such as Chinese
and Tibetan medicine, or the South Asian Ayurveda or Islamic Unani
traditions, have undergone dynamic changes leading to hybridisation,
often influenced by European medical thought. For example, the use of
radical and rough healing methods, such as bloodletting and purging,
has decreased in modern Ayurveda medicine, while ‘soft’ methods have
become more popular.24
Similar to European medical cultures, pluralism of and contestation
over healing practices have also been present in Asia. As Linda L. Barnes
and T.J. Hinrichs have pointed out regarding Chinese medicine, healing
was shaped not only by written literature and a privileged orthodox sta-
tus, but also by the messy contingencies of practice. Like the West, the
East has witnessed its own conflicts between licenced doctors and diverse
types of healers. In some periods, physicians attacked healers labelled as
‘shamans’ (wu) and ‘adepts’ or ‘remedy masters’ (fangshi) and labelled
their rivals as charlatans, while at the same time ignoring the therapeutic
and conceptual methods they shared with other healers, such as herbal
therapies, exotic techniques and Yin-Yang cosmologies. China also par-
ticipated in the global cross-fertilisation of medical practices well before
the nineteenth century, with influences flowing into and out of China
and also other regions that shared the East Asian literal traditions, such
as modern-day Korea, Japan and Vietnam.25
Central Asia was an important region for the cross-cultural interac-
tion between Europe and Asia.26 Between roughly 750 and 1150, this
crossroad of civilisations was at the helm of global medical learning. The
translation of Greek, Chinese and Indian scholarship led to a synthesis
of new innovations in the field of medicine and especially pharmacology.
Ibn Sina’s (980–1037) Canon of Medicine stands as the major testimony
to the dynamism of Central Asia’s medical culture, which flourished in

such important centres of learning as Baghdad, Merv, Nishapur and
Bukhara. Physicians such as Abū Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakarīya al-Rāzi,
in turn, wrote extensively about the constant competition between
learned doctors and popular healers. The regulation of healing became
an important feature of medical culture in the Arabic world. Arabic
works on charlatans demonstrate the wide range of different healing
methods available to patients. Many factors affected the popularity of
folk healers, ranging from socioeconomic (healers were cheaper than
physicians) to therapeutic (folk medicine gave similar or better results
compared to academic medicine). In the end, even famed physicians such
as al-Rāzi had to admit that doctors were unable to heal some illnesses
and that experienced popular healers could at times succeed better than
physicians.27
Globally and over time, however, folk healing’s ‘breathing space’
became ever more restricted. Folk healers had to increasingly react to
the attacks of professional physicians, surgeons and pharmacists. This
became especially apparent in the twentieth century, when popular
healers needed to mould their practices to fit societal and legal expec-
tations. However, as Markku Hokkanen’s chapter on Southern Africa
demonstrates, this does not automatically signify the slow demise of folk
practitioners. The rise of biomedicine, urbanisation and commercialisa-
tion has also offered new business opportunities in the medical market-
place. Another potentially significant reactive strategy, one used by both
patients and healers, has been resorting to secrecy. When a healer’s prac-
tice is threatened by repressive measures, it can continue underground
and under the cover of secrecy in hidden ritual spaces. Further, hybridity
can be interpreted as a strategy meant to decrease suspicion in the eyes of
authorities.
Methodologies for Histories of Healing

Despite the prevalence of medical pluralism in global history, research
on the history of medicine has been dominated by the study of written
sources and learned medicine. Although most healthcare was provided
by practitioners other than learned doctors, the professional groups of
physicians, surgeons and apothecaries remained, until the 1980s, much
more thoroughly studied than the practice of popular and often illiterate
healers, let alone the responses of their patients.28 In a seminal article
published in 1985, Roy Porter argued that ‘medical history ought cen-
trally to be about the two-way encounters between doctors and patients
… a great deal of healing in the past (as, of course, in the present) has
involved professional practitioners only marginally’.29 More than three
decades later, we have a much broader understanding of how ordinary
people have actually regarded health and sickness and managed their
encounters with healers and physicians. Recent oral histories of medi-
cine have pushed this understanding further and brought new insights
on the great transformations of twentieth-century medicine discussed
above, especially in Western contexts.30 Yet, for earlier periods and for
non-Western societies, many methodological challenges still remain.
Heterogeneous primary sources, such as private journals, correspondence
and household records, can reveal the patients’ common ways of han-
dling illness, but in the absence of such records, historians of, for exam-
ple precolonial Africa, have very little to work with.
Recent historiography has demonstrated that household healthcare
and self-help was perhaps the most important form of medicine in early
modern Europe; most treatments took place in the home.31 Medicines
were both made and purchased by households, and they can be identi-
fied as sites for the development of early modern science and technology.
Home remedies were not only transmitted orally through generations,
but household medicine was also related to developments in commercial
medicine. Another significant factor was the spread of print culture and
literacy—popular medical books began to appear soon after the inven-
tion of the printing press. This development spread unevenly in different
parts of the world. As Kalle Kananoja’s chapter on Brazil demonstrates,
popular medical guides printed in Rio de Janeiro spread intensively
throughout the country in the nineteenth century. In Africa, medi-
cal books, pamphlets, and especially, hygienic guides began to appear
in European and vernacular languages during the colonial period. How
they affected household healthcare and popular healing practices remains
to be investigated.32
In plural medical cultures, a neutral and mutually tolerant co-exist-
ence between different healing systems has often left little traces in the
documentation. So long as the day-to-day interactions between healers
and patients proceeded without conflicts, there was little reason to make
records of them—what is most obvious is often left unsaid. Likewise,
if professional competition between practitioners from different med-
ical systems did not lead to open conflicts, this was barely mentioned
by anyone. However, distinctions between different types of healers

emerged quite early on, especially in literate cultures. When one group
of practitioners began to claim their knowledge as superior, other groups
began to be put down with derogatory remarks. In different cultural
spheres, popular healers have invariably been denounced as quacks, char-
latans, witches and witch doctors, medicine men/women, and shamans,
or simply as wise old men and women, whether or not these have been
the healers’ own personal and professional identities. As Gentilcore has
demonstrated in the case of early modern Italy, the title of charlatan,
which was regulated by authorities, was also a self-claimed identity of
people who sold medical compounds. Elsewhere, however, popular heal-
ers would hardly have called themselves quacks or used any other pejora-
tive term. As David Posthumus’s study on the Lakota in this collection
demonstrates, Amerindian societies differentiated between various types
of healers and religious specialists, from the holy man or shaman to herb-
alist to conjuror.
It is instrumental to compare these portrayals of Lakota specialists
with the images of southern African healers discussed by Hokkanen.
Although their practices in colonial times were occasionally studied with
precision and without a racial bias, all too often African healers were sim-
ply labelled as ‘witch doctors’. Race, class, gender and religious beliefs
guided and distorted many attempts to observe and record healers in
action. If these attempts were coupled with politics and judicial power,
contestation and repression often followed. This caused practitioners
of folk medicine to go underground, and when this happened, there is
hardly a chance to uncover what took place in rituals. However, as Ivan
Sablin’s chapter on Tibetan medicine in the Soviet Union shows, some-
times even brutal repression did not lead to the complete eradication of
healing knowledge.
In global history, many healing methods have been categorised as
magic or sorcery. The meanings and definitions of magic have evolved
in different eras and cultures. In mediaeval and early modern Christian
Europe, magic was conceptualised as invoking the Devil or used to pro-
vide assistance in life’s challenges, such as attempts to restore health.
In other words, magic was seen as the opposite of Christian religion.
However, separating magic from religion is not always simple, as many
rituals and ceremonial practices in world religions resemble magical prac-
tices.33 In the contemporary world, separating magic from science is a
more relevant division. In this perspective, attempts to control physical
reality or the human psyche with means that cannot be explained scien-
tifically are categorised as magic. Therefore, belief in magic is defined
as superstition. Historically, magic and superstition have had a strong
association with creating otherness and confrontations between groups
of people; people from different cultures or of certain social classes have
been labelled as superstitious.
The Church had a decisive influence on many medical traditions
throughout Europe. Besides offering organised healthcare in the cit-
ies, the Church had a repressive influence on folk medicine. Especially
vehement were the Catholic Inquisitions of the Mediterranean world.
Local Inquisitions sprung up in Italy, Spain and Portugal, but there were
major differences between them. In the Inquisitions of Venice, Friuli and
Naples, the majority of those processed (between roughly 30 and 40%,
depending on the region) were practitioners of magic, witchcraft, sorcery
and healing. In the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon, superstitious beliefs
led to far fewer denunciations than in Italy; approximately 8% of the
more than 44,000 cases concerned magic and sorcery. In Portugal, the
Inquisitions of Lisbon, Coimbra and Évora concentrated their repressive
force on New Christians accused of practising Judaism. However, even in
Portugal popular healers were more tightly controlled by the Inquisition
in the eighteenth century.34
The case of Portugal is significant because it has traditionally been
seen as a region without an organised witch hunt.35 The majority of pro-
ceedings against practitioners of magic were concentrated between the
years 1715 and 1760, a period when the European witch hunts had by
and large ended. A great majority of the ‘witches’ denounced in Portugal
were peasant folk healers who earned part of their living by offering
magic cures. In other words, this was not a repressive campaign against
witches accused of having entered into a pact with the Devil. As Timothy
Walker has demonstrated, university-trained, licenced physicians took an
active role in the Inquisition proceedings against folk healers either as
expert witnesses or as the original denouncers. Physicians employed the
Inquisition to attack their competitors, while at the same time advancing
rational, scientific medicine in the Portuguese medical culture.36
Catholic Inquisitions also played an active role in Iberian overseas
colonies. The recent work of Pablo Gómez has advanced our knowl-
edge of early Caribbean medical culture. His thorough research of the
Inquisition archives places healers of different origins—Amerindian,
European, African and mixed origin—at the centre of their own
histories.37 Other regional histories as well as numerous case studies

have demonstrated the importance of indigenous and African healing
traditions in colonial Latin America.38 James Sweet’s work on the West
African healer Domingos Álvares in eighteenth-century Brazil stands as
an important landmark study of the biographical turn in medical history
in the Atlantic world. Like Gómez, Sweet relies on the Inquisition pro-
ceedings to demonstrate how an African healer adapted to a New World
cultural setting. Domingos Álvares began his Brazilian journey on a
Pernambucan sugar plantation, but finally ended up in the urban setting
of Rio de Janeiro. In Rio, Domingos succeeded in healing several slaves
owned by his master, and he was allowed to move about freely to earn
money, which eventually allowed him to buy his freedom. As a freedman,
Domingos established a healing community and gained a group of fol-
lowers. These activities raised suspicion among ecclesiastical authorities,
and he was finally denounced to the Inquisition, which transported him
to Lisbon for a trial.39
Major challenges and limitations for the historians of healers from
‘alternative’, indigenous or folk traditions stem from the lack of primary
sources written by the healers themselves. Beyond court cases, healers are
often discussed in the usually hostile testimonials of university-educated
doctors, clergymen and officials, or as subjects of anthropological and
ethnographic inquiry. However, the modern era has witnessed the emer-
gence of literate healers in many areas. Some famous healers attracted the
attention of the media, and many took advantage of the opportunities
offered by printed advertisements. In the twentieth century, healers in
many regions organised themselves in more professional ways, setting
up societies, registering their memberships and establishing systems of
qualification in order to match the status and authority of biomedical
physicians. Literate healers wrote up some of their medical knowledge,
defended their profession in print and probably also increasingly took up
autobiographical writing, although there is little research on this so far.40
Some of the most fascinating work on individual healers has been
based on interviews with healers and their family members. For exam-
ple, in South Africa the biographies of the famous healer Khotso and the
part-time healer, sharecropper Kas Maine have revealed valuable insights
into the changing world and practices of healers during the late colonial
and apartheid periods.41 As Posthumus shows in this volume, the ‘heal-
ers’ voice’ from among the Lakota people (among others) can be dis-
cerned from the extensive interviews of famous healers during the early
twentieth century, although the processes of interviewing and editing

need to always be critically assessed for the purposes of historical inquiry.
The more in-depth healer histories from across the world are heteroge-
neous and disparate, often providing fascinating glimpses and curious
anecdotes of healers’ thoughts and practices rather than the kinds of
comparable, thick and predictable sources that intellectual and social his-
torians of medicine would prefer.
Locating Healing in Imperial and Colonial History

Healing tends to become more interesting to political rulers if and when
it offers advantages or poses threats to them. Sometimes, of course, heal-
ers are political rulers, but this tends to be exceptional.42 Cultural, lin-
guistic and societal distances and differences between the rulers and the
ruled complicate this pattern and influence how healing has been defined,
contested and regulated. In large empires and colonial settings, it was
typical that a wide range of medical ideas, practices and systems co-existed
within political systems that encompassed several ethnicities, nations and
regions. From the early modern period onwards, these empires tended to
be at least loosely interconnected, forming something that could be called
a global sphere of healing ideas, practices and materials.43
Much of the previous historiography on plural medicine, medical
hybridisation and medicine as contested practice has developed in colo-
nial contexts. Particularly influential have been the new histories of medi-
cine in the British Empire since the late 1980s, including works by David
Arnold, Mark Harrison and many others.44 This book builds partly on
this tradition, and as the chapter by Saara-Maija Kontturi demonstrates,
colonial medicine could awaken interest in European countries with ten-
uous links to overseas colonies. However, many of the book’s studies
come largely from beyond the British (and Anglophone) Empire. In the
imperial and colonial history of healing, it is important to note the dif-
ferences and nuances in various colonial contexts and situations as well as
to be on the lookout for similarities, common patterns and shared nar-
ratives. A common danger of anachronism or over-simplification lies in
the careless use of the terms ‘colonial’ or ‘colonialism’, often used syn-
onymously with ‘power’ or ‘oppression’. There were many empires and
colonialisms, and there could be important differences even within a sin-
gle colonial regime as to how, by whom, and how effectively, for exam-
ple, healing was investigated, considered or policed over time.45
As an important general point of periodisation, it should be noted

that a substantial change in the ‘paradigm’ of colonialism and healing
took place in the early to mid-nineteenth centuries. In the early nine-
teenth century, the British in India (as with the French in North Africa
and the Portuguese in Africa and Goa) remained generally interested
in non-Western medicine, and they were broadly tolerant of its various
practitioners. By about 1850, while the search for medicinal substances
everywhere continued, Europeans generally began more and more to
deride and condemn non-European practitioners and their medical sys-
tems.46 There were many contributing and intertwined factors behind
these changes. The very rise and professionalisation of Western medi-
cine, as part of modernisation and the emergence of industrial nation-
states and their colonial empires, was at the heart of a growing Western
sense of superiority and the perceived inferiority of other cultures and
societies, including their medicines. Medical science, modern imperialism
and scientific racism all grew up together, feeding each other particularly
intensively in the high imperial period of colonialism from about 1860
to 1914.47 At home, ‘alternative’ and ‘folk’ medicine were increasingly
seen as dangerous or foolish quackery, and in other parts of the empire
‘witch doctors’ and ‘medicine men’ were portrayed as comical or danger-
ous hindrances to progress, civilisation and Christianity. If medicinal sub-
stances (such as cinchona bark or strophanthus) could still be obtained
from outside Europe, and on a larger scale than in the earlier colonial
period, in the nineteenth century these materials were scientifically ana-
lysed, industrially produced and professionally advertised in ways that
gradually erased their ‘exotic’ origins.48
Within colonial empires, however, the extent to which non-
Western practitioners came under pressure from the colonialists greatly
varied. While Europeans could in certain localities control and police
healing more effectively than before, and charge, imprison or banish
healers that were regarded as threats or criminals, the fact remained that
(until at least the mid-twentieth century), the vast majorities of colonial
populations looked for healing primarily from various indigenous prac-
titioners.49 Simonson’s chapter on Obeah practitioners in the Danish
West Indies shows that even on a small island, where the state authori-
ties increased the pressure on healers in the nineteenth century, there was
still ample room for practitioners to negotiate their craft.
In the various colonies, those public institutions that impacted heal-
ing the most—administration, policing, medical services—concen-
trated on urban and economic hubs. Likewise, private Western medical
practitioners tended to be concentrated in these areas, too, with wealth-

ier clienteles. Generally speaking, healing in rural areas was only occa-
sionally a concern of the colonial state, for example during major public
health campaigns or during scares of political unrest.50 However, in addi-
tion to the colonial state, Christian missionaries took up medical practice
in many areas, sometimes directly attacking other forms of healing on
both medical and religious grounds.51 On occasion, such as in late nine-
teenth- and early twentieth-century South Africa, missionaries, the colo-
nial state and private Western medical practitioners found common cause
in their attempts to curb and police indigenous and hybrid forms of heal-
ing. However, as historians of South Africa have shown, these attempts
were only partly successful (notably, healers in Natal were successful in
establishing a legitimate professional body).52
Even during the high imperial period, there were doctors such as W.A.
Scott, who in 1894 reminded his readers in the British Central Africa
Protectorate that ‘all our medicines were native to begin with’, as he
cautiously kept open the possibility of learning from local healers.53 In
nineteenth-century Brazil, it was increasingly acknowledged that the
early Europeans in the Americas had been largely dependent on indig-
enous medicines and healers. By contrast, the historical role of indige-
nous medicine in the United States was still largely ignored at that time,
and the early historiography of medicine in the United States was largely
written as a branch of Western medicine. The same was true of South
Africa, where the pluralistic medical culture of the nineteenth century
was largely erased in twentieth-century historiography, until a major revi-
sion in the 1990s and 2000s. The situation was different again in the
Indian subcontinent, where the strong medical traditions of Ayurveda
and Unani had their own histories alongside the growing allopathic and
biomedical tradition.54 Generally however, by the early 2000s the impor-
tance of indigenous perspectives on histories of medicine and healing has
been increasingly recognised. For instance, after the introduction of the
notion of bioprospecting in international law in the early 1990s, histori-
ans have started to take a fresh look into the past acquisition of medicinal
plants from indigenous communities in Africa, Asia and the Americas.
The Chapters
The authors discuss healers, empires and medicines on several levels, pro-
viding different combinations of primary source-driven case analyses with
broader surveys. The studies range in scale and scope from micro-level
case studies of mobile individuals (Kontturi), to small island environ-

ments (Jobbitt, Simonsen), to regions within a state (Posthumus), to
transnational regions (Kylli, Hokkanen), and finally, to large, heteroge-
neous and multi-ethnic states (Sablin, Kananoja). Any comparisons made
between the case studies must be done with caution. For often challeng-
ing and elusive subjects such as healers, occasionally changing the scale
and methodological ‘lenses’ used by historians arguably enables us to be
sensitive to significant similarities, differences, patterns and also notable
exceptions necessary for understanding the dynamism of medicine and
healing in the imperial world.
The first three chapters in this collection come from beyond the con-
fines of the colonial world as it is commonly understood: the second
chapter is on traditional healing in Lapland, while the third chapter is
a study of late eighteenth-century Swedish physicians’ connections with
colonial medicine and the fourth chapter deals with Tibetan medicine
and Buddhism in the Soviet Union. In different ways, these studies also
raise questions about the nature, reach and varieties of colonialism and
draw comparisons between colonialism and other kinds of far-reaching
power. In the case of the Sámi of Swedish and Finnish Lapland, Ritva
Kylli highlights patterns that were common to the colonial experience
elsewhere, such as the outlawing of some forms of healing by the Church
and state and the growing scientific interest in indigenous medicines,
diet and health. There is an ongoing debate as to the extent to which
the theories and concepts of colonial studies apply to the Northern
Nordic history.55 At any rate, the dynamism of the Sámi medical culture,
which responded to modernisation and increasing global trade, com-
prises an interesting case when set alongside indigenous medical cultures
in the colonial empires. For her part, Saara-Maija Kontturi reminds us
that Sweden, although only a minor colonial power, was connected to
the Atlantic colonial world and its medical ideas and practices through
mobile practitioners in both the metropole and colony. Focusing on the
medical journeys of Fredric Schulzen and Samuel Fahlberg, she demon-
strates how Sweden sought to profit from developments in colonial med-
icine. Fahlberg’s descriptions of St. Barthélemy’s medical geography in
particular fulfilled the Linnaean ideals of an all-encompassing curiosity
and knowledge of all fields, but especially the natural sciences. Schulzen’s
report especially demonstrates an interest in medical issues: he made it
clear that he wanted to deliver useful new medicine from Britain and its
empire. It is noteworthy that in both Kylli’s and Kontturi’s chapters, the
healing knowledge and medicines of the Sámi and black slave islanders
of St. Barthélemy are described rather positively. With the exception of
the practice of traditional Sámi religion, Swedish authorities did not gen-
erally see healers in these cases as a major problem or threat, and it was
thought that both the Sámi and the African Caribbean islanders enjoyed
comparably good health in the respective Arctic and tropical climates.
Their medicines and knowledge were sought after by the authorities,
leading some Sámi healers to try and conceal their healing knowledge,
suggesting at least a subtle contestation over healing practices.
By contrast, the fourth chapter calls attention to the rawest forms of
power: the outlawing, imprisonment and killing of Buddhist medical
specialists and the destruction of their medical institutions in the Soviet
Union went beyond the violence meted out by the older colonial pow-
ers. Despite its anti-colonial stance elsewhere, the Soviet Union was
also an empire, one which had inherited the imperial realms of Russia
and which manifested similar traits and trends of scientific investiga-
tion, guarded tolerance and repression of Tibetan medicine as Western
European colonial powers showed towards indigenous healing elsewhere.
Unlike most other healers studied in this collection, the Tibetan prac-
titioners in the Soviet Union had an old written medical tradition and
established medical schools. As Sablin shows, the fate of Tibetan medical
practitioners in the Soviet Union was decided not by medical or religious
factors, but by political factors and general suspicion during the Stalinist
regime. At the same time, the positive interest shown in Tibetan medi-
cine in the higher echelons of the Soviet state suggests that sometimes
the most powerful in a society can have notably different approach and
access to plural medical resources than those below. The partial resur-
gence of Tibetan healing after the Second World War stemmed partly
from the fact that Soviet state medicine was unable to meet the needs
of its diverse population, a continuing interest in Tibetan therapeutics
and Moscow’s reaching out to Asian countries in the context of the Cold
War.
For his part, Hokkanen explores the history of Southern African
healers in the colonial era, focusing on healers’ strategies employed
against colonial attempts at controlling, appropriating, denigrating and
outlawing their practices. In terms of violence and enforcement, colo-
nial Southern Africa can be placed between the ‘softer’ Swedish rule
in the Arctic and the brutal totalitarianism of the Soviet Union during
Stalin’s purges. Secrecy, mobility, professionalisation and a redefinition of
healers’ practices and public image were among the methods employed
by healers, both individually and collectively. When compared to Tibetan
practitioners in the Soviet Union, one of the strengths of southern
African healers was the weakness and incapacity of modern medicine
and the colonial state to offer credible treatment to large parts of the
population. While the colonial power exercised in courts and churches
and through policing and knowledge-production efforts shaped regional
healing, the medical culture retained its hybrid and pluralistic character,
which was influenced by increasing movements and cultural contacts
across Southern Africa, the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean, places that
were beyond imperial control.
Rafaela Jobbitt’s chapter on medical practices in São Tomé connects
the histories of the Atlantic Ocean and Indian Ocean more explic-
itly, reminding us that the Portuguese Empire remained global in the
nineteenth century. Alongside physicians, many of whom originated in
Goa, African healers also offered medical services to the population of
São Tomé. Colonial officials, including physicians in the medical ser-
vice, attempted to marginalise such healers by labelling their practices
as mere ‘quackery’ or ‘superstition’ or as primitive traditions associated
with ‘African medicine’. Jobbitt shows how the distinction they made
between ‘African’ and ‘European’ medicine, however, failed to cap-
ture the reality of healing in the colony. Rather than being representa-
tive of fixed ‘African’ healing traditions, the healers’ therapies should
be regarded as ‘hybrid’ because they had incorporated elements of
European medical knowledge.
The final three chapters deal with perceptions of healing in the
Americas. Kananoja discusses the evolvement of medicine and h ealing
in Brazilian history from the mid-seventeenth to the mid-twentieth
century, demonstrating how the shift from humoral to hygienic medi-
cine impacted attitudes towards folk medicine and African healing.
Notably, the image of Amerindians and the valorisation of their local
herbal knowledge changed little over time. The different waves of migra-
tion, the majority of which was African from the sixteenth to the early
nineteenth century and European from the mid-nineteenth century
onwards, also had an impact on healing landscapes in urban and rural
Brazil. Nineteenth-century Brazil proliferated with charlatans of differ-
ent origins, who found a lucrative market for their cures. At the same
time, Afro-Brazilian healing practices were increasingly marginalised and
persecuted.
Focusing on African and Afro-Caribbean practitioners of Obeah,

Gunvor Simonsen analyses healers’ strategies for minimising risk in the
Danish West Indies. Unlike in the tiny Swedish colony in the late eight-
eenth century, discussed by Kontturi, Nordic colonialists in the Danish
West Indies in the nineteenth century clearly sought control and dis-
cipline over healing through law and policing. By habitually creat-
ing distance and bridging the geographical and relational distance as a
part of their ritual practice, healers sought to avoid being detected by
island authorities. In a number of court sessions analysed by Simonsen,
enslaved Africans and Afro-Caribbean people forwarded complaints
about and made claims about the nature and practice of Obeah and the
Danish judges. Enslaved plaintiffs, witnesses and defendants named,
blamed and praised individual ‘Obeah men’, who constantly sought to
minimise the adverse results of their craft.
In contrast to African and Caribbean healers, who were often por-
trayed negatively and had to defend their practices in court, the final
chapter focuses mostly on sympathetic descriptions of Lakota healers. As
in the case of southern African healers, however, Lakota specialists were
frequently misrepresented by nineteenth-century outsider observers. By
delving into material written by the Lakota people themselves and data
recorded by non-natives, the chapter rearticulates the organisation and
classification of nineteenth-century Lakota religious and magico-medi-
co-ritual specialists. These sources show the plurality of Lakota indige-
nous healing and demonstrate how a traditional medical system was open
to creative change. While the most powerful and influential specialists,
the holy men, had their own organisation and rigorous form of train-
ing, it was possible to start one’s career as an herbalist by purchasing
medicines. Between the categories of holy men and herbalists, the more
secretive conjurors frequently dealt with illnesses caused by sorcery or
witchcraft and provided expensive medicines for luck, love and success.
As in Southern Africa, such medicines seem to have been more expensive
(and more commercial in general) than therapeutic medicines.
In several chapters, secrecy and avoidance of authorities are high-
lighted as one of the tactics employed by healers facing inquiries, control
or oppression. When successful, such methods tend to conceal healers
from historians as well. The search for sources authored by healers them-
selves is required to challenge and complement the records and accounts
of authorities and outsiders. However, attention to medicines and
materials used for healing may allow new perspectives on cross-cultural
medical encounters, mobilities and agencies and help in locating new

sources. Noting that medicines may also be important foodstuffs, spices
or luxuries, and that ideas of health are frequently fundamentally con-
nected to diet, is useful here.56 Many chapters in this collection touch
upon the connections between food and medicine, a theme that would
also deserve further investigation. In the increasingly interconnected,
globalised and commodified world, materials such as tobacco, castor oil,
alcohol, Angelica archangelica or reindeer antlers spread across more
widely geographical spaces and acquired medical and health meanings
and uses among healers, sufferers and various mediators. Indigenous
healers and Western doctors were important, but they were not the only
groups with stakes in the production, distribution and consumption of
medicines, and as this collection shows, their resources and possibilities
for success varied greatly.
Conflicts over healing that ended up in colonial courts often revealed
tensions and contests within a local community, not only between heal-
ers and authorities. The establishment of legal and policing authorities
(regardless of how repressive they might be), in theory at least, pro-
vided patients and their kin with more power over healers, who could be
denounced and taken to court. In colonial Brazil, Southern Africa and
the Danish West Indies, for example, healers had to tread carefully with
both their patients and the authorities. Also, while the modernisation
and commercialisation of healing offered greater opportunities for ‘tradi-
tional’ healers to augment their income, agency and ability to advertise,
it also gave rise to increasing competition, a growing medical trade and
possibilities for sufferers to buy cures from peddlers, charlatans, apothe-
caries or pharmacies, thus sometimes cutting out medical experts, heal-
ers and physicians entirely. However, the recurring idea that in order for
medicine to work, it has to be empowered by spiritual power, prayer or
blessings from a higher being (apparent, for example, in Southern Africa
and the Caribbean and among the Lakota) could work to secure the
need for a specialist healer who could facilitate such empowerment.
Altogether, the contributions in this book demonstrate how heal-
ing knowledge circulated through various networks and became part of
the ‘human web’,57 frequently through hybridisation and contestation.
Attention to healers and medicines in ‘out-of-the-way empires’ helps
us to see the variety and complexity, as well as common and repeated
themes, in global and imperial histories of medicine and healing. The
ways in which healers have encountered, engaged with and participated
in politics, law and religion underline the close connections between

healing, power and knowledge, and they illuminate both the capacities
of authorities and the agency of healers, sufferers and societies. Mobility
through migration (both forced and voluntary), exploration and settle-
ment created conditions for the cross-cultural transmission of medical
practices, a process that was arguably speeded up by empires but shot
through with struggles over power, knowledge and authority. The spa-
tial parameters of these encounters took place on a local, a regional and
a global scale. For some individuals, like uncle Pekka mentioned at the
beginning of this introduction, the global was overshadowed by the
local. However, for many of the characters encountered in the following
chapters, global interaction made the hybridisation of healing practices,
and the conflicts over them, part of their everyday lives.
Notes
1. On Orthodox Christianity and folk healing practices in Karelia, see Teuvo
Laitila, Jumalat, haltiat ja pyhät: Eletty ortodoksisuus Karjalassa 1000–
1900 (Helsinki: Suomen kirkkohistoriallinen seura, 2017).
2. Roy Porter, Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity
from Antiquity to the Present (London: Fontana Press, 1997); Onni
Vauhkonen, ‘Yleiskatsaus Suomen lääkintälaitoksen ja terveydenhuollon
kehitysvaiheisiin 1600-luvulta 1970-luvulle’, in Terveydenhuollon historia
(Helsinki: Sairaanhoitajien koulutussäätiö, 1992), 187–292, esp. the sta-
tistical tables on 239–250.
3. John Pickstone, ‘Medicine, Society, and the State’, in The Cambridge
Illustrated History Medicine, edited by Roy Porter (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1996), 333–337; Randall M. Packard, A
History of Global Health: Interventions into the Lives of Other Peoples
(Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016).
4. Michel Foucault, History of Madness (London: Routledge, 1972); Ivan
Illich, Limits to Medicine: Medical Nemesis: The Expropriation of Health
(London: Boyars, 1977).
5. For a Middle Eastern perspective, see Ghada Karmi, ‘The Colonisation
of Traditional Arabic Medicine’, in Patients and Practitioners: Lay
Perceptions of Medicine in Pre-industrial Society, edited by Roy Porter
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 315–339.
6. David Wootton, Bad Medicine: Doctors Doing Harm Since Hippocrates
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
7. David Arnold, Colonizing the Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease
in Nineteenth-Century India (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1993); Mark Harrison, Public Health in British India: Anglo-Indian

Preventive Medicine 1859–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
1994), 40–43; Marie-Cecile Thoral, ‘Colonial Medical Encounters in the
Nineteenth Century: The French Campaigns in Egypt, Saint Domingue
and Algeria’, Social History of Medicine 25 (2012): 608–624.
8. Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and
Historical Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000);
Patrick Manning, Navigating World History: Historians Create a Global
Past (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003); Jack Goody, The Theft
of History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Sujit
Sivasundaram, ‘Sciences and the Global: On Methods, Questions, and
Theory’, Isis 101 (2010): 146–158.
9. William H. McNeill, Plagues and Peoples (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press,
1976); Monica H. Green, ‘The Globalisations of Disease’, in Human
Dispersal and Species Movement: From Prehistory to the Present, edited by
Nicole Boivin, Rémy Crassard, and Michael D. Petraglia (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2017), 494–520.
10. Classics in the field include Arnold, Colonizing the Body; Harrison, Public
Health in British India; Andrew Cunningham and Bridie Andrews, eds.,
Western Medicine as Contested Knowledge (Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 1997); David Arnold, ed., Imperial Medicine and
Indigenous Societies (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988).
11. Packard, A History of Global Health.
12. Robert Jütte, Geschichte der Alternativen Medizin: Von der Volksmedizin
zu den unkoventionellen Therapien von heute (München: C.H. Beck
Verlag, 1996).
13. Roberta Bivins, Alternative Medicine: A History (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2007), 13–29.
14. Michael Stolberg, ‘Learning from the Common Folks: Academic
Physicians and Medical Lay Culture in the Sixteenth Century’, Social
History of Medicine 27 (2014): 649–667.
15. See, for example, Ned Vankevich, ‘Limiting Pluralism: Medical Scientism,
Quackery, and the Internet’, in Plural Medicine, Tradition and
Modernity, 1800–2000, edited by Waltraud Ernst (London: Routledge,
2002), 218–243; Roy Porter, ‘Western Medicine and Pain: Historical
Perspective’, in Religion, Health and Suffering, edited by J.R. Hinnells
and R. Porter (London: Kegan Paul, 1999). For a recent memoir on the
search for a cure to chronic pain across the globe, see Julia Buckley, Heal
Me: In Search of a Cure (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 2018).
16. Markku Hokkanen, Medicine and Scottish Missionaries in the Northern
Malawi Region, 1875–1930: Quests for Health in a Colonial Society
(Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2007), 2–3; Murray Last,
‘The Importance of Knowing About Not Knowing: Observations from

Hausaland’, in The Social Basis of Health and Healing in Africa, edited by
Steven Feierman and John M. Janzen (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1992), 393–406.
17. Ludmilla Jordanova, ‘The Social Construction of Medical Knowledge’,
Social History of Medicine 8 (1995): 361–381.
18. David Harley, ‘Rhetoric and the Social Construction of Sickness and
Healing’, Social History of Medicine 12 (1999): 407–435.
19. Roy Porter, Health for Sale: Quackery in England 1660–1850
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988). For a rare example
of a healer admitting that they knew their medicines did not work, see
Simonsen‘s chapter in this volume.
20. Waltraud Ernst, ‘Introduction’, in Plural Medicine, Tradition and
Modernity, 1800–2000, edited by Waltraud Ernst (London: Routledge,
2002), 1–9. On medical systems and cultures, see John M. Janzen, The
Quest for Therapy: Medical Pluralism in Lower Zaire (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1978); David Gentilcore, Healers and Healing in
Early Modern Italy (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998);
Edith Turner, Among the Healers: Stories of Spiritual and Ritual Healing
Around the World (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2006); Walter Bruchhausen,
‘Medical Pluralism as a Historical Phenomenon: A Regional and Multi-
Level Approach to Health Care in German, British and Independent
East Africa’, in Crossing Colonial Historiographies: Histories of Colonial
and Indigenous Medicine in Transnational Perspective, edited by Anne
Digby et al. (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010); Laura
Marie Zucconi, Can No Physician Be Found? The Influence of Religion on
Medical Pluralism in Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia and Israel (Piscataway,
NJ: Gorgias Press, 2010).
21. Ernst, ‘Introduction’, 4–5.
22. Ernst, ‘Introduction’, 9; Kapil Raj, ‘Beyond Postcolonialism … and
Postpositivism: Circulation and the Global History of Science’, Isis 104
(2013): 343.
23. Ernst, ‘Introduction’, 7–9.
24. Ernst, ‘Introduction’, 5–8; Seema Alavi, Islam and Healing: Loss and
Recovery of an Indo-Muslim Medical Tradition, 1600–1900 (Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).
25. Linda L. Barnes and T.J. Hinrichs, ‘Introduction’, in Chinese Medicine
and Healing: An Illustrated History, edited by T.J. Hinrichs and Linda
L. Barnes (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2013), 1–4.
26. Janet L. Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D.
1250–1350 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989).
27. Peter E. Pormann, ‘The Physician and the Other: Images of the Charlatan
in Mediaeval Islam’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine 79 (2005):
189–227.
28. Roy Porter, ed., Patients and Practitioners: Lay Perceptions of Medicine in
Pre-industrial Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).
29. Roy Porter, ‘The Patient’s View: Doing Medical History from Below’,
Theory and Society 14 (1985): 175.
30. Lucinda McCray Beier, For Their Own Good: The Transformation of
English Working-Class Health Culture, 1880–1970 (Columbus: Ohio
State University Press, 2008).
31. Anne Stobart, Household Medicine in Seventeenth-Century England
(London: Bloomsbury, 2016).
32. Abena Dove Osseo-Asare, ‘Writing Medical Authority: The Rise of
Literate Healers in Ghana’, Journal of African History 57 (2016): 69–91.
33. On magic and religion divide, see, e.g. Robin Horton, Patterns of Thought
in Africa and West: Essays on Magic, Religion and Science (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1993); Roy Porter, ‘Witchcraft and Magic
in Enlightenment, Romantic and Liberal Thought’, in Witchcraft and
Magic in Europe: The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, edited by
Bengt Ankarloo and Stuart Clark (London: Athlone Press, 1999), 191–
282; Kathryn A. Edwards, ed., Everyday Magic in Early Modern Europe
(London: Routledge, 2016).
34. Francisco Bethencourt, The Inquisition: A Global History, 1478–1834
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 334–338; E. William
Monter and John Tedeschi, ‘Toward a Statistical Profile of the Italian
Inquisitions, Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries’, in The Inquisition in
Early Modern Europe: Studies on Sources and Methods, edited by Gustav
Henningsen and John Tedeschi (Dekalb: Northern Illinois University
Press, 1986), 130–157; Jaime Contreras and Gustav Henningsen, ‘Forty-
Four Thousand Cases of the Spanish Inquisition (1540–1700): Analysis
of a Historical Data Bank’, in The Inquisition in Early Modern Europe,
100–129.
35. José Pedro Paiva, Bruxaria e superstição num país sem “caça às bruxas”
1600–1774 (Lisbon: Notícias Editorial, 1997).
36. Timothy D. Walker, Doctors, Folk Medicine and the Inquisition: The
Repression of Magical Healing in Portugal During the Enlightenment
(Leiden: Brill, 2005).
37. Pablo F. Gómez, The Experiential Caribbean: Creating Knowledge and
Healing in the Early Modern Atlantic (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 2017).
38. Martha Few, Women Who Live Evil Lives: Gender, Religion, and the Politics
of Power in Colonial Guatemala (Austin: University of Texas Press,
2002); Brad R. Huber and Alan R. Standstrom, eds., Mesoamerican

Healers (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001).
39. James H. Sweet, Domingos Álvares, African Healing, and the Intellectual
History of the Atlantic World (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 2011), 68–71, 99–101.
40. Murray Last, ‘Professionalization of Indigenous Healers’, in Medical
Anthropology: Contemporary Theory and Method, edited by Thomas M.
Johnson and Carolyn F. Sargent (New York: Prager, 1990), 349–366;
Harriet Ngubane, ‘Clinical Practice and Organization of Indigenous
Healers in South Africa’, in The Social Basis of Health and Healing
in Africa, edited by Steven Feierman and John M. Janzen (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1992), 366–375; Rebecca Marsland,
‘The Modern Traditional Healer: Locating “Hybridity” in Modern
Traditional Medicine, Southern Tanzania’, Journal of Southern African
Studies 33 (2007): 751–765; David S. Simmons, Modernizing Medicine
in Zimbabwe: HIV/AIDS and Traditional Healers (Nashville, TN:
Vanderbilt University Press, 2012).
41. See Chapter 4 in this volume.
42. Marc Bloch, The Royal Touch: Sacred Monarchy and Scrofula in England
and France (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973).
43. On the interconnections between empires, see C.A. Bayly, The Birth of the
Modern World, 1780–1914: Global Connections and Comparisons (Oxford:
Blackwell, 2003).
44. Arnold, Colonizing the Body; Mark Harrison, Climates and Constitutions:
Health, Race, Environment and British Imperialism in India 1600–1850
(New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999); Cunningham and Andrews,
eds., Western Medicine as Contested Knowledge; Arnold, ed., Imperial
Medicine.
45. See, for example, Sebastian Conrad, German Colonialism: A Short History
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); Frederick Cooper,
‘Conflict and Connection: Rethinking Colonial African History’,
American Studies Review 99 (1994): 1516–1545. For a comparative
approach to healthcare in German and British colonial East Africa, see
Bruchhausen, ‘Medical Pluralism’.
46. Arnold, Colonizing the Body; Thoral, ‘Colonial Medical Encounters’.
47. See, for example, Arnold, Colonizing the Body; Alison Bashford, Imperial
Hygiene: A Critical History of Colonialism, Nationalism and Public
Health (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004); Wolfgang Eckart,
Medizin und Kolonialimperialismus: Deutschland 1884–1945 (Paderborn:
Ferdinand Schöningh, 1997); Megan Vaughan, Curing Their Ills:
Colonial Power and African Illness (Stanford, CA: Stanford University
Press, 1991).
48. On folk healers in Britain, see Mary Chamberlain, Old Wives’ Tales: The
History of Remedies, Charms and Spells (Stroud: Tempus, 2006). On
colonial ‘bioprospecting’, see Markku Hokkanen, ‘Imperial Networks,
Colonial Bioprospecting and Burroughs Wellcome & Co.: The Case
of Strophanthus Kombe from Malawi’, Social History of Medicine 25
(2012): 589–607; Abena Dove Osseo-Asare, Bitter Roots: The Search
for Healing Plants in Africa (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,
2014).
49. On the powers and limitations of imperial medicine and colonial rule,
see, for example, Arnold, Colonizing the Body; Harrison, Public Health;
Vaughan, Curing Their Ills; Philip Curtin, ‘Medical Knowledge and
Urban Planning in Colonial Tropical Africa’, in The Social Basis of Health
and Healing in Africa, edited by S. Feierman and J.M. Janzen (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1992).
50. Arnold, Colonizing the Body; Harrison, Public Health; Maryinez Lyons,
The Colonial Disease: A Social History of Sleeping Sickness I Northern
Zaire, 1900–1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press); Karen
Flint, Healing Traditions: African Medicine, Cultural Exchange and
Competition in South Africa, 1820–1948 (Athens: Ohio University Press,
2008).
51. On missionary medicine, see, e.g. David Hardiman, ed., Healing Bodies,
Saving Souls: Medical Missions in Asia and Africa (Amsterdam: Rodopi,
2006); Vaughan, Curing Their Ills; Hokkanen, Medicine and Scottish
Missionaries.
52. Flint, Healing Traditions; Anne Digby, Diversity and Division in
Medicine: Health Care in South Africa from the 1800s (Oxford: Peter
Lang, 2006).
53. Life and Work in British Central Africa, December 1894.
54. Seema Alavi, Islam and Healing: Loss and Recovery of an Indo-Muslim
Medical Tradition, 1600–1900 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).
55. Gunlög Fur, Colonialism in the Margins: Cultural Encounters in New
Sweden and Lapland (Leiden: Brill, 2006); Daniel Lindmark, ‘Colonial
Encounter in Early Modern Sápmi’, in Scandinavian Colonialism and
the Rise of Modernity: Small Time Agents in a Global Arena, edited by
Magdalena Naum and Jonas M. Nordin (New York: Springer, 2013),
131–146. See also Magdalena Naum and Frederik Ekengren, eds., Facing
Otherness in Early Modern Sweden: Travel, Migration and Material
Transformations, 1500–1800 (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2018).
56. Rebecca Earle, The Body of the Conquistador: Food, Race and the Colonial
Experience in Spanish America, 1492–1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2012).
57. J.R. McNeill and William McNeill, The Human Web: A Bird’s-Eye View of
World History (New York: Norton, 2003).
CHAPTER 2
Traditional Arctic Healing and Medicines

of Modernisation in Finnish and Swedish
Lapland
Ritva Kylli
In 1737, Carl Linnaeus, later von Linné, published Flora Lapponica.

In this book he introduced the flora of Lapland, which he had inves-
tigated during his explorations five years earlier. On his expedition,
Linnaeus had also recorded traditional ways of using the plants, and
described the Angelica archangelica, also known as Norwegian angelica
and wild celery (Sámi: urtas’, fatno, botsk, rasi), as follows:
Found near fell brooks everywhere in Lapland; common especially in wet,

moss-growing grove valleys. The biggest of all grass plants of the fell. Not
found outside the fell, except possibly on nearby riverbanks. – The Lapps
say the first-year root, which does not yet sprout stalk, is a marvellous
medical herb that gives good health and long life. If they used any med-
ication, it would most certainly be this. They also chew on the roots, like
chewing tobacco, and also on milk-parsley roots.
R. Kylli (*)
University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland
e-mail: ritva.kylli@oulu.fi

28 R. KYLLI
The stalks of the Angelica archangelica were a summertime delicacy of

the Sámi and a key vegetable in their diet, but the plant and especially
the root were also used as medicine. It provided relief in the summer-
time when the Sámi had severe stomach troubles after drinking sun-
warmed, unhygienic forest water. In addition to the root of the Angelica
archangelica, severe diarrhoea could, according to Linnaeus, be treated
using tobacco ash, tobacco oil and a castoreum solution.1
Carl Linnaeus became famous for his work as a botanist, but he was
also a doctor who had studied medicine at university before his travels in
Lapland. According to Lisbet Koerner, Linnaeus’ most important con-
tribution to medicine was his work with nutrition and diet. His journal
from Lapland shows that the Sámi of the fell region were generally in
good health and rarely used any form of medication. When medication
had to be used, they had at their disposal a choice of both animal- and
plant-based natural remedies, such as Angelica archangelica and cas-
toreum,2 and imported goods such as tobacco. Young Linnaeus admired
the traditional remedies and medicinal herbs of the Sámi, and recom-
mended methods such as using birch bark for treating wounds, common
yarrow for parasites and reindeer cheese for frostbite.3
The Sámi [Lapps4] are a native people living in an area that cur-
rently spans four countries in Northern Europe. This chapter focuses
on the healing methods of Sámi communities in the area that is today
called Swedish and Finnish Lapland. I examine especially the former
administrative region called Torne Lappmark, the administrative cen-
tre of which was the town of Tornio, located on the northern coast of
the Gulf of Bothnia. Tornio was founded in 1621 at the mouth of the
most important waterway of the region, the River Torne, which extends
deep into Lapland. Torne Lappmark included the northernmost par-
ishes of Sweden and Finland, namely Utsjoki and Enontekiö in Finland
and Jukkasjärvi in Sweden. I primarily rely on materials that describe the
cures and remedies used by the Utsjoki Sámi in the easternmost parish
of Torne Lappmark. Utsjoki, situated along the River Teno in Finland’s
far north, is an interesting object of study as its population consisted
exclusively of Sámi and Finnish officials posted in the parish up until the
twentieth century. In Enontekiö, the first Finnish settlements appeared
as early as in the seventeenth century, while in Jukkasjärvi the mine
attracted non-Sámi population early on.5
In cultural terms, Torne Lappmark was relatively uniform: North Sámi
was spoken among the Sámi, and reindeer herding, hunting and fishing
2 TRADITIONAL ARCTIC HEALING AND MEDICINES … 29
on the riverbanks and lake shores were everyday activities. The region was
in the inland fell area, but its connections to the coast of Norway were
common. Reindeer herders with large flocks spent their summers on the
coast of the Arctic Ocean. Finnish and Swedish settlers also moved to the
region, although the cold climate made agriculture difficult: according to
the first vicar of Utsjoki the soil was not free of frost before June, and
started freezing again at the end of July.6 Torne Lappmark was divided
by a national border in 1809, when Finland was separated from Sweden
and became part of Imperial Russia. The town of Tornio was left on the
Finnish side of the border and the doctor in charge of the entire Finnish
Lapland still lived there during early nineteenth century.
The chapter reaches from the seventeenth to the early twentieth cen-
tury. It was during this time that the Sámi became more firmly integrated
into the networks of international trade. Tobacco, also mentioned by
Linnaeus, was among the first imported overseas goods used as medi-
cine. Imported products were used side by side with local cures and rem-
edies; they were, in a way, prototypes of globalisation and modernisation
among the Sámi. Focusing on a longer period of time, examples of both
confrontation and coexistence between traditional Arctic healing and the
new medicines of the globalising world can be found.
Much has been written about encounters between cultures over the
centuries, and texts written by Europeans who moved to live among
Native Americans, for example, frequently also document the ways of
healing used by the native people.7 In their writings about the Sámi,
Finnish and Swedish officials and explorers have recorded a wealth of
data about their traditional ways of healing. As my sources I use news-
paper articles, travelogues and reports written by officials who worked in
Lapland. I also rely on scientific studies, court records and other unpub-
lished and published materials that contain information about traditional
healing in the Sámi area. When available, I also use texts written by the
Sámi themselves.
These sources must be assessed critically, because the ways of healing
used by the Sámi were in all likelihood regarded in a highly exoticised
light. Since the times of Aristotle (384–322 BC), people of cold regions
have been thought to be strong. In the early modern period, when
Europeans settled new continents, hot and humid tropical regions were
considered unhealthy, while high and windy locations were considered
good for the health.8 Explorers like Linnaeus could idealistically admire
the traditional natural medicine of the Sámi and judge against imported
30 R. KYLLI
‘poisons’, such as sugar and salt.9 The comments of those writing about
Arctic healing may sometimes be more revealing of their own attitudes
than of the healing methods and their effects. Some of them, on the
other hand, could uncritically admire all signs of modernisation and give
their attention solely to imported methods and medicine.
Some medicines were imported to the Arctic region, but the inhab-
itants also relied on local remedies when fighting sickness. In this chap-
ter I focus on the attitudes towards different forms of medication among
the Sámi at different times. How did the notions of what was acceptable,
what was suspicious and what was outright prohibited shift over time? In
the contextual analysis of my material I take into account the fact that
the Sámi changed their religion within the time range in question—
public practising of the old ethnic religion was given up in Torne Lappmark
in the early eighteenth century—and that the diet of the Sámi underwent
a great change during the nineteenth century, when many substances that
had previously been considered medicine were increasingly being used
as food and for pleasure. Over the centuries these changes also led to the
negotiation and contestation as well as hybridisation of healing practices.
Healing or Heathenism? Contestation and Negotiation

In recent studies on different medical cultures and their history, it has
been concluded that healing and religion are difficult, if not impossible,
to separate.10 This is also true regarding the Sámi of the past centuries:
they did not necessarily feel that they practised a religion, but instead
only tried to safeguard their own health and that of their kin, make life
safer and make their means of livelihood more successful. The most
important gods of the Sámi were often very essential life-maintaining
forces. The Sámi of the seventeenth century may have been considered
pagans simply because they worshipped the sun, which, in their view of
the world, simply gave their reindeer food and warmth.11
The Swedish empire started to tighten its rein on its peripheral areas
in the early seventeenth century, and more attempts were made to inte-
grate the Sámi into the sphere of the Evangelical Lutheran church. The
clergymen accepted some of the old ways of the Sámi, but found some
features and practices so controversial that they were considered hea-
thenism. One of these was the drum (goavddis). The drums were often
large and attracted attention, and had special meaning to the Sámi, espe-
cially in times of crisis. In Arjeplog in Southern Swedish Lapland, a Sámi
man named Lars Nilsson was sentenced to death in the 1690s. He had
been found drumming outside his dwelling (goahti)12 after his six-year-
old grandson had drowned in a nearby spring. The man had tried to
bring the boy back to life with his drumming, and when the Sámi who
arrived told him to stop such blasphemy, he had refused and, instead,
furiously blamed others for the boy’s death.13
The measures taken against the pre-Christian religion of the Sámi
intensified in the 1680s and 1690s. The church tried to use the court
of law to force the Sámi to give up their heathen ways and serve the
Christian God in heaven. Court records from Torne Lappmark also fea-
ture statements of Sámi accused of drumming where they explain why
drumming had been resorted to. The matter was discussed, for example,
in a court of law held in Enontekiö in February 1681. One 40-year-old
Christopher Anundsson had used a drum the previous autumn to cure
his wife’s ailing finger, but had, in the end, smashed his drum in anger
because it had not helped him.14
In the seventeenth century witches were burned at the stake across
Europe, and many traditional healers were also accused of witchcraft.15
No Sámi of Torne Lappmark, however, was beheaded for using the drum
for healing. Christopher Anundsson was only given a fine as punishment.
The rationale for this was that according to witnesses he had never used
his drum for any evil purpose, and his drumming had not caused harm
to anyone. According to Jari Eilola, who has studied seventeenth-century
Swedish and Finnish magic and witchcraft, and boundaries between the
accepted and the forbidden, the use of magic was usually accepted when
someone had fallen sick (as long as the healing did not happen at the
expense of other people, for example, by sending a disease back to its
sender). It was also important that the magic did not happen in secret.16
In the Sámi community, drums were traditionally also used by witches
(noaidi), who used them to interpret symptoms and cure diseases and ill
health. According to Aage Solbakk, ‘[r]elying on the magic power of the
goavddis, the noaidi could read both the cause and the cure of the illness
in question.’17 Apparently there were still professional witches in Lapland
in the sixteenth century, but by the seventeenth century the foundations
of shamanistic witchcraft had already crumbled. In the late seventeenth
century ordinary Sámi families owned drums, which were instruments
used for creating security and safety in their lives. One Sámi from Torne
Lappmark stated in the early 1660s that he was reluctant to give up his
drum because it helped him when people and God could not.18
32 R. KYLLI
Contestation and negotiation concerning acceptable healing prac-

tices generated a lot of documents that historians can use as their source
material. Court records dating back to the seventeenth century contain
illustrative information of controversial healing instruments, such as
drums and the use of spells for treating sickness. Studying the medical
knowledge of native people is difficult in the sense that their thoughts
are usually described through Christian lenses in the texts.19 Court
records are, however, considered to be fairly reliable sources as the Sámi
also had jurors in the sessions, and the statements of the witnesses were
recorded as accurately as possible. However, they contain no information
on the methods that were not considered prohibited or criminal.
In Lapland, the church usually permitted relics from the old reli-
gion that were used for maintaining health if they were beneficial to the
church in financial terms—even though they might have been considered
somewhat suspect. The religious state of the area of Torne Lappmark
was examined in a court session in 1687. According to a vicar from
Enontekiö parish (in the western part of what is today Finnish Lapland),
a large proportion of his parishioners had given up their ‘superstitions’,
yet some remained. At this stage the Sámi were in the habit of bring-
ing the sacrifices that they had previously brought to the sieidi altars
(old sacrificial sites) to the altars of Christian churches built in Lapland.
The vicar said that the Sámi resorted to this procedure when they were
threatened by illness. Those who hoped to be cured brought reindeer
pelts, antlers and hooves to the parish church or its altar as a sacrifice.
The church could then auction the goods and use the money for its own
purposes.20
Sacrificing to the church was still practised in the eastern parish
of Utsjoki in the mid-eighteenth century: the Sámi would donate to
the church to ask for help when they fell ill, or to show their gratitude
when they regained their health. The first dedicated priest of the par-
ish of Utsjoki, Anders Hellander, even recorded these donations and the
purposes for which they were made in the church records in 1751 and
1752. In November 1751, Sámi men named Olof Tuitio, Olof Påhlsson
and Pehr Rasmusson donated to improve their luck when hunting. In
the November of the same year some members of the parish made dona-
tions to improve the health of their children as well as themselves. A
Sámi teacher employed by the church also donated in December after
regaining his health. Donations were made to the church to maintain
or appease the forces that maintained life, which is why even the less
wealthy members of the parish donated what they could of their little
possessions. A widow might, for example, donate a pair of homemade
mittens, some reindeer cheese, wool or fresh fish to the church.21
In the eighteenth century, Finland was part of the Swedish Empire,
and the Swedish rulers of the time wanted to know the population of
the land. Priests were assigned the task of collecting population data,
including causes of death.22 Anders Hellander, appointed priest of
Utsjoki parish in the 1740s, also started recording the causes of death of
his parishioners. In 1751, he recorded nine dead on the Utsjoki parish
list of deceased. Causes of death ranged from lung disease and tumours
to freezing to death, paralysis caused by asphyxiating cough, and frailty
of old age. Contagious diseases also took their toll: the two-month-old
Jon Aslacsson Paut and the 16-year-old Sámi teacher Johan Olofsson
Tornensis died of measles in February and March 1751.23
Although some people died of measles and other contagious diseases
in Utsjoki every now and then, the death toll was never very high. The
region was extensive and sparsely populated, with a total population of
only approximately three hundred. Over a period of one hundred years,
from 1750 to 1850, ten per cent of the deceased died of old age in
Utsjoki; disease rarely killed before ‘old age’ and frailty. Common causes
of death included accidents, especially drowning and lung and chest
illnesses. Looking at the list of deceased, however, it appears that espe-
cially in the eighteenth century Utsjoki had an exceptionally high num-
ber of inhabitants who reached a very advanced age (80 or above).24
In his report on Lapland written in the mid-eighteenth century, vicar
Pehr Högström, who was in charge of administering the church in Torne
Lappmark in the 1740s, stated that the Sámi were—thanks to the cli-
mate, their diet and their overall way of living—generally considered very
healthy. Högström himself had little experience of the matter, but he
knew that many diseases that were common among Swedes were rela-
tively rare among the Sámi. The Sámi rarely suffered bubonic plague or
pox. Illnesses of the eye, however, were common. The eyes of the Sámi
were affected by their smoky dwellings and, in the springtime, bright
snow.25 Both their illnesses and remedies were closely linked to their
environment. The commonness of chest disease, for example, was in all
likelihood due to the harsh Arctic climate.
The Sámi fought hard against their diseases. Their traditional cures
and remedies had elements that officials coming from outside also started
using—and later conveyed to their native lands. Written sources that are
34 R. KYLLI
available contain no sign of action taken against remedies based on ingre-

dients from local nature at any point; only curing disease by drumming
was disapproved of.26 Traditional herbs were never considered blasphemy
or black magic. This is demonstrated by the fact that also clergymen and
other officials would use natural remedies in times of illness.
Clergyman Johan Wegelius (1693–1764), a priest in the Enontekiö
parish in the early eighteenth century, collected a manuscript of cures
and remedies used in Lapland and other regions of northern Finland. It
is dated 1760, and is entitled En Samling af Läkedomar och Huus-Curer
(A Collection of Remedies and House Cures). In the foreword, Wegelius
states that in Lapland natural cures were essential simply because there
were no doctors or pharmacies to call on.27 It was, above all, a ques-
tion of survival, not so much a question of a desire to go to nature. On
the other hand, Wegelius’ manuscript also lists many medicinal plants
imported from other regions, such as hyssop and fig. When Wegelius
wrote his manuscript, he had also lived in the coastal town of Tornio,
which received a considerable influx of new products and knowledge in
the eighteenth century.28
The Christian faith gained ground among the Sámi in the early eight-
eenth century. Sources from the period, however, also show how central
a role amulets and spells still played. Notes about suspicions of witch-
craft can still be found in court records from the 1710s. For instance, in
1715 in Enontekiö the body of a child exhumed from a churchyard was
found in the sledge of one couple. In the early eighteenth century peo-
ple often protected themselves by carrying bones, snake skulls and other
charms.29 The manuscript written by Wegelius includes some remedies
that are rather impressive from a modern point of view, such as treating
a cough using a mixture of garlic and honey, but also some rather ques-
tionable methods that are not far from skulls and bones exhumed from
graveyards. According to Wegelius, a painful tooth could be picked at
with a rusty nail, which then had to be put back where it was taken from.
The idea was to transfer the pain to the nail, and then take the nail to a
place from which the pain could not return to the tooth.
Wegelius’ manuscript shows that when looking for remedies from
nature, listening to people who know about nature is advisable. Wegelius
was influenced by the medicinal skill of the inhabitants of Lapland, but
the Sámi also perused the medical knowledge learnt from other cultures.
The next chapter shows how this influence was often received across long
geographical distances.
Indian or Indigenous Medicine? Cross-Cultural

Medical Encounters
The Age of Enlightenment in the eighteenth century, known as the Age
of Utility in Finland, encouraged priests and other officials to work on
health and welfare, including in Lapland. The fundamental idea was to
make the empire of Sweden more prosperous by increasing its popula-
tion. Infant mortality, for example, was to be reduced by investing in the
training of midwives.30 The ideals of the Age of Utility were put to work
by individuals such as Eric Grape (1755–1808), the vicar of Enontekiö in
the late eighteenth century, who managed to grow ‘earth apples’ (pota-
toes), beetroot, spinach, carrots, parsnips, red onions, chives and various
herbs commonly used as remedies in his garden.
According to Grape, the remedies used in his parish were simple and
limited. Of those, camphor, castoreum, asafoetida resin, turpentine,
pepper and gunpowder mixed with alcohol were considered the most
powerful. The most common diseases were chest pains caused by lung
diseases, burning fever and diseases of the eye. According to Grape, the
Finnish settlers in Enontekiö were not as interested in different medica-
tions as the native Sámi. The Finns believed sickness was an unavoidable
fate and had no faith in medicine, whereas the Sámi were much more
confident that remedies could be found.31
Examples show that the Sámi rarely relied on wild plants when treat-
ing ill health. On the other hand, vegetables were not a staple part of
their diet either, especially during wintertime. It seems as if they had
adapted to their Arctic environment so well that their bodies could uti-
lise the vitamins of the plants they used as nutrition very efficiently,32
although their vitamin content was rarely very high. They consumed
Angelica archangelica, for example, in significant quantities. Angelica
archangelica also had magical connotations, and since it has a pleasant
taste, eating the plant is thought to have given pleasure similar to that
from eating of sweets or fruit today. Plants such as Angelica archangelica
were both remedies and food to the Sámi. Oral histories collected from
the Sámi in the twentieth century also highlight the medicinal properties
of the plant: ‘Eat it in the summer, be fine all winter.’33
Since distinguishing between natural remedies and food is often dif-
ficult, dietary habits must be taken into account when considering the
natural remedies of the Sámi. Although their diet was heavy on fish and
meat, it also included berries and grass plants that had a positive health
36 R. KYLLI
impact.34 Angelica archangelica had even been considered an impor-

tant remedy in fighting the plague: it was exported from the lands of the
Sámi to Central Europe in the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries in
such volumes that it became extinct in some of its natural habitats in the
western part of Norway. Faith in the miraculous potential of the plant is
reflected in its Latin name Angelica archangelica; it is said that the arch-
angel Gabriel himself manifested before a monk and revealed that the
plant was a medicine against the plague.35
Italian explorer Giuseppe Acerbi (1773–1846) also praised the
health-improving properties of the Angelica archangelica in his journal
of his travels in Lapland in the late eighteenth century:
Our Laplanders quit the boats, and we pursued our journey on foot
as before. On the border of this lake, one of these people spying a cer-
tain plant, ran to gather it, and devoured it with as much avidity as if it
had been the most delicious morsel in the world. It was the famous plant
Angelica, the chief luxury of the North, and which is deemed a very great
antiscorbutic. Being desirous of tasting it, one was given to me, and I
found it so agreeable to my palate, that I soon became fonder of it than
even the Laplanders themselves. I am fully convinced that I owe to this
plant the uninterrupted good health which I enjoyed during all the time
I was in those parts; where we had nothing else for our subsistence than
dried or salted fish, the dried flesh of the rein-deer, hard cheese, biscuit,
and brandy; all of them heating and insalubrious aliments.36
Lapland was at this point a popular destination for gentlemen explorers.

In addition to people, goods also travelled long distances to reach the
North: written sources dating back to the eighteenth century mention
camphor and asafoetida resin among the remedies used by the Sámi. The
Sámi might treat a cough, for example, by holding a clump of asafoetida
resin in the mouth, or by mixing asafoetida resin with snuff and inhaling
the mixture through the nose.37 In India, asafoetida is a commonly used
food and medicine plant, which also found its way to subarctic Northern
Europe relatively early on.
Many other plants also spread to what is currently known as
Fennoscandia from India. Ginger, as well as pepper, which grows both
wild and cultivated in the western parts of South India, were used in
the area of what is today Finland by the sixteenth century at the latest.
Pepper was probably among the very first goods imported from Asia to
Europe: the first mentions of it date back to 300 BC. Ginger has been
used in various ways in the medical traditions of China, India and Japan:
it helped with gout, cold, tooth pain, diarrhoea, rheumatism, malaria,
leprosy and indigestion. Ginger and pepper were also important spices
in the regions where they grow,38 but the ginger and pepper obtained by
the Sámi were in all likelihood intended solely to be used as medicine.
Just like the actual herbs, information about their medicinal properties
and uses also travelled between cultural spheres in the early modern era.
Tobacco, which was also used for medicinal purposes, was common in
northern Finland by the early seventeenth century.39 How the medici-
nal herbs reached the Sámi can be traced back using customs records:
the cargos of individual ships were recorded in detail in customs books.
Records also reveal that vitamin-rich cloudberries were exported from
northern parts of Norway to Central Europe in significant quantities,
along with train oil and fishing products, as early as the early eighteenth
century.40
In the early modern world, India was famous for its knowledge of
medicine (ayurveda, for example), and India was also the melting pot
of different medical traditions. In the sixteenth century, for example,
Chinese rhubarb was used in Goa, and, according to the cargo records
of the Swedish East India Company, founded in 1731, it was also
imported to Sweden.41 In addition to rhubarb, the Swedish ships of the
East India trading company—which mostly transported tea and china-
ware to Northern Europe—also brought camphor, ginger, garlic and
opium.42 Traders from northern Finland during the late 1700s had many
edible (medicinal) plants in their stock. In 1766, a man called Zacharias
Toppelius (in the city of Oulu, northern Finland) cleared anise, liquorice
(root) and camphor through customs, most likely intended for pharma-
ceutical purposes.43
In the early nineteenth century, Lars Levi Laestadius (1800–1861), a
botanist and the founder of the Laestadian revival movement, worked as
a vicar in the region of Karesuando, a part of Enontekiö that became
part of Sweden in 1809. Laestadius wrote in his Fragments of Lappish
Mythology about the belief that the Sámi had in the miraculous power
of snake stones. Snake stones were, according to Laestadius, stones that
snakes had played with and had been taken from them.44 Laestadius—
who had partly Sámi roots and knew the Sámi culture very well—was
well aware that believing in their power was not limited to the Sámi. He
wrote:
38 R. KYLLI
The old manuscript Experimenta (1685), written by Franciscus Redus and

printed in Amsterdam, includes several stories about the power of snake
stones to cure various diseases. The author, who was apparently a doctor,
had made several experiments using snake stones, but to no effect. He also
included many drawings of snake stones brought from East India in his
manuscript. Faith in the miraculous power of snake stones is said to be
common among natives living along the Ganges.45
In Laestadius’ description, the reference to the Ganges is very interest-

ing. He wrote that the belief in snake stones could ‘originate in India,
like perhaps many other elements in Lapp and Finnish magic too.’ A
more familiar remedy—also mentioned by Laestadius—is the use of
snake skins. In the medical tradition of the Sámi, snake fat was used to
make a rheumatism ointment, women in labour were given snake skin
soaked in alcohol, and snake parts could also be used to make solutions
with aphrodisiacal effects.46
A contemporary of Laestadius, Jacob Fellman, the vicar of Utsjoki in
the 1820s, also made note of local and overseas elements among Sámi
cures. Toothache could be cured by placing a clump of pine resin on the
ailing tooth, and wounds could be treated using yarrow (achillea mille-
folium). Dried Angelica archangelica root, asafoetida resin, camphor,
pepper, gunpowder and turpentine are mentioned as the most effective
cures against sickness. Bear bile (pånjo) could, according to Fellman, also
be used to cure almost any disease.47 Arno Forsius, the author of the
article Bear and Traditional Folk Medicine, says that in addition to the
hide and the flesh, almost every part of a slain bear was used for some
purpose. The hunters would gain vitality by drinking bear blood, while
bear bile was thought to help especially against jaundice.48 The number
of imported goods was so high up on Fellman’s list that it can be said
that in addition to hunting success (not everyone in Lapland could slay a
bear), global economic forces were a factor that shaped the health of the
Sámi.
The medical culture of Lapland had a relatively strong cross-cultural
dimension early on. The Sámi had remedies originating in India and
other distant lands in their possession—even to such an extent that it
seems as if purchased medicine had a special symbolism to them. Not all
inhabitants of the Arctic region, however, could afford to buy imported
products, which in the context of the eighteenth and even the nineteenth
century should be considered luxuries. Sources include a wealth of infor-
mation about domestic medicine.
Many remedies of the Sámi reflected their way of life: a bleeding

wound, for example, could be dressed using reindeer lung. Other parts
of the reindeer and also cheese made of reindeer milk were used as rem-
edies. Ague could be cured by drinking blood taken from a reindeer
at the time of its slaughter. Anders Andelin, the vicar of Utsjoki in the
1850s, mentioned the drinking of blood in his report on the Utsjoki par-
ish: ‘If no reindeer was available for slaughtering, stored reindeer blood
was boiled in water, and this was given to the sick to drink, who were
then covered with reindeer skins and allowed to perspire profusely.’49
Snow and ice were also important elements. According to informa-
tion recorded in the nineteenth century, a frozen limb should be kept
in cold water until it warmed, and then be brushed with reindeer fat.50
Another document from the early twentieth century states that a nasty
cough could be treated by brushing the soles of the feet with ice and
then ‘heating them up as much as the patient could stand.’51
Although much was written about the medical tradition of the Sámi
in the nineteenth century, little information about the actual heal-
ers is extant. Some information recorded by priests in Utsjoki has sur-
vived, but its nature is controversial: in the nineteenth century, stories
of a healer woman, the ‘Kentänpään eukko’, who could be asked how
the sick could be cured, were recorded. On closer inspection, however,
similar figures were also found in Karelia and in the Norwegian folk tra-
dition.52 However, the nineteenth-century clergymen knew there were
some known healers on the Russian side of the border. Jacob Fellman
wrote in the 1820s that he had met a trollkarl (witch) in Rasnjarga
(Rasnavolok, Russia). According to Fellman, many people from near and
far visited this trollkarl, and even some Finns trusted this ‘oracle’: One
Finnish man, Henrik Körkö from Rovaniemi, visited the trollkarl due to
his epilepsy. The trollkarl had told him that the illness was not temporary
and could not be cured.53
The scarcity of information about healers probably also indicates a
desire on the part of the Sámi to keep certain knowledge about heal-
ing to themselves. As more and more Sámi learnt to write in the late
nineteenth century, many of them also started writing down the tradi-
tional ways of healing. A Sámi man called Johan Turi (1854–1936), who
lived in Jukkasjärvi on the northern shore of Torniojärvi, described the
medical tradition of the Sámi in detail in his 1910 book Muitalus sámiid
birra (‘An Account of the Sami’). Some information, however, he kept
to himself:
40 R. KYLLI
The Sámi must have studied ways of treating the ill already in ancient
times, as they had no doctors available to help them; indeed, some of them
did not even know of their existence. In all likelihood they studied the
illnesses to such an extent that they learnt the categories of different dis-
eases and how they could be treated. And they have, as a matter of fact,
gained so much knowledge that they are able to cure several illnesses, even
some that doctors cannot help with. - - But not all of that art can be writ-
ten of here, because this book will be read around the world, and many
learned men should never come to know all the secrets. They would not
believe them; they would only ridicule the Sámi and their foolishness, yet
if they could see everything that the Sámi does, they could not but wonder
at their power and where it comes from.54
When writing his book on Sámi culture, Turi took into account the dif-
ferent backgrounds of the assumed readers. Traditional medicine does not
concern itself merely with questions about different ways of treating dis-
eases, but also with culturally constructed understandings of health and
sickness. How different beliefs, values and habits are emphasised in heal-
ing depends on what notions of health and sickness are acceptable in a
culture, what the state of the health care system is, and what the char-
acteristics of each individual healer, patient and sickness are.55 The next
section describes the changes in the Sámi health care system and the
accepted ways of treating diseases around the late nineteenth century.
Traditional Cures or Modern Medicine? Hybridisation

of Healing Practices
The traditional remedies of the Sámi underwent a great change in

the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. The Sámi way of life
changed when many of them gave up the nomadic lifestyle and moved
from their traditional goahti dwellings to houses. Cattle herding became
more common, and many of the Sámi who made their living through
reindeer herding also built permanent homes and kept cattle to supple-
ment their income from reindeer. Johan Turi, writing on Sámi remedies
in the early twentieth century, also stated that women who have given
birth should now be given home butter made of cow’s milk since ‘there
is no reindeer butter anymore’.56 Reindeer husbandry had not ended,
but modernisation had made the milking of reindeer and the making of
reindeer cheese less common. On the coast of Norway, margarine could
already be purchased.57
This was not the only change in the Sámi diet. Refined sugar was pen-
etrating one indigenous cuisine after another, accompanying the ‘mod-
ernisation’ and ‘westernisation’.58 Sugar, which had originally been a
special ingredient used in medical remedies only, also became more com-
mon in the area of Torne Lappmark, along with other high-carbohydrate
foods.59 Towards the end of the nineteenth century, pharmacists and
doctors with scientific medical training were also being posted to the
Sámi municipalities. At this point the bodies of the Sámi were taken
under closer control: since the beginning of the twentieth century,
medications and remedies were argued more scientifically. Doctors also
assumed the right to classify and assess the individuals whom their work
affected—while simultaneously trying to heal them.60 Starting in the late
nineteenth century, the Sámi were measured, weighed and medicated
more regularly than ever before.
The control of Sámi health started in the nineteenth century with the
effort against smallpox. In 1826, a company that included Dr. Deutsch,
a district doctor posted in Tornio, 600 kilometres south of Utsjoki, vis-
ited Jacob Fellman in Utsjoki. Deutsch’s journey to Lapland was related
to the ongoing anti-smallpox campaign. In the previous decades, north-
ern Finland had suffered serious smallpox epidemics. Following the inoc-
ulation order of February 1825, inoculant storages were established in
the posts of district doctors across Finland. It was the duty of the district
doctors to oversee inoculations and inoculation inspections. Clergymen,
on the other hand, were required to maintain lists of people who were
not inoculated and had not suffered smallpox.61
Dr. Deutsch was later said to have also given medical help to the
Sámi. Fellman also notes that Deutsch ‘was probably the first practising
doctor who came to the parish with medicine supplies.’62 According to
Fellman, all Sámi who had suffered even minor illnesses wanted to par-
ticipate in the doctor’s consultation. He could not, however, help many
of the inhabitants as most of them suffered from gout or rheumatism.
Although the cold climate, according to Fellman, ‘purified the air,
strengthened the body and improved the appetite’, it also caused diseases
like gout for reasons such as insufficient perspiration due to the cold
temperature.63
Before medicine became a professional skill in Lapland, priests and
their spouses were among those who worked to improve the health of
the Sámi. In the early nineteenth century Utsjoki was made an independ-
ent inoculation district. Carl Stenbäck, the vicar of Utsjoki in the 1830s,
42 R. KYLLI
wanted to take over the inoculation operations. He then used the pro-
ceeds from the inoculation to teach Christianity to destitute Sámi chil-
dren. Carl Stenbäck’s wife Ottilia also became known for helping the
people of the region with medical advice.64 The priest and his household
had medical books that could be used to identify different diseases and
find ways of treating them. Starting in the 1820s, the inventory lists of
the Utsjoki parish archives feature mentions of medical guidebooks. The
1828 inventory mentions, for example, Joh. Johnsson Hartman’s doc-
tor’s book (1765), which the clergymen used when they needed cures
and remedies.65
Some of the clergymen who worked in Utsjoki in the nineteenth cen-
tury had some medical training,66 but also the priests of the eighteenth
century were recording causes of death in considerable detail. Analysing
the causes of death related to diseases of the lung reveals a considerably
detailed record of whether the deceased had passed away due to short-
ness of breath or chest pains.67 Starting in the eighteenth century, vicar-
ages usually had supplies of common medicines, and Fellman mentions
that he carried a small travelling pharmacy with him when he travelled in
Lapland.68
In the nineteenth century, the palette of cures and remedies available
to the Sámi was already a rich selection of local knowledge and methods
assimilated from a variety of sources, i.e. the forms of healing were at this
point very hybrid. For example, wet cupping, known in China for thou-
sands of years, was practised in many countries by different kinds of heal-
ers in the nineteenth century. It was also known in Torne Lappmark, but
it was adopted there relatively late, as it was not known among the Sámi
during the time of Linnaeus’ travels in the 1730s.69 It seems, according
to the nineteenth-century sources, that the Sámi did not always use cup-
ping horns. Anders Andelin wrote the following about the medical cul-
ture of his parish: ‘Cupping is a well-known treatment; but it is ghastly
because they use the big Lapp knife as the cupping knife. The knife is set
at the place of the horn and then hit with another knife, causing not only
long but also deep wounds.’ The Sámi sometimes also tried to treat the
eye by scraping a turned eyelid with a knife.70
One remedy used relatively often by the Sámi was burning tinder,
which is interesting in the sense that it is not known anywhere else in
Finland but has a counterpart (moxibustion) in the traditional medicine
of China and Japan. In the Chinese method, heat irritation was applied
to precise acupuncture points. The burning of tinder was based on the
notion that the disease affecting an individual could have been sent by
God or brought about by another person. This is why the disease had to
be removed from the body in concrete terms by burning tinder fungus
where the pain was, then allowing the disease to leave the body through
the burnt hole.71 The Sámi also treated ailments such as chest pains and
headaches using burning tinder at various times and in different regions
of Lapland. According to Andelin, severe headache could also be treated
by first cutting the hair away from the affected part of the head, then
placing a burning roll of tinder on the bared skin and allowing the skin
to burn with the tinder. The wound would then ooze pus and take away
the headache.72
More written sources have survived from the nineteenth century com-
pared to earlier centuries, and by the twentieth century there was also
written information about the health of the Sámi going back many gen-
erations. Carl Linnaeus’ report from the early eighteenth century, which
commended the healing skills of the Sámi, has received critical attention
from modern researchers. Lisbet Koerner, for example, states that despite
Linnaeus’ praise, the Sámi were, already in the eighteenth century, a
colonised people who suffered from smallpox and alcoholism and who
had lost their fishing waters and reindeer pastures to settlers and mining
companies.73 On the other hand, by the late nineteenth century many
observers had noted, like Linnaeus, that some Sámi tended to live very
long lives. Their longevity and good health attracted considerable atten-
tion, which is why the traditional healing and medication of the Sámi
were also studied and described in many texts—although the Sámi them-
selves were sometimes characterised as uncivilised savages.74
Andelin, the vicar of Utsjoki, wrote in the 1850s that the Sámi rarely
used any medicine bought from the city, but when medication was
required, they might purchase pepper, ginger, asafoetida resin, sugar
and camphor, which were used to ‘cure all pains’.75 Pepper, for example,
could be boiled in milk and then used to cure stomach pains. Sugar was
mentioned as a medicine in Utsjoki by the 1820s at the latest (as powder
to be blown into a sore eye), and like sugar, flour was also sometimes
used as medicine. Sámi with stomach trouble, for example, would make
bread from ‘rabbit droppings, mixed with rye flour’. This bread was con-
sumed as long as required for the ‘contents of the stomach to become
firmer again.’76 Coffee, brought from the tropics to Lapland, is also
mentioned occasionally in the lists of remedies from the nineteenth cen-
tury. According to Johan Turi, headaches could be cured by first heating
44 R. KYLLI
the scalp by massaging it and then pulling the hair, sometimes so vigor-
ously that the skin would tear off and blood would flow. Washing the
scalp with ‘strong, hot coffee’ was another way to treat headaches.77
Until the late nineteenth century, and with the exception of the occa-
sional itinerant doctor, attempts to improve the health of the Sámi were
based on natural remedies and the work of clergymen, their spouses and
the officials who lived among them. Studying source materials from the
final years of the nineteenth century prompts the question of how the
authorities of the new, scientific medicine regarded the traditional cures
and the health of the Sámi. Thorough investigations of the living condi-
tions in Lapland were conducted in the first years of the twentieth cen-
tury, focusing on matters such as the means of livelihood and the diet
of the Sámi. In a report on the Sámi of Utsjoki written by former vicar
Aukusti Koivisto, the following was said about the health of the Sámi:
People of Lapland are generally healthy and rarely use any kind of med-
icine. They have the traditional remedies they have inherited from their
forefathers for all kinds of diseases, and I once heard a learned doc-
tor say that not all of these remedies are despicable. – Pestilence rarely
menaces these lands, but when it does, it affects everyone; as in smallpox
and typhoid fever – but even then not many die. There must be power
of resistance in nature, and there are no pharmacist’s medications med-
dling with and paralysing those powers. Vaccination uncles also come to
Lapland every winter to inoculate children – to the great horror of the
little ones.78
Koivisto wrote about the diet of the Sámi in a praising tone when he
lived in Utsjoki in the 1890s. He focused his attention especially on fish
liver oil, commonly used for nutrition by the Sámi, the consumption of
which he knew to be beneficial especially to the sick (the health effects of
fish liver oil were not known in any detail at this point):
- - nothing is better than fresh codfish, and it is consumed here through

the winter. In the springtime, when catches are good, it only costs 6 to 7
pennies a kilo – it is melted into fish oil, which you (Finns) buy for your
children in the pharmacies, but oh, what kind of oil it is that you have
there…; Here, when fresh, it is of light colour and sweet taste, therefore
agreeable to eat, – for all who can eat rich foods, and it is certainly healthy
for everyone, especially those weak of chest or otherwise withered.
When scientific medicine started gaining ground, the medical tradition

and diet of the Sámi were initially viewed quite positively. Although con-
tagious diseases were more common in the parish of Utsjoki during the
latter half of the nineteenth century, and some years saw higher mor-
tality than birth rates, the Sámi still lived relatively long lives,79 and the
northern lands were still considered healthy because of the hardening
and invigorating nature of the climate. District doctor K.A. Hällström,
who visited Lapland in 1891, complained of draught when staying with a
Sámi family, but this did not seem to bother the family’s old grandfather
of 80, who slept with a bare head on his grass bed while the wind blow-
ing from a rickety window ruffled his hair. Finnish travellers could do
nothing but envy the magnificent health of the old Sámi man. According
to the doctor, the draught was enough to give anyone brain inflamma-
tion, yet he never heard the old man so much as sneeze.
The art of medicine became more professional in the nineteenth cen-
tury, and hospitals turned into centres of scientific medical research.
Before the nineteenth century, doctors relied on information given by
patients, but already in the early nineteenth century they had new meth-
ods, such as palpation (examination by hand) and auscultation (listen-
ing to the sounds of the body using a stethoscope), at their disposal.80
The doctors of the nineteenth century felt they were at the peak of their
powers. A district doctor working in Lapland in the 1890s also recorded
observations of attitudes to health care and the treatment of diseases of
the Sámi living in Finnish Lapland. We can read between the lines in the
doctor’s report that he considered his own knowledge vastly superior to
that of the Sámi, or at any rate regarded Sámi who dared to comment
on the general state of health affairs in the region with condescension.
The person in question, the foreman of the board of municipal affairs
in Utsjoki, told the doctor that there were no contagious diseases cur-
rently affecting the area. In the doctor’s notes, the person ‘Lapp as he
was, tried to administer the municipal health care as best he could’. Since
there were no illnesses worth mentioning in the municipality at that par-
ticular moment, only a handful of people came to his reception for help:
Ten patients had the rare pleasure of complaining of their ailments to the
doctor. - - Of the ten mentioned above, 30% were rheumatic and weak in
the muscle, and the other 30% were deaf, only in need of a thorough wash-
ing of the ears. The latter, after regaining their hearing after nothing more
than a spraying of water, held the doctor truly a wise man, but from others
he probably only got the naive complaint: ‘So very expensive!’81
46 R. KYLLI
The day-to-day environment of the Sámi, often considered healthy,

was viewed with new scientific criticism in the early twentieth century.
Geographer J.E. Rosberg (1864–1932) visited Lapland and wrote in
his book Lappi (1911) how ‘Lapland’s altitude above sea level, higher
than other regions of Finland, may play a role, but the relatively bacteria-
free environment must be considered the primary reason.’ According to
Rosberg, polar explorers had examined the quality of air in the Arctic
region and had found it to contain almost none of those microscopic
organisms that especially in cultured lands and marsh regions make the
air so foul and unhealthy.82 In the history of medicine, the nineteenth
century has been referred to as the era of bacteriological revolution.
Insights into the causes of various illnesses had been made on the level of
viruses and bacteria, making disease and their causes much easier to fight
in the early twentieth century.83
In parallel with the rapid development of modern laboratory-based
sciences, traditional healing was still in great demand in Lapland.
According to a written record made in Utsjoki in 1925, a Sámi woman
called Maria Aikio had healed a man by taking some soil from the place
where the man had supposedly been infected. After this she ‘rubbed the
pain with it three times; then with the eye-side of a thick needle circum-
ambulated the location three times.’ She promised the disease would be
gone in three days—and it was.84
Conclusion
In the study of history, the Sámi have often been considered a static peo-
ple who lost their traditional habitats to settlers and gave way to them.
Only recent research has highlighted the role of native people as dynamic
groups who crossed oceans and took part in the gradually globalising
trade as active participants.85 The Sámi lived at the crossroads of many
cultural spheres of influence, knew many languages and their thinking
was often very flexible. This also becomes manifest when studying their
medical tradition over a period of more than 300 years.
Traditional healing was no simple matter among an indigenous minor-
ity people. Regardless of whether those who wielded power were rep-
resentatives of the church or science, they tried to influence how the
Sámi were treated and how their health was maintained. In seventeenth-
century Lapland, the Evangelical Lutheran church fought against the tra-
ditional Sámi remedies, which, in their eyes, were manifestations of an
ethnic religion. Using the drum to cure illness was not allowed, but plants
found in the nature could be used freely—and indeed they were used,
both by the Sámi as well as the officials living among them. This crossfire
of different world views, however, also made it possible to try different
cures: if one failed, the other might work. Cross-cultural interaction also
affected the art of medicine: Lapland was a popular destination among
travellers. The lands of the Sámi were part of constantly evolving trade
networks, which brought overseas cures and remedies to complement
local knowledge. The Sámi were open-minded and eager to try different
remedies, and although new contacts also brought new diseases, these
encounters also had much to offer in terms of medication and healing.
The traditional medicine skills of the Sámi featured many elements
from traditional Indian and Chinese medicine. As burning tinder, com-
monly practised by the Sámi, was not used in southern parts of Finland,
it is fascinating to speculate how the practice came to Lapland. Medical
goods and knowledge had probably moved across the Eurasian continent
for a very long time, but there were also active maritime connections.
The Sámi who lived in Torne Lappmark regularly travelled to the coast
of Norway to trade or herd their reindeer.86 Ships brought in new ideas
and new goods, including medicine, from many parts of the world to the
trading towns. Moreover, it should be noted that Lapland was not only
a recipient in this trade, but many traditional remedies and herbs com-
monly used by the Sámi, such as Angelica archangelica, were also taken
from Lapland to Central Europe.
Despite the influx of influence, however, much remained the same: In
Lapland, folk healers were still the experts of nature in the early twenti-
eth century. They knew where plants for medicine and food grew, and
they knew the spells needed for healing.87 The strong health of the Sámi
was also still receiving attention. In 1730, Carl Linnaeus wrote in his
Flora Lapponica how the Sámi ‘would live their innocent lives’ some-
times for more than one hundred years. According to him the health
of the Sámi was excellent, and they were ‘unknowing of the countless
diseases that are common among us Europeans.’ A vicar who worked
in Utsjoki wrote in a similar tone in 1903 that the Sámi who lived in
Finnish Lapland were generally healthy and rarely used any medication.
In his view their health also depended on the fact that no pharmacy-
bought medicine was available to meddle with the natural forces.
The Sámi diet was also considered healthy: the importance of fish liver
oil was emphasised whenever the Sámi way of life was written about.
48 R. KYLLI
This chapter investigated the significance of imported medicine in the

medical culture of the Sámi, which has traditionally been closely linked
to their Arctic means of livelihood. As the twentieth century advanced,
new food products started appearing on the market and the accelerat-
ing urbanisation of the Sámi began interfering with their knowledge of
the traditional ways of healing.88 The use of Angelica archangelica, for
example, started becoming less common when imported vegetables and
fruit became more readily available. The school system also did its part
in alienating the Sámi from their own culture: to the Sámi of Finnish
Lapland, the two decades after the Second World War were a time of
assimilation, as most of the children of Sámi families attended schools
while living in dormitories away from home.89 Keeping the connection
to the traditional ways of healing alive was difficult in a situation where
one’s personal health was constantly controlled by the Finnish school
system.
Notes
1. Carl von Linné, Lapin Kasveja (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden
Seura, 1991), 33–36.
2. Castoreum, a substance extracted from the castor sacs of beavers, was also
used as medication.
3. Lisbet Koerner, Linnaeus: Nature and Nation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1999), 56, 72.
4. The name Lapp was given to the Sámi by non-Sámi.
5. Ritva Kylli, Kirkon ja Saamelaisten Kohtaaminen Utsjoella ja Inarissa
1742–1886 (Rovaniemi: Pohjois-Suomen historiallinen yhdistys, 2005).
6. And. Hellander, ‘Kort underrättelse om Utsjoki By i Torneå Lappmark’,
Tidningar Utgifne Af et Sällskap i Åbo, 26 March 1772.
7. Virgil J. Vogel, American Indian Medicine (Norman: University of
Oklahoma Press, 1990), 36–38.
8. Andrew Wear, ‘Medicine and Health in the Age of European
Colonialism’, in The Healing Arts: Health, Disease and Society in Europe,
1500–1800, edited by Peter Elmer (Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 2004), 315–343.
9. Koerner, Linnaeus, 57–72.
10. See e.g. Medicine and Religion in Enlightenment Europe, edited by Ole
Peter Grell and Andrew Cunningham (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007).
11. Ritva Kylli, Saamelaisten Kaksi Kääntymystä: Uskonnon Muuttuminen
Utsjoen ja Enontekiön lapinmailla 1602–1905 (Helsinki: Suomalaisen
Kirjallisuuden Seura, 2012), 59.
12. The Sami traditionally lived in teepee-like dwellings made of animal skins

or peat.
13. Karin Granqvist, ‘Till vem ger du din själ? Berättelsen om Lars Nillsson
på liv och död’, in Fordom Då Alla Djur Kunde Tala… Samisk Tro i
Förändring, edited by Åsa Virdi Kroik (Stockholm: Rosima, 2001),
51–58.
14. Court records, Enontekiö 1681. Svea Court of Appeal, Protocols of the
Local Courts of Justice 1681. Västernorrland County. Vol. 2. Swedish
National Archives (SNA).
15. Marko Nenonen, Noitavainot Euroopassa: Ihmisen Pahuus (Jyväskylä:
Atena, 2007).
16. Jari Eilola, Rajapinnoilla: Sallitun ja Kielletyn Määritteleminen
1600-luvun Jälkipuoliskon Noituus- ja Taikuustapauksissa (Helsinki:
Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 2003), 64–70.
17. Aage Solbakk, ‘Nature Heals: Guvhlláruššan—An Introduction to the
Tradition of Sami Folk Medicine’, in What We Believe in: Sámi Religious
Experience and Beliefs from 1593 to the Present, edited by Ellen Marie
Jensen (Karasjok: CálliidLágádus, 2015), 138–161.
18. Kylli, Saamelaisten Kaksi Kääntymystä, 72.
19. Wear, ‘Medicine and Health’, 331.
20. Court records, Enontekiö 1687. Svea Court of Appeal, Protocols of the
Local Courts of Justice 1687. Västernorrland County. Vol. 8. SNA.
21. Account book 1702–1759. Utsjoki Parish Archives (UPA) TI:1. NA
(National Archives of Finland).
22. Priests who recorded the reasons for death may not have known or under-
stood all the diseases the Sámi suffered from. However, some of the
priests had medical training and all of them had at least some medical
books in their libraries. For example Lars Levi Laestadius, a famous vicar
and botanist of Lapland, had a lot of medical information, even if he was
sometimes criticised (by scholars of southernmost Sweden and Finland)
for not having a decent library in his isolated vicarage. Juha Pentikäinen
and Risto Pulkkinen, Lars Levi Laestadius: Yksi Mies, Seitsemän
Elämää (Helsinki: Kirjapaja, 2011), 41–58; Kirsi Vainio-Korhonen,
Ujostelemattomat: Kätilöiden, Synnytysten ja Arjen Historiaa (Helsinki:
WSOY, 2012).
23. Causes of death 1749–1751. UPA IAI:2. NA.
24. Causes of death 1750–1850. UPA IAI:2, IC:1–2. NA.
25. Pehr Högström, Beskrifning Öfwer de til Sweriges Krona Lydande
Lapmarker År 1747 (Umeå: Två förläggare förlag, 1980).
26. See also Eilola, Rajapinnoilla, 69–77.
27. See also Lillian Rathje, ‘Notes on Saami Folk Medicine’, in Reading in
Saami History, Culture and Language II, edited by Roger Kvist (Umeå:
Umeå University Center for Arctic Cultural Research, 1991), 93.
50 R. KYLLI
28. En Samling af Läkedomar och Huus-Curer (A Collection of Remedies and

House Cures). The National Library of Finland, Manuscript collection
BB.1.
29. Kylli, Saamelaisten Kaksi Kääntymystä, 122.
30. Vainio-Korhonen, Ujostelemattomat, 15–16.
31. Er. J. Grape, Utkast Till Beskrifning öfver Enontekis Sokn i Torneå
Lappmark ([Luleå]: [Tornedalica], 1969), 207.
32. Ingela Bergman, Lars Östlund, and Olle Zackrisson, ‘The Use of Plants
as Regular Food in Ancient Subarctic Economies: A Case Study Based on
Sami Use of Scots Pine Innerbark’, Arctic Anthropology 41 (2004): 5–9.
The notion of vitamins was not invented until 1912.
33. Eeva Snellman, Väinönputki Oljenkortena (Rovaniemi: Arktinen keskus,
1996), 16–40.
34. Phebe Fjellström, ‘Lapp Diet in Former Times and Today’, Ethnologia
Scandinavica: A Journal for Nordic Ethnology (1983): 84–93.
35. Snellman, Väinönputki, 15–27.
36. Giuseppe Acerbi, Travels Through Sweden, Finland, and Lapland to the
North Cape in the Years 1798 and 1799: In Two Volumes (London: Joseph
Mawman, 1802), 49–50.
37. E.g. Anders Andelin, ‘Kertomus Utsjoen pitäjästä’, Suomi: Tidskrift i
Fosterländska Ämnen 1858, 188.
38. Kaisa Häkkinen and Terttu Lempiäinen, Agricolan Yrtit: Mikael
Agricolan Rucouskirian Terveyttä Tuovat Kasvit, Niiden Esiintyminen ja
Käyttö 1500-luvulla (Turku: Kirja-Aurora, 2007), 71–93.
39. Christfrid Ganander, Maan-miehen Huone- ja Koti-aptheeki (Wasa:
Georg Wilhelm Londiceri, 1788); Tuokko court register, Northern
Ostrobothnia. NA.
40. See e.g. Jens Krigsman (Sønderborg) from Vadsø (in Finnmark) to
Copenhagen 1746, http://dietrich.soundtoll.nl/public/places_standard.
php?id=531917. Accessed 27 June 2017.
41. Hanna Hodacs, Silk and Tea in the North: Scandinavian Trade and the
Market for Asian Goods in Eighteenth-Century Europe (Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 34.
42. Archives of the Swedish East India Company, Gothenburg University
Library, http://www.ub.gu.se/samlingar/handskrift/ostindie/. Accessed
27 June 2017.
43. Inrikes Förpassnings Journal För Uhleåborgs Stora SjöTulls Kammarn,
Pro anno 1766 (nr 30). Account books 1766–1770. Oulu City Archives,
Customs House KIa:1–2. NA. Usually the foodstuffs meant for phar-
maceutical purposes were shipped among other products such as colour
pigments. In 1832, the shipmaster Hans Schloes sailed from Hamburg
to Stockholm—the capital city of Sweden—with nutmeg, rice, annatto,
bayberry, almonds, sumac, pepper, rhubarb, caraway, anise, liquorice,

fig, vermilion, curcuma, rubber, quicksilver, dye wood, arter cæsalpinia,
antimony, white lead, potassium bitartrate, sulphuric acid, lead diox-
ide, resin, zinc, lead, tin, Madeira wine, merchant’s goods and firebrick.
Hans Schloes (Stockholm) from Hamburg to Stockholm 1832, http://
dietrich.soundtoll.nl/public/cargoes.php?id=1235712. Accessed 25
October 2017.
44. Lars Levi Laestadius, Lappalaisten mytologian katkelmia, edited by Juha
Pentikäinen (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 2000), 98–100.
45. Laestadius, Lappalaisten mytologian katkelmia, 98.
46. Laestadius, Lappalaisten mytologian katkelmia, 100.
47. Jacob Fellman, Anteckningar Under Min Vistelse i Lappmarken I–III
(Helsingfors: Finska litteratursällskapet, 1906), III: 163.
48. Arno Forsius, ‘Karhu ja kansanlääkintä’, Suomen Lääkärilehti 16 (1992):
1628. Cures and remedies were thought to have an effect on human
beings and their diseases following a principle of similarity. Yellow bile
was used to cure jaundice, which could also be combated by eating a
skinned yellowhammer.
49. Andelin, ‘Kertomus’.
50. Fellman, Anteckningar Under Min Vistelse, III: 163; Andelin, ‘Kertomus’,
188–190.
51. Johan Turi, Kertomus Saamelaisista (Helsinki: WSOY, 1979), 154–156.
52. Erkki Itkonen, ‘A. Andelinin utsjoenlappalainen satu- ja sananlasku
keräelmä-’, Suomalais-ugrilaisen Seuran Aikakauskirja LIII (1947):
16–17; Kylli, Saamelaisten Kaksi Kääntymystä.
53. Fellman, Anteckningar Under Min Vistelse, I: 558–559.
54. Turi, Kertomus Saamelaisista, 144–166.
55. Ulla Piela, Kansanparannuksen Kerrotut Merkitykset Pohjois-Karjalassa
1800- ja 1900-luvuilla (Joensuu: University of Eastern Finland,
2010), 17.
56. Turi, Kertomus Saamelaisista, 159; see e.g. Utsjoki estate inventory deeds.
District Court of Lapland EcI:6. NA.
57. The reports of Lapland municipalities (Utsjoki) 1903. Lapland
Committee Archives Ee:1. NA.
58. Sidney W. Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern
History (New York: Penguin, 1986), 193.
59. Ritva Kylli, ‘Bread and Power in the “Land of No Bread”—Low-
Carbohydrate Sámi Diet in Transition’, Acta Borealia (2014): 1–22.
60. Minna Harjula, Vaillinaisuudella Vaivatut: Vammaisuuden Tulkinnat
Suomalaisessa Huoltokeskustelussa 1800-luvun Lopulta 1930-luvun Lopulle
(Helsinki: Suomen Historiallinen Seura, 1996), 19.
52 R. KYLLI
61. Arno Forsius, ‘Rokotus isorokkoa vastaan Suomessa: Kuvauksia lääket-

ieteen historiasta’, http://www.saunalahti.fi/arnoldus/rokotus.html.
Accessed 18 June 2017; Turo Manninen, Pohjoisen Suomen Sairaanhoidon
Historia (Oulu: Pohjois-Pohjanmaan sairaanhoitopiirin kuntayhtymä,
1998), 43–45.
62. ‘Jaakko Fellman ja hänen kertomuksensa Lapista’, Kyläkirjaston Kuvalehti,
1 November 1907; Fellman, Anteckningar Under Min Vistelse, I:
392–402.
63. Fellman, Anteckningar Under Min Vistelse, I: 341–342.
64. ‘Ottilia Christina Stenbäck’, Suomen nainen, 1 February 1915.
65. Inventory list 1828. UPA WI:1. NA.
66. Kylli, Kirkon ja Saamelaisten Kohtaaminen, 91.
67. Causes of death 1750–1850. UPA IAI:2, IC:1–2. NA.
68. Ulla Piela, ‘“Konsti elää kauwwan”: Parantaminen Suomessa varhaismod-
ernilta ajalta nykypäivään’, in Kiistellyt Tiet Terveyteen: Parantamisen
Monimuotoisuus Globaalihistoriassa, edited by Markku Hokkanen and
Kalle Kananoja (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 2017), 98;
Fellman, Anteckningar Under Min Vistelse, vol. I.
69. Grape, ‘Utkast Till Beskrifning’; Turi, Kertomus Saamelaisista, 146–147;
Rathje, ‘Notes on Saami Folk Medicine’, 102.
70. Andelin, ‘Kertomus’, 190.
71. T.I. Itkonen, Suomen Lappalaiset Vuoteen 1945: 2. Osa (Porvoo:
WSOY, 1948), 450–451; P.J. Pöntinen and Tero Sisto, ‘Taulaaminen,
saamelainen parannuskeino’, Kalevalaseuran Vuosikirja (1983): 304–305.
72. Andelin, ‘Kertomus’, 188.
73. Koerner, Linnaeus, 73–74.
74. Cf. Vogel, American Indian Medicine, 4.
75. A.A., ‘Lappalaisten luonnon taipumukset ja awut kuin myös wiat’,
Suometar, 15 May 1857.
76. Fellman, Anteckningar Under Min Vistelse, III: 163; Andelin, ‘Kertomus’,
187–189.
77. Turi, Kertomus Saamelaisista, 147.
78. The reports of Lapland municipalities (Utsjoki) 1903. Lapland Committee
Archives Ee:1. NA.
79. Causes of death 1850–1899. UPA. NA.
80. Heikki S. Vuorinen, Taudit, Parantajat ja Parannettavat:
Lääketieteellinen Historia (Tampere: Vastapaino, 2010), 230–232.
81. K.A. Hällström, ‘Kuvia Kittilän piirilääkärin alueelta’, Duodecim 7 (1891):
216–238.
82. J.E. Rosberg, Lappi (Helsinki: Kansanvalistusseura, 1911).
83. W.F. Bynum, The Western Medical Tradition: 1800 to 2000 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2006).
84. Suomen Kansan Vanhat Runot: 12, Pohjois-Pohjanmaan Runot 2:

Toisinnot 4683–8737 (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 1935),
281–282.
85. Tony Ballantyne, ‘Empire, Knowledge and Culture: From Proto-
Globalization to Modern Globalization’, in Globalization in World
History, edited by A.G. Hopkins (New York: Norton, 2002), 115–140.
86. J. Qvigstad, Lappische Heilkunde, mit Beiträgen von K. B. Wiklund (Oslo:
Aschehoug, 1932), 227–228.
87. Turi, Kertomus Saamelaisista, 154.
88. See e.g. Eilola, Rajapinnoilla, 11–12; Veli-Pekka Lehtola, Saamelaiset
Suomalaiset: Kohtaamisia 1896–1953 (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden
Seura, 2012).
89. Snellman, Väinönputki, 21.
CHAPTER 3
Reports on Encounters of Medical Cultures:

Two Physicians in Sweden’s Medical
and Colonial Connections in the Late
Eighteenth Century
Saara-Maija Kontturi
In 1798, two Swedish physicians reported to Collegium Medicum, the

Swedish state medical college, from a faraway land: the first one in London,
the other one in the Swedish colony of St. Barthélemy in the Caribbean Sea.
Although Swedish medical presence in such distant locations was excep-
tional at the time, the fact that the reports came in the same year is a coin-
cidence. The locations and physicians had nothing to do with each other,
but their experiences abroad share some common elements, which are inter-
esting in the context of this book’s themes: medical transnational networks
between countries and continents, hybridisation and pluralism of medicine,
and transferring ideas between different medical cultures. They also show
Swedish medical and scientific activity outside the actual medical culture of
the motherland, and especially in the colonial and Atlantic context, a point
of view traditionally consigned to the margins of Swedish history.1
S.-M. Kontturi (*)

University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland
e-mail: saara-maija.kontturi@jyu.fi

56 S.-M. KONTTURI
Having lost its status as a great power in the early eighteenth century,
Sweden saw an opportunity in science. Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus
was one of the most famous naturalists at the time, known for develop-
ing and formalising the foundations of modern taxonomy. Linnaeus sent
his students all over the world to spread his ideas and collect informa-
tion. His policy is thought to have greatly influenced and encouraged
early modern scientific travel in Europe. For example, Sir Joseph Banks,
the famous British patron of science, was inspired by him and further
promoted scientific travel. The journeys of Linnaeus’ students (known
as his apostles) continued for half a century. The students visited all five
known continents and worked with several Swedish institutions, such as
the East India Company.2 The motives for these expeditions were more
than just classifying species of plants and other organisms. It was thought
that collecting foreign species might make homeland cultivation possible
and reduce expensive imports. Linnaeus personally was very patriotic and
cameralist in his endeavours, and this economic aspect made the expedi-
tions possible, as it was in accordance with the mercantilist policy of the
period.3
Linnaean travel shaped a tradition that was linked with the medical
exchange of ideas and colonial interests later on, at the turn of the cen-
tury. Sweden was actively seeking ways to extend its power and tried
to enter the colonial competition, but as a latecomer, it was relatively
left out, acquiring only few, small and short-lived colonies. From 1638
to 1878, Sweden had overseas colonies in Africa (only in the seven-
teenth century) and America. Most of these lasted under Swedish rule
for only a few years. Territorial aspirations were secondary. Science was
a tool of colonial power: scientific exploration in colonies was thought
to strengthen Sweden’s position and international influence, as well as
bringing economic advantage with transfers and adaptations of foreign
products to Sweden.4 Scandinavian colonial exploitation has often been
portrayed as more subtle and humane than that of other European colo-
nial powers. However, criticism of this perspective has pointed out that
even though the Crown and some administrators encouraged peace-
ful means and questioned the racial justification of slavery, in practice
Sweden participated in the slave trade and exploitation, and many colo-
nial administrators shared the discriminating views that were thought
to justify slavery.5 Also the scientific motivation for colonialism has
been regarded as morally superior to those of other European pow-
ers, even though the scientific perspective, too, was clearly shadowed
3 REPORTS ON ENCOUNTERS OF MEDICAL CULTURES … 57
by mercantilist ideology and economic profit. Moreover, Sweden bene-

fited from what the other colonial powers had accomplished in the West
Indies.6
Against this background, the travels of physicians Fredric Schulzen
and Samuel Fahlberg were part of the greater phenomena of scientific
travel, colonial medicine, and knowledge transfer, but also personal
quests and opportunities for homeland medicine to explore and share
information. The traditions of scientific travel had been long estab-
lished: both Fahlberg’s and Schulzen’s cases demonstrate the method
of travel, observation, and report by letter. Fahlberg’s reports also show
how words shaped the colonial habit of discovery, description, and
finally exploitation of foreign materials. A specific “philosophy of travel”
advised scientists to observe and write everything down in detail.7 It was
also promoted by Linnaeus, who believed a scientist was also an observer
of all fields and told his apostles to “ask about everything”.8
In the following sections, the cases of Schulzen and Fahlberg are scru-
tinised as two exceptional colonial links connecting the West Indies and
East Indies (via Britain) to Northern Europe. The focus of this analysis
is on global networks and the interaction of physicians with the differ-
ent medical systems between which they operated. It shows how Sweden
participated in shaping and sharing medical information gained from the
colonies outside Europe, impacting on how certain global diseases were
managed and treated in their own sphere of influence, which extended
from the Caribbean via London to Sweden. This chapter also contributes
to the main themes of this book, hybridisation and pluralism of medi-
cal cultures (both between different cultures and between folk and offi-
cial healers), as well as spatial connections and transfer of information
between regions.
Two Physicians in Global Medical Networks

Fredric Schulzen (1770–1848)9 graduated from Uppsala as a doctor in
medicine in 1797 and left for a scientific excursion in October of that
year. The trip was a long one, lasting until 1804.10 His first destination
was London, where he worked as an assistant in the library and museum
of Sir Joseph Banks. Banks, President of the Royal Society of London,
was a famous naturalist and botanist, also known for taking part in
James Cook’s first great voyage. Schulzen’s appointment as Banks’ assis-
tant ended after three years, but he continued his studies in England
58 S.-M. KONTTURI
and Scotland until 1801.11 This chapter is based on his 1798 report
to Sweden about new potentially revolutionary findings in medicine in
British India. His journal of the tour enlightens readers about the practi-
calities and reality of travelling for scientific purposes: his goals and how
they were met, his financial situation while travelling, and above all else,
his connection to East India and enthusiasm for new medical ideas trans-
ferred from there.
Schulzen was not the first Swedish assistant Banks had. There was a
“natural history axis” between Uppsala and London from 1760 to 1810:
Linnaeus’ apostles, naturalists Daniel Solander (1733–1782) and Jonas
Carlsson Dryander (1748–1810), and botanist Adam Afzelius (1750–
1837) had been Banks’ secretaries and librarians before Schulzen—
Dryander and Afzelius even at the same time as Schulzen in 1798.12
During his appointment in London, Schulzen met Dryander,13 at least,
but his connection to Linnaeus’ other apostles is uncertain. Schulzen
had studied in Uppsala,14 but he was not Linnaeus’ student, as the great
naturalist had died in 1778. However, Schulzen benefited from the con-
nection Linnaeus had created. Even if he was not a naturalist, the “natu-
ral history axis” paved the way for Schulzen, too, as Banks already knew
the Uppsala students. Especially Solander, who came to London in 1760
and—against Linnaeus’ expectations—decided to stay in Britain, played a
significant role in establishing a connection and trust between British and
Scandinavian academics.15 There was, after all, a special kinship between
natural history and medicine: several physicians of the eighteenth century
besides Linnaeus were also natural historians, including another key fig-
ure in this chapter, Samuel Fahlberg. Dryander’s uncle Lars Montin was
a physician and one of the most influential Swedish naturalists of the era,
too.16
Some of Linnaeus’ students also had degrees in medicine, but the
motives for their journeys were not medical. As such, Schulzen’s pre-
conditions for travelling were somewhat different from theirs. In the
eighteenth century, the Swedish Kingdom had a severe lack of offi-
cial physicians. The cornerstones of medical development had been
laid in the latter half of the seventeenth century with the foundation of
Collegium Medicum and a proposal for regional physician’s offices, but
it took decades, even centuries, before this was actually put into prac-
tice. Medicine was a new profession and not very appealing to students,
and medical education in itself was insufficient, so there were not enough
medical graduates. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the few
physicians in the whole kingdom were commonly of Central European

origin (the Netherlands, France, Germany).17 Aspiring physicians sought
a better medical education abroad. In the eighteenth century, Swedish
medical students travelled abroad to study in universities such as Leiden,
Utrecht, and Harderwijk in the Netherlands, Greifswald and Halle
in Germany, and Reims in France, where they eventually graduated as
doctors in medicine.18 In the nineteenth century, studying abroad was
much less common.19 Swedish universities had developed enough to
offer higher-quality education to the growing number of medical stu-
dents, and there was no need to travel abroad to get a degree in med-
icine. Instead, study tours were done—by default—to acquire and share
medical knowledge during one’s studies or at a more advanced stage in a
physician’s medical career.20
This was also the case with Schulzen. However, the true motives of
medical scientific tours are hard to trace. An individual desire to see the
world and get to know foreign colleagues cannot be ignored. According
to several studies of students’ motives, the attraction of Western cul-
ture, humanism and the Enlightenment were indeed significant pull
factors for academic mobility,21 and their importance only grew in the
nineteenth century when the educational conditions improved. Even
Linnaeus’ apostles are thought to have been partly motivated by “curi-
osity” or a “desire to explore the world,” with an emphasis on the stu-
dents’ individual aspirations, not only the general good resulting from
these expeditions.22
Samuel Fahlberg’s case is somewhat different. He was sent to work
as a physician in Sweden’s Caribbean colony, St. Barthélemy, in 1785.
Thus, he is one of the farthest-travelled Swedish physicians of the eight-
eenth century. He wrote several reports to Sweden concerning epidem-
ics, weather, and the natural history of the island. These journals have
been used as sources for this chapter. His experiences and observations
provide a window on cultural and environmental influences on European
medicine, far from the actual sphere of influence of the motherland.
They show the interaction between different medical systems and the
challenges European medicine encountered in an unfamiliar environ-
ment. Schulzen and Fahlberg travelled for different reasons: Schulzen’s
trip was temporary, although a lengthy one. Fahlberg settled down in the
Caribbean West Indies permanently; leaving Sweden was a requirement
for and purpose of his appointment, rather than a means for achieving
something through it.
60 S.-M. KONTTURI
The aspiration for a colony physician’s office is understandable in

the overall European context. The experience gained from the East and
West Indian colonies was valuable and respected among medical prac-
titioners, and the physicians of the colonies were considered to have a
significant effect on medicine in the homeland. Colonial medicine has
a special position in the history of medicine in this regard. It forced
European medicine to adjust its perceptions to a new environment and
conditions and thus encouraged the observational method of develop-
ing medicine. Especially, it made medical practitioners consider the
relationship between environment and disease. Colonial medicine was
a hybridised system, even refined: it had to combine scientific methods
with the learned traditions and folklore of a different, even conflicting
system. As stated in the introduction to this book, conflict and hybridi-
sation were not mutually exclusive. Colonial practitioners often declared
themselves—directly or indirectly—independent from professional
authorities, and the colonies attracted people who were independently
inclined to start with, not to mention adventurous and ambitious, willing
to promote their personal career or scientific interests.23
Reporting on the New Cure for Venereal Disease

In 1798 Schulzen, a newly-qualified doctor of medicine, sent a letter to
Collegium Medicum from London:
since October last year I have been in London, where I have by all
possible means aspired to educate myself with the situation in Medicine
and Surgery; but to this day, as a stranger and newcomer, I have not fully
reached my goal. My desire to deliver something worthwhile to the Royal
College has thus been unmet. Despite these difficulties, I have acquainted
myself with one person and another with a lot to give to medicine.24
Schulzen’s letter shows a clear indication of his motives for the trip:
to be of use to medicine in his homeland. Despite having served as an
assistant to Joseph Banks for some time and even having made some
acquaintances, he had struggled to find his place in a new medical
and professional environment. By this time, Schulzen was not aware
of where the trip would take him or how long it would last. His route
went through several countries, but most is known about his time in
London.
During this time, Schulzen also had access to letters concerning med-
ical observations, probably via Banks. These included letters from two
surgeons, Bartlett and Sandford.25 In his report, Schulzen pays special
attention to one of these letters, which was sent directly to Banks. In
1796, with the contribution of Banks, the letter was published in the
London-based medical journal Annals of Medicine.26 The letter was writ-
ten by—as Szhulzen wrote—“Mr Scot from Bombay,” who claimed to
have found a new cure for the venereal disease, syphilis.27 In Europe,
syphilis was generally considered a public and pernicious problem. Even
though it was not usually lethal, it afflicted a remarkable percentage of
the population; both its victims and the whole society suffering from it
bore a heavy stigma. The usual preventive methods (quarantine, isola-
tion) were typically impractical or ineffective because of the nature of
the disease (long duration, often no visible signs or imminent threat of
transmission). The stigma prevented the victims from seeking treatment,
they were able to conceal the disease, and thus spread it further. Syphilis
soon became a global problem.28 As Schulzen wrote, there was a need
for proper treatment; the customary mercury treatment was usually even
more harmful than the disease itself.29
By “Mr Scot”30 Schulzen meant the Scottish physician Helenus Scott,
the developer of nitric acid treatment,31 which had raised a “glimmer of
hope” of a new efficient successor for mercury.32 Scott had been in India
since 1782 as a member of the British East India Company. He was very
young at the time, probably around 25 years of age (his exact birth date
is unknown). One of his early appointments in India was as an apothe-
cary in the East India Company’s hospital in Bombay, which offered him
the opportunity to get in contact with indigenous practitioners and trad-
ers. Scott had sent his first letter to Banks in 1790, but the first one con-
cerning the nitric acid treatment was sent in 1796.33 This was the letter
Schulzen was referring to in his journal.
Scott had been studying nitric acid for several years. Because nitric
acid was not widely in use, he thought it appropriate to test it on himself
first.34 Indeed, referring to what he had read in Scott’s letter, Schulzen
described how Scott had used nitric acid to treat his own liver prob-
lems and found it to have had similar effects to mercury, with fewer side
effects. The article published in Annals of Medicine sparked immediate
interest, and several trials were begun. In the Royal Naval Hospital in
Plymouth, over 50 syphilis patients were treated with nitric acid, most
of them “of the worst kind.” The treatment was deemed successful.
62 S.-M. KONTTURI
A surgeon in the hospital, Mr. Stephen Hammick, wrote a letter about

the trials to the physician Thomas Beddoes, another prominent figure
in science and medicine in late eighteenth-century Britain. Beddoes was
enthusiastic about the findings and started to heavily promote further tri-
als. A publication on the Plymouth hospital trial came out in 1797.35
In autumn 1797, enthusiasm about the potentially revolutionary
treatment was still high, with reportedly some 100 cases having been
cured in trials. In 1798, the finding was attracting more than just praise
and the tone of medical writings started to shift towards scepticism and
criticism. Scott seemed to be let down by this, but in a letter of 1799
he was still offering an explanation for failed trials of the treatment: the
amount of nitric acid used in the failed trials was too small. This letter
was his last one concerning nitric acid treatment; in his later letters to
Banks he focused on other medical subjects.36
In his journal, Schulzen offered a few brief descriptions of nitric acid
treatment. These referred to trials by other physicians and surgeons,
including Beddoes, Bartlett, and Sandford. He cited the successful case
of a 20-year-old woman, who had been cured within a month of nitric
acid treatment. Schulzen pointed out that, according to Beddoes, nitric
acid seemed to be beneficial for the primary symptoms of Lues (syphilis)
and in some cases even in the secondary phase. Therefore, he argued,
treatment should always be started with nitric acid before anything else.
Furthermore, Schulzen wrote that in many cases, nitric acid seemed to
increase appetite; this was reported with an asthmatic patient and some
delicate women, “among whom lack of appetite is the most prevalent
condition.” Bartlett had also successfully treated Typhus Nervosa with
nitric acid.37
Despite the apparent enthusiasm and praise for nitric acid treatment,
Schulzen clearly wanted to appear critical and objective. He summed
up some reports by Sandford “in order to give examples of a different
kind of success.”38 Case one, a young man, had been cured successfully
within weeks. Case two, a 45-year-old man, had been more complicated:
the treatment had caused him side effects, such as burning in the throat,
stomach pain and flatulence, which had led to discontinuing the treat-
ment. After a second trial and the same result, the man had been given
opium to alleviate his symptoms. Case three, a 22-year-old man, had
been cured with nitric acid and sent home from the hospital, but with
a curious side effect: his face had become inflamed and bloated to the
point that he had become almost unrecognisable.39
After summing up these cases, Schulzen shifted back to Scott, who

in a very recent letter had written that he was still continuing to use
nitric acid with great success. This time, Scott had found that the treat-
ment was effective both externally and internally, which, according to
Schulzen, was a “fortunate situation, for admittedly certain patients are
bothered by its effects on the stomach and bowel.”40 Scott was recom-
mending a bath with nitric acid blended in, from half an hour to an hour
at a time. According to Harrison, Scott recounted the use of nitric acid
baths in his last letter concerning nitric acid from 1799,41 but Schulzen
was aware of the bath treatment even when writing his letter, signed 20
February 1798. It appears that Scott had written about the bath treat-
ment even earlier on.
Schulzen was clearly aware of the inconsistent trial results and espe-
cially the conflicting response from physicians. He had heard of disap-
pointing reports from some English hospitals: for example, in the Lock
Hospital in London, the treatment had not met the expectations of phy-
sicians, having cured only some symptoms but not the disease altogether.
Taking this into account, Schulzen wanted to wait for more trials, so that
“some physicians become less excited about its recognition, and others
less captivated by prejudice.”42 Only then could he provide more reliable
information and conclude whether the treatment should be implemented
or not.43
Schulzen was one of several foreign physicians to seize on the find-
ings: they continued to practice and develop the nitric acid treatment
even after Scott himself had given up on it and moved on to other sub-
jects.44 However, Swedish physicians did not seem to adopt the use of
nitric acid, at least not as a customary treatment alongside mercury; it
was not mentioned in journals thereafter.
Scott caused a sensation with his findings at the time, but history
remembers him mainly through the writings of others rather than his
own publications—which were scarce. Harrison describes him as an
almost forgotten figure in the history of medicine.45 However, on a
larger scale, Harrison argues that the colonies had a significant influ-
ence on British and European medicine. Traditionally this influence has
been viewed as one-sided and coming from Britain to the colonies, but
the colonies also fostered new practices, which spread to Britain and
Europe. The British East India Company took pride in being independ-
ent from the motherland’s scientific and metropolitan authority. Many
Indian-based therapies were brought to and practiced in Britain, and
64 S.-M. KONTTURI
Harrison also notes that colonial research on the natural history of dis-
ease and on morbid anatomy had a significant effect on European med-
icine. The different circumstances sparked new ideas and promoted
empirical practice. As such, Harrison notes, the influence of the colo-
nies was central rather than peripheral, and Scott is only one of numer-
ous examples.46 The case of Schulzen also demonstrates how medical
networks connected colonies to motherlands, Europe and the North,
through distinctive physicians and scientists. A famous name, Joseph
Banks, connected Schulzen and Scott, two young and aspiring physi-
cians, and helped transfer ideas from Bombay to Sweden. According to
Harrison, there was also a Protestant connection between colonial prac-
titioners and Danish and German missionaries, who further delivered
new ideas to Northern Europe.47
By the time of his letter, Schulzen was planning to stay in London
until the end of the next year (1799). He emphasised that this was nec-
essary in order to achieve “sufficient knowledge” in medicine and sur-
gery. After that, he was planning to travel to Paris, but the costs of his
trip were already exceeding his means. He ended his letter with a plea to
Collegium Medicum to support his trip with a grant. He expressed that
with “such a remarkable support in these costly conditions,” he would
feel indebted and obliged to be of more use to his “beloved fatherland”
in the future.48 Schulzen signed his letter 20 February 1798. He would
travel to Paris, but two years later than he originally thought; he first
continued his studies in England and Scotland until 1801. He also trav-
elled to Vienna and Berlin before returning home in 1804.49 It is not
known how he actually funded the rest of his trip, but his assignment as
Banks’ assistant continued at least until 1800.
Scott was not the only physician with new ideas to end up in
Schulzen’s reports. The other became one of the biggest names of the
history of medicine. In 1798, Edward Jenner published his observations
about the use of cowpox in inducing smallpox immunity, and Schulzen
reported to Sweden about this “new inoculation”, later known as vacci-
nation. He was the first one who sent the vaccination material to Sweden
stored in glass, but this material was not used yet.50 Schulzen returned
to Sweden in 1804 and became a quarantine doctor in the Känsö quar-
antine station near Gothenburg. He held this office until 1847 and died
the following year. During the course of his career, he also temporarily
worked as a second city physician, military physician, and manager of a
vaccine stock.51
The nitric acid treatment connected the East and West Indies in a
curious way and showcases the transfer of information from an eastern
colony to a western one. Scott brought the idea of nitric acid treatment
from the East Indies to Britain via a letter to Banks. Another British
doctor working in Liverpool, James Currie, trialled the treatment and
suggested it be used in the West Indies, where some practitioners did
so with success52—and where the other physician discussed here, Samuel
Fahlberg, was working while Schulzen was in London.
Interaction Between Medical

Cultures in St. Barthélemy
Long before it had a Caribbean colony, Sweden was already actively trad-
ing in the Caribbean and felt it necessary to obtain its own island. Several
attempts were made to negotiate and buy islands in the West Indies from
European colonial powers, especially Tobago, but most of these plans
failed. Tobago was seen as an ideal colony: its rich soil enabled the cul-
tivation of raw materials such as sugar, coffee, and indigo, it was easy to
defend, and in a favourable location. Aspirations for a colony finally bore
fruit when France sold the West Indies island St. Barthélemy to Sweden
in exchange for trading rights at Gothenburg in 1784. At the time of
acquisition, Sweden was not aware of the island’s potential and took a
risk. In comparison to Tobago, St. Barthélemy was more of a compro-
mise. The agricultural conditions were difficult: it was small, moun-
tainous and unfertile, and there was no fresh water. Sweden was clearly
disappointed in St. Barthélemy, demonstrated by the fact that it tried to
acquire yet another island from Spain.53
Upon arrival on the island in 1784 it became clear that cultivation
there would bear no fruit. Other plans for the island were made swiftly.
St. Barthélemy was expected to become a transit port for goods and the
slave trade.54 At first, the plan seemed successful. St. Barthélemy had
a population of 739 in 1787, of which 458 were of European back-
ground (Swedes, French, English, and Dutch) and 281 were African.
In 1800, the population of the island had exceeded 5000. The Swedish
West India Company was founded and the capital city of Gustavia estab-
lished, named in honour of the king, Gustaf III.55 Gustavia was built
from scratch, and the population growth came mainly from migrants
from other Caribbean islands. This was a desired outcome and deliberate
strategy, as opposed to the potential floods of migrants coming from the
66 S.-M. KONTTURI
motherland. Especially among Finnish peasants, there was great interest

in emigrating to the New World, but it was promptly suppressed.56
The Swedish government and the Swedish West India Company
sought administrative personnel to send to the colony, with a prefer-
ence for people who had some experience of the New World. A young
Swedish surgeon, Samuel Fahlberg, had the advantage of having been in
North America before in the service of Jean Francois de la Perouse, a
French naval officer and explorer. Fahlberg was wounded in a battle with
the English in Hudson’s Bay and returned to Stockholm in 1784. That
same year, he was selected as a government secretary and physician to St.
Barthélemy.
Fahlberg had qualified as a surgeon in 1782 at the age of 24. His first
appointment had been as a surgeon on a merchant ship, followed soon
by service in de la Perouse’s fleet. He had very little administrative expe-
rience when he was appointed as a physician to St. Barthélemy. Fahlberg
gave up his position as government secretary only two years later and
took the assignments of customs inspector and cashier instead. He also
became a provincial doctor and acted as a surveyor and naturalist on the
island.57 However, he is best known for his work as a cartographer. He
mapped St. Barthélemy and several surrounding islands with distinctive
accuracy and aestheticism; his 1801 map of St. Barthélemy, Charta öfver
ÖN St BARTHELEMY, is considered one of the most significant histori-
cal maps of the island.58
Fahlberg described his arrival on the island in 1785:
Here to St Barthélemy we came on fifth of March —. This island is quite

mountainous, all the peaks are growing different kinds of Cacti, Opuntiae
and an immeasurable amount of stinging and poisonous rambling plants,
so that getting through is almost impossible, at the very least extremely
difficult and dangerous; which is one of the reasons why the island is so
uncultivated. Furthermore, the only relief for the inhabitants’ poverty is
to grow cotton, the natural product of the island. There are approximately
80 residences and the population comes to 450 whites and 278 Negroes;
all of them very uncultured and at times disorderly, since they have no
proper administration; certainly, they have a so-called Commandant,
appointed by themselves, but the French do not seem to have been very
attentive to them. Surely, it seems that the island’s favourable location and
short distance from several other islands should make commerce here con-
siderable …59
Fahlberg described the climate of St. Barthélemy as “healthy”. There was

no fresh water and rain was scarce, so the inhabitants needed to get their
water from the neighbouring islands, St. Eustatius and St. Christopher.60
His daily weather accounts demonstrate the dryness of the island with
few rainy days.61 Fahlberg noted that Europeans were unaccustomed
to the climate and lifestyle of the islands and thus were susceptible to
diarrhoea, pleurisy and rheumatic catarrh. They also felt uncomforta-
ble in the heat and sought for relief in shade and cool gusts, sometimes
undressed. Fahlberg thought these activities made them all the more
vulnerable to the diseases. Another common condition was sunstroke,
which often followed long periods spent in the sun in the countryside.62
Contemporary medicine took the general view that the constitution of
Europeans had been shaped by the cold climate; diseases or conditions
were not that different from those in Europe, but they were more severe
in nature, especially for Europeans with their unaccustomed constitu-
tion.63 Fahlberg also noted that because constitution and temperament
varied from person to person, not all medicine was effective for everyone:
even though they had the same illness, the effect of the medicine also
depended on the patient’s constitution and temperament.64
Natural susceptibility to certain diseases is also one of the reasons why
Fahlberg systematically distinguished between European colonisers and
African slaves. The Africans were thought to be prone to different diseases
and were treated separately.65 Fahlberg sorted out the cases of disease and
death into white people and “people of colour”. For example, the cause
of death Trånsjuka was only present in the mortality list of non-whites
in a 1787 report.66 Trånsjuka usually meant death by cachexia or atro-
phy, and it was often connected with gastrointestinal diseases.67 Fahlberg
also wrote that leg wounds and rotten sores were getting more common
among the Africans, and that they blamed the soil for it: where they lived,
the soil was calcareous, whereas elsewhere it was saline.68
European medicine in the West Indies also had to come to terms with
African medicine, sometimes resulting in conflict. The enslaved Africans
held on to their own medicine and only accepted selected parts of the
European medical tradition into their own.69 Despite some European
doctors’ contempt for African medicine, many others generally respected
and even valued it. Africans and their “slave doctors” were thought to
know more about the nature and treatment of tropical diseases—from
which the Europeans suffered a great deal.70 Cross-cultural medical
68 S.-M. KONTTURI
interaction, as defined in this volume, was thus happening simultaneously

in both directions: conflict and contestation, but also accepting and even
embracing some ideas, resulting in a form of hybridisation.
Fahlberg reported that syphilis was “very common, especially in the
town” and that “among negroes in the countryside, venereal scabies is
found every now and then.” According to Fahlberg, in treatment, “they
use nothing else” besides the bark of the guaiac tree and mercury lotion
applied to the venereal sore.71 Fahlberg’s choice of words can be inter-
preted in two ways: that the African slaves only accepted these particu-
lar treatment methods or that they did not consider any other treatment
necessary. Whichever the explanation, it shows the independence and
detachment of African from European medicine—they themselves chose
what was best for them. Fahlberg also repeatedly wrote about African
treatments in terms of what they did instead of what was done to them.
For example, when describing the use of guaiac tree bark in his Utdrag
af Samlingar til Natural-Historien Öfver Ön St Barthelemi i Vest-
Indien,72 he wrote that the islanders cultivated it both for their own use
and for sale outside the island, and the Africans used it to treat venereal
disease grated and boiled.73
The medicine practiced on the island was shaped by nature’s offer-
ings. Fahlberg was very interested in the island’s flora and described
their characteristics and uses in detail in his Anmärkningar vid åtskil-
liga Vestindiska Trädarter (Observations on Several West Indian Wood
Species).74 For example, in his 1787 report, he wrote that he had
used Bois de guajac & Bois de foires to treat venereal disease.75 He also
described Bois de guajac (the guaiac tree) in Anmärkningar vid åtskilliga
Vestindiska Trädarter and in Utdrag af Samlingar til Natural-Historien
Öfver Ön St Barthelemi i Vest-Indien. In the former, he stated that when
dried and consumed as a tea, it strengthened the stomach and purified
the blood. It could be used by white and black people,76 demonstrating
that not every medicine was thought to be suitable for both.
The above examples show the actual position of Fahlberg in rela-
tion to the island’s medical culture. In his writings, Fahlberg objectively
described what was customary among the islanders. Another example
was his description of calabash (according to him, reminiscent of “our
apple tree”). The inhabitants made a soup from it as “a good and guar-
anteed treatment for a prolonged and deeply-rooted diarrhoea.”77 Above
all, he was an observer and learner, respectful of the medical traditions
of the island, both of the slaves and the free Europeans. His approving
and adopting attitude is also visible in his description of the castor oil
plant (Palma Christi): an oil produced from it could be used to treat
headache from the heat of the sun. According to Fahlberg, it brought
good relief.78 As Fahlberg was not the only medical practitioner with
neutral or even positive attitudes towards differing medical cultures, his
attitude can be regarded as a sign of exotification rather than contempt
of the “foreign”, and of respect for the experience gained in different liv-
ing environments—in essence, empiricism surpassing rationalism. It was
a solid foundation for open interaction, rather than contest or conflict,
between different medical cultures.
In his 1787 report, Fahlberg stated that neither smallpox nor severe
fevers had appeared during the few years he had lived on the island.79
Given that the small island was quite an isolated community and the
population was not large in the first years of the colony, it is easy to
understand why epidemics were few. But the fact that the island served
as a transit port ensured that infectious diseases tried to make their way
there every now and then. This and the growing population may have
accounted for the increasing outbreaks of epidemics. Even though in
1798 Fahlberg still stated that St. Barthélemy was one of the health-
iest islands in the West Indies, his report was much more concerned
about epidemics by then, especially “the fevers so common in the hot
climates.”80 A specific disease was known to have affected the West
Indies, which was first called Maladie de Siam and, in the English islands,
Bantam Fever. In the last few years, especially from 1787 onwards, it
had become more common in the English colonies and known as Yellow
Fever, distinguished by yellowness of the skin. The disease had been very
deadly in the beginning, causing violent convulsions and unnatural dis-
tortion of the body in patients who had died of the disease. The physi-
cians of the West Indies felt powerless to combat it: the usual treatment,
such as emetics and bloodletting, were found only to speed up death.
According to Fahlberg, the works of several famous physicians, such as
Chisholm, Duncan, Clark, and Rush, eventually offered some useful
remedies, such as calomel, helping to counter the deadly effects of the
disease.81
Smallpox, endemic worldwide and regarded as one of the most dis-
astrous diseases of the time,82 had spared St. Barthélemy, but it was
menacing the island in 1798. By the date of his report, 22 August
1798, Fahlberg had administered 185 inoculations—predecessors of
vaccinations, smallpox immunity induced by human smallpox virus—to
70 S.-M. KONTTURI
“people of all colours,” ranging from one to 67 years of age. He also

wrote that two French physicians and one English physician had together
inoculated about 700 people.83 Eventually, the whole population of the
island was inoculated by these four physicians. According to the gover-
nor, Fahlberg had saved the lives of a great proportion of the island’s
population, and in comparison with the other West Indies, Fahlberg
was a pioneer of systematic inoculation.84 Later, after the introduction
of vaccination at the turn of the nineteenth century, effectively per-
formed vaccinations would also become the norm in the West Indies. In
the Danish-Norwegian West Indies, a strict vaccination policy was put
into operation. Vaccinations differed from inoculations by the fact that
they were performed with cowpox virus85 instead of the human small-
pox virus, which first led to problems with transporting the live virus
to the West Indies; the virus did not survive alive for a long time, and
it was not readily available in the way that smallpox was. In 1803, this
changed: the virus was transported to the islands with living patients. A
closed community enabled better social control over the vaccinations,
with unvaccinated children banned from getting confirmed in church
or attending school. Slaves were vaccinated, too, and if their children
were left unvaccinated, their owners were fined. Inoculation was pro-
hibited altogether.86 Despite it causing immunity, its risks were immi-
nent: usually one in every 100–200 inoculated people perished because
of the milder smallpox that inoculation caused. Fahlberg reported five
fatalities for over 700 inoculated people on the island.87 Even though
inoculations were not considered as safe and effective as vaccinations, a
strict, controlled policy, made possible by the closed community of the
colony, ensured much more extensive coverage than in the homeland,
where inoculations were still voluntary and not accepted by the majority
of people.88
Fahlberg’s reports from St. Barthélemy demonstrate an awareness of
the situation in other West Indian islands and co-operation with other
physicians, especially French and English ones, who also dominated lan-
guage policy in the West Indies. Gustavia, the capital of St. Barthélemy,
was itself a lively town with a multicultural, multilingual and mobile
population. Fahlberg was only one of the many migrants who travelled
around other West Indian islands, where he even had some properties
and family ties.89 Fahlberg’s wife Elisabeth Sievers was from the neigh-
bouring island of St. Eustatius, and his daughters lived during their adult
years on another island, St. Martin.90 It is no wonder that by the early
nineteenth century, the West Indies had started to develop into a set of
islands with its own cultural and social identity.
After over 20 years spent in the Caribbean, it is easy to understand
why Fahlberg’s ties with his homeland were loosening. During the
French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars, the political situation on St.
Barthélemy was getting complicated, and the population was divided
into pro-French and pro-British groups.91 Fahlberg was on good terms
with the leader of the pro-British camp, and after his appointment as
commander of a Swedish militia company, he tried to stop the privateer-
ing activities of the pro-French faction. His neutrality lost, Fahlberg was
exiled to the neighbouring island, St Eustatius, in 1810. Fahlberg did
not give up his political stand and even sent two letters to the Swedish
government in 1811, advocating a declaration of neutrality under British
protection for the island. Fahlberg was tried for conspiracy against the
Swedish government and sentenced to death; however, the sentence was
never carried out. Deprived of his positions and property, Fahlberg spent
the period from 1810 to 1816 on St. Eustatius and 1816–1829 on St.
Martin, where his two married daughters lived. In 1829, he returned to
St. Eustatius, where lived until his death on 28 November 1834. Right
before his death, the Swedish government sent him a pardon under a
general amnesty, but he did not live to see it.92
The success of St. Barthélemy did not last either. In the 1840s, trade
started to wane fast, in part because former Spanish colonies were now
independent and free to choose their own trading partners. The econ-
omy of the island relied on slaves, and with the decision to abolish slav-
ery and the emancipation of all 1800 slaves on the island in 1846, many
of the island’s planters went into bankruptcy. Mass emigration followed,
and the overall economy of the island collapsed. The colony had become
a burden to Sweden, to the point that in 1868, negotiations were started
with the United States to sell the colony. Negotiations were later initi-
ated with Italy, too, but neither country wanted the island. Only negoti-
ations with France, its former owner, resulted in returning the island in
exchange for 320,000 francs.93
Conclusion
In 1782, Helenus Scott, a young British doctor, was sent to British
India with the British East India Company. In 1784, another young
doctor from Sweden, Samuel Fahlberg, was sent to the West Indies
72 S.-M. KONTTURI
to the Swedish Caribbean colony of St. Barthélemy. Scott reported

on the new nitric acid treatment to Sir Joseph Banks in London in 1797.
At the time, another Swedish physician, Fredric Schulzen, was working
as Banks’ assistant and relayed Scott’s findings to Sweden. Yet another
British physician, James Currie, reported about the same treatment to the
West Indies, where Fahlberg was still working—and reported to Sweden
in 1798, just as Schulzen had done. The physicians, connected by Banks,
form an interesting circle of medical information between eastern and
western colonies, three continents and different European countries,
encompassing a surprisingly wide spatial and cultural sphere.
The two Swedish physicians discussed here were in many respects
exceptions in the medical system of their day. Their contribution to
medicine in Sweden was transferring ideas from both the East and West
Indies, but perhaps even more significant was their work at their desti-
nation, especially in the case of Fahlberg, who made his lifework in the
West Indies over the course of 24 years. Both physicians were young
when they left Sweden: Schulzen was 27, Fahlberg only 24. Despite his
age, Fahlberg had more practical experience; Schulzen had only gradu-
ated in the year when he left. Fahlberg’s previous journey had given him
outstanding experience overseas that ensured him a position as a colony
physician, despite his lack of experience in medical practice. Schulzen
could expect to benefit from his trip when returning to Sweden, but for
Fahlberg, it was a permanent decision—whether he knew it then or not.
After more than 20 years spent in the Caribbean, where his family had
taken root, would he have returned to Sweden even if he had not been
exiled?
Medical journeys were part of a greater phenomenon of international
scientific travel in the Linnaean tradition. The homeland expected to
benefit from physicians’ mobility, so they were required to report even
from a great distance. Fahlberg’s descriptions of St. Barthélemy’s hab-
itat, agriculture and vegetation directly follow the Linnaean ideals of
all-encompassing curiosity and knowledge in every field, especially the
natural sciences. Medical interest is seen especially in Schulzen’s report:
he made it clear that he wanted to deliver useful new currents of med-
icine from Britain, especially because the trip was most likely—at least
initially—funded by Collegium Medicum. Schulzen applied for further
funding for his trip in the report, arguing that it would benefit his home-
land. His report from London was also highly apologetic for not hav-
ing been able to deliver more useful information earlier, although he
clearly believed his news on a new colonial-based treatment for venereal

disease might prove revolutionary. Schulzen was a link between colonial
practitioners, in this case another young physician, Scott, and Northern
Europe—often considered peripheral and distant from Central European
trends in medicine. The network of connections was created through the
famous British patron of science, Sir Joseph Banks.
Despite conflicting results in trials, Schulzen considered nitric acid
treatment interesting enough to report about it to Sweden. He wanted
to believe this new treatment could work, as venereal disease had proven
hard to get rid of and the traditional cures were heavy on the patients.
Another factor that may have made him write the report was the sen-
sation the new treatment had caused in Britain. In the end, nitric acid
treatment did not become a prevailing method, but it continued to
be used in the colonies and by some foreign practitioners who, like
Schulzen, had spread the word outside Britain.
Colonial medicine was shaped by the interaction of differing cultures,
countries, medical systems and demographic groups. This interaction
could be conflicted, rivalrous, or peaceful coexistence, neutral observa-
tion, even curious and appreciative, thus resulting in hybridisation. All
forms of interaction could be happening at the same time. In the West
Indies, medical systems were affected in both ways. Interaction made
possible a separate “West Indian medical culture”—a diverse hybrid of
medicine from several European countries and the islanders, including
African slaves with their own medicine. An even smaller medical circle
was the island of St. Barthélemy itself, with its distinctive vegetation
used by the free and enslaved inhabitants as medicine. Fahlberg’s reports
date from the first year of his presence in the West Indies, which in part
explains his role as an observer and learner. Yet his sympathy and curios-
ity towards the unfamiliar medical system come through his writings: he
was approving of the cures the islanders had found useful. Even though
some other parts of the West Indies saw conflict between European and
African medicine, Fahlberg seems to have been one of the European
medical practitioners who took a neutral or even positive stance towards
different medical cultures. He was promoting hybridisation, learning,
and coexistence rather than prohibition or control of unofficial systems.
Fahlberg’s later career was ruined by political convolutions, but his
contribution to the colony of St. Barthélemy was significant in medical as
well as in other respects, such as the natural history and mapping of the
island. With his foreign colleagues, he saved the people of St. Barthélemy
74 S.-M. KONTTURI
from a devastating smallpox epidemic with the protection of extensive

inoculation. He brought Swedish medicine to terms with the Caribbean
climate, ecosystem, and way of life, combining his knowledge and experi-
ence as a physician with his awareness of new diseases and medical plants
of the Caribbean. Fahlberg reported on his medical experiences and
thoughts but did not bring them back to Sweden—his legacy was left
mostly on the shores of St. Barthélemy.
Notes
1. Lauri Tähtinen and Kalle Kananoja, ‘Atlantin historian haaste’, in
Pohjola, Atlantti, Maailma: Ylirajaisen vuorovaikutuksen historiaa
1600–1900-luvuilla, edited by Kalle Kananoja and Lauri Tähtinen
(Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 2018), 28.
2. Kenneth Nyberg, ‘Linnaeus’s Apostles and the Globalization of
Knowledge, 1729–1756’, in Global Scientific Practice in an Age of
Revolutions, 1750–1850, edited by Patrick Manning and Daniel Rood
(Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016), 78–79; Sverker Sörlin,
‘Globalizing Linnaeus—Economic Botany and Travelling Disciples’,
TijdSchrift voor Skandinavistiek 29 (2008): 118–119.
3. Lisbet Koerner, Linnaeus: Nature and Nation (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1999); Sverker Sörlin, ‘Ordering the World
for Europe: Science as Intelligence and Information as Seen from the
Northern Periphery’, in Nature and Empire: Science and the Colonial
Enterprise, edited by Roy MacLeod (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2000), 64; Sörlin, ‘Globalizing Linnaeus’, 125; Hanna Hodacs,
‘Local, Universal, and Embodied Knowledge: Anglo-Swedish Contacts
and Linnaean Natural History’, in Global Scientific Practice in an Age
of Revolutions, 1750–1850, edited by Patrick Manning and Daniel Rood
(Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016), 90.
4. Sörlin, ‘Ordering the World’, 64, 69; Christina Skott, ‘Expanding Flora’s
Empire: Linnaean Science and the Swedish East India Company’, in
The Routledge History of Western Empires, edited by Robert Aldrich and
Kirsten McKenzie (London: Routledge, 2014), 251.
5. Magdalena Naum and Jonas M. Nordin, ‘Introduction: Situating
Scandinavian Colonialism’, in Scandinavian Colonialism and the Rise of
Modernity: Small Time Agents in a Global Arena, edited by Magdalena
Naum and Jonas M. Nordin (New York: Springer, 2013), 10.
6. Nyberg, ‘Linnaeus’s Apostles’, 79.
7. Sörlin, ‘Ordering the World’, 54.
8. Skott, ‘Expanding Flora’s Empire’, 240.
9. Lars-Olof Skoglund, ‘Schulzenheim, von (Schultz, Schulzen, von

Schulzen), släkt’, Svenskt biografiskt lexicon, https://sok.riksarkivet.se/
sbl/artikel/6564. Accessed 4 March 2017.
10. Otto E.A. Hjelt, Svenska och finska medicinalverkets historia 1663–1812
(Helsinki: Helsingfors Central-Tryckeri, 1893), III: 695.
11. Skoglund, ‘Schulzenheim, von’.
12. Hodacs, ‘Local, Universal, and Embodied Knowledge’, 91–93.
15. Sörlin, ‘Globalizing Linnaeus’, 134; Hodacs, ‘Local, Universal, and
Embodied Knowledge’, 98.
16. Hodacs, ‘Local, Universal, and Embodied Knowledge’, 103.
17. Hjelt, Svenska och finska medicinalverkets, 675–701.
18. Hjelt, Svenska och finska medicinalverkets, 675–701.
19. Physician database 1749–1856 (Saara-Maija Kontturi, 2015–2017).
Collection of data on Finnish physicians, compiled from several primary
and secondary sources: CVs and journals of physicians, registers, biogra-
phies, and research literature.
20. Physician database 1749–1856.
21. Pieter Dhondt, ‘A Difficult Balance Between Rhetoric and Practice:
Student Mobility in Finland and Other European Countries from 1800
to 1930’, in Students, Staff, and Academic Mobility in Higher Education
Account, edited by Fred Dervin and Michael Byram (Newcastle:
Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008), 51.
22. Nyberg, ‘Linnaeus’s Apostles’, 85, 87.
23. David N. Livingstone, Putting Science in Its Place: Geographies of Scientific
Knowledge (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2003); Mark Harrison,
Medicine in an Age of Commerce & Empire: Britain and Its Tropical
Colonies 1660–1830 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 3–5.
24. “at sedan October månad förl. år warit wistande i London, hwarest jag
tillika på möjeligaste sätt sökt underrätta mig om tilståndet I Medicine
och Chirurgien; men såsom ännu främmande och nykommen har jag ej
fullkomligen wunnit mit ändamål. Min längtan at få meddela något wär-
digt Kongl. Collegii upmärksamhet har härigenom blifvit oupfylld. Dessa
swårigheter åaktad har jag dock gjort mig bekant med en eller annan
som tyckste lofva läkarekonsten mycken nytta.” Riksarkivet, Stockholm,
Collegium Medicum, Årsberättelser från provinsialläkare: 1796–1799
[hereafter, RA/CM, ÅFP], Fredric Schulzen 1798.
25. RA/CM, ÅFP Fredric Schulzen 1798.
26. Mark Harrison, ‘Medical Experimentation in British India: The Case of
Helenus Scott’, in The Development of Modern Medicine in Non-Western
Countries: Historical Perspectives, edited by Hormoz Ebrahimnejad
(London: Routledge, 2009), 32.
76 S.-M. KONTTURI

28. Peter Baldwin, Contagion and the State in Europe, 1830–1930
29. RA/CM, ÅFP Fredric Schulzen 1798; Baldwin, Contagion and the State,
355.
30. The surname “Scott” has been sometimes spelled with only one “t”.
Harrison, ‘Medical Experimentation’, 38.
31. Harrison, Medicine in an Age of Commerce, 158–168.
32. RA/CM, ÅFP Fredric Schulzen 1798; Harrison, ‘Medical
Experimentation’, 32.
33. Harrison, ‘Medical Experimentation’, 27–28.
34. Harrison, ‘Medical Experimentation’, 30.
40. “…lycklig omständighet, då onekeligen somlige Patienter ganska mycket
besväras af dess värkan på magen och tarmarne.” RA/CM, ÅFP Fredric
Schulzen 1798.
42. “en del Practici blifvit mindre ifriga för dess beröm, och andre mindre
intagne af fördom.” RA/CM, ÅFP Fredric Schulzen 1798.
52. Londa Schiebinger, ‘Scientific Exchange in the Eighteenth Century
Atlantic World’, in Soundings in Atlantic History: Latent Structures and
Intellectual Currents, 1500–1830, edited by Bernard Bailyn and Patricia
L. Denault (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 325.
53. Eric Schnakenbourg, ‘Sweden and the Atlantic: The Dynamism of
Sweden’s Colonial Projects in the Eighteenth Century,’ in Scandinavian
Colonialism and the Rise of Modernity: Small Time Agents in a Global
Arena, edited by Magdalena Naum and Jonas M. Nordin (New York:
Springer, 2013), 229–242; Holger Weiss, Slavhandel och slaveri under
svensk flagg: Koloniala drömmar och verklighet i Afrika och Karibien

1770–1847 (Helsingfors: Svenska Litteratursällskapet, 2016), 51–57;
Victor Wilson, Commerce in Disguise: War and Trade in the Caribbean
Free Port of Gustavia, 1793–1815. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Åbo
Akademi University (2016), 66.
54. Schnakenbourg, ‘Sweden and the Atlantic’, 238–239.
55. Neil Kent, A Concise History of Sweden (Cambridge: University Press,
2008), 134–135.
56. Wilson, Commerce in Disguise, 83–84.
57. Dennis Reinhartz, ‘The Caribbean Cartography of Samuel Fahlberg’,
in History of Cartography, edited by Elri Liebenberg and Imre Josef
Demhardt (Berlin: Springer, 2010), 21–22.
58. Reinhartz, ‘The Caribbean Cartography’, 25.
59. “Hit til St Barthelemy kommo vi d. 5 Martii —. Denna Ö är ganska ber-
gaktig, alla höjder öfverväxte med flere slags Cactus, Opuntiae och en
oräknelig hop stickande och giftiga Tråd (a), at man dels ogörligt, dels
med största svårighet och fara kand komma fram; hvilket är en af ordsak-
erne at Öen är så litet upodlad; Därtil bidrager dock mäst Inbyggarnes
fattigdom, som endast plantera något Bomull, hvilken är Öens naturliga
product. Habitationer finnas ungefärligen 80 St och Folk-nummern sti-
ger til 450 hvita och 278 Negrer; alla mycket ohyfsade och fins emellan
oeniga, emedan de icke haft någon ordentlig styrelse; väl hafva de haft
en så kallad Commendant, som varit utsedd af den sjelfve, men Frankrike
synes ej hafva gjordt stor upmärksamhet på dem. Dock synes det som
skulle Öens fördelaktiga belägenhet och ringa afstånd från flere andra
Öar, göra handeln härstädes med tiden ansenlig …” Samuel Fahlberg,
‘Utdrag af Bref från Hr. SAMUEL FAHLBORG dat. St Barthelemi d. 14
Maji 1785, til Prof. Bergius’ (1785).
60. Samuel Fahlberg, ‘Utdrag af Samlingar til Natural-Historien öfver Ön St
Barthelemi i Vest-Indien’, Kungl. Vetenskapsakademiens Nya Handlingar
7 (1786): 215–240, 248–254.
61. Samuel Fahlberg, ‘Observationer öfver Varmen, Vinden och Väderleken
på Ön St Barthelemi i Vest-Indien’, Kungl. Vetenskapsakademiens Nya
Handlingar 8 (1787): 143–154.
62. Fahlberg, ‘Utdrag af Samlingar’.
63. Niklas Thode Jensen, ‘The Creolization of Medicine: Perceptions and
Policies of Health and Medicine in the Danish-Norwegian West Indies,
1750–1850’, in Citizens, Courtrooms, Crossings: Conference Proceedings,
edited by Astri Andresen et al. (Stein Rokkan Centre for Social Studies,
2008), 162.
64. Fahlberg, ‘Observationer öfver Varmen’.
78 S.-M. KONTTURI
65. Jensen, ‘The Creolization of Medicine,’ 162.

66. Samuel Fahlberg, ‘Mortalitets-Lista för Ön St Barthelemi, upsatt af
Gouvernements-Medicus Hr. SAMUEL FAHLBERG, dat. den 23 April
1787’.
67. Heikki S. Vuorinen, Tautinen historia (Tampere: Vastapaino, 2002), 782.
68. Fahlberg, ‘Mortalitets-Lista’.
69. Jensen, ‘The Creolization of Medicine’, 162–164.
70. Schiebinger, ‘Scientific Exchange’, 300.
71. Fahlberg, ‘Mortalitets-Lista’.
72. “Excerpt of Collections on the Natural History of the St. Barthélemy
Island in the West-Indies.” Fahlberg, ‘Utdrag af Samlingar’.
81. RA/CM, ÅFP Samuel Fahlberg 1798.
82. Baldwin, Contagion and the State, 244.
84. Ingegerd Hildebrand, ‘Samuel Fahlberg’. Svenskt biografiskt lexicon
(1956), https://sok.riksarkivet.se/sbl/artikel/14963. Accessed 27 June
2017.
85. Contemporary science called the vaccine virus cowpox virus; however, it
has been known since 1930 that the virus differed from today’s cowpox
virus, and recent research has shown that at least some vaccines contained
a virus more similar to today’s horsepox. It is possible that both cowpox
and horsepox (and possibly a pox that is not known today) were used
interchangeably in vaccines. Livia Schrick, Simon H. Tausch, Woejciech
P. Dabrowski, Clarissa R. Damaso, José Esparza, and Andreas Nitsche,
‘An Early American Smallpox Vaccine Based on Horsepox’, The New
England Journal of Medicine 344 (2017): 1492–1492.
86. Jensen, ‘The Creolization of Medicine’, 164–165.
88. Saara-Maija Kontturi, Parantajat ja tieteentekijät: Piirilääkärit Ruotsin
valtakunnassa 1700-luvun lopulta 1800-luvun alkuun. Unpublished M.A.
thesis, University of Jyväskylä (2014), 33.
89. Victor Wilson, ‘Gustavia, Saint-Barthélemy, 1793–1815: Karibianmeren
ruotsalainen vapaasatama’, in Pohjola, Atlantti, Maailma: Ylirajaisen vuor-
ovaikutuksen historiaa 1600–1900-luvuilla, edited by Kalle Kananoja and
Lauri Tähtinen (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 2018), 114.
90. Reinhartz, ‘The Caribbean Cartography’, 24; Weiss, Slavhandel och slav-

eri, 72.
91. Hildebrand, ‘Samuel Fahlberg’.
92. Reinhartz, ‘The Caribbean Cartography’, 24.
93. Kent, A Concise History of Sweden, 191–192.
CHAPTER 4
Tibetan Medicine and Buddhism in the

Soviet Union: Research, Repression,
and Revival, 1922–1991
Ivan Sablin
Introduction
Since 1972 the World Health Organization (WHO) supports the global
movement that seeks to utilise both modern and alternative medi-
cine in order to make healthcare accessible to all of the humanity.1 The
WHO’s support for alternative medicine also provincialises Europe,2
albeit reluctantly, for most alternative practices originate from elsewhere.
Even though the attempted convergence may be seen as post-West-
ern or postmodern—for it implicitly acknowledges the failure of global
Eurocentric modernity in providing universal access to healthcare—the
relations between “traditional” and “modern” medicine remain highly
asymmetric.
As Volker Scheid has shown for the case of China, “traditional” med-
icine as a heterogeneous set of practices was subject to modernisation
and standardisation over most of the twentieth century but especially
I. Sablin (*)
University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany
e-mail: ivan.sablin@zegk.uni-heidelberg.de

82 I. SABLIN
since the late 1950s.3 The award of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Medicine to
Tu Youyou, who discovered novel therapy against malaria in the 1970s
when studying traditional herbal medicine, not only demonstrated that
the effort paid off but also highlighted the uses of pre-modern traditions
beyond complementary functions. In the People’s Republic of China tra-
ditional medicine fit well into the political modernity of nation building.
A similar phenomenon occurred with Ayurveda that was increasingly
branded as Indian medicine, although it became much less institution-
alised, standardised, and nationalised. Tibetan medicine is also among
the most popular global medicines, but unlike Chinese medicine and
Ayurveda it is less centred on a particular state, for it is claimed by the
Chinese state and scholars, the Tibetan exile community in Dharamsala,
India, and smaller centres in Europe, North America, and elsewhere and
remains heterogeneous and non-standardised.4
Although today China and India are undisputable leaders in exporting
alternative healthcare, from herbal medicines to various forms of ther-
apy to yoga, the WHO recognises Tuva, Buryatia, and Kalmykia5 in the
Russian Federation as centres of Tibetan medicine. Indeed, the Soviet
government not only joined the global movement of converging mod-
ern and alternative medicine by hosting the International Conference on
Primary Healthcare in Alma-Ata (Almaty, Kazakhstan) in 1978 but also
sponsored scientific studies of Tibetan medicine in the 1920s and 1930s
and then again since the 1960s.6
Despite the periods of violence, for most of Soviet history modern
biomedicine and Tibetan medicine were in the mode of hybridisation
rather than contestation. Hybridisation was exhibited in two aspects.
First, the early approach to building Soviet modernity was open to inte-
gration of European and non-European knowledge systems, albeit with
a strong preference for the former. This allowed potential inclusion of
Tibetan medicine into Soviet medicine, otherwise largely based on
“Western” biomedicine. Despite the Eurocentric homogenisation effort
of the Stalinist regime, Soviet medicine became once again opened to
hybridisation with the global recognition of traditional and alternative
medicine. Second, Tibetan medicine, as a complex system of knowledge
and practices, was itself a hybrid phenomenon. In the Russian/Soviet
imperial formations it was infused with local medical knowledge, whereas
Buddhist modernists attempted to enrich it further through integration
with European scientific medicine.
4 TIBETAN MEDICINE AND BUDDHISM IN THE SOVIET UNION … 83
The concept of hybridisation was being developed in the early Soviet

linguistics, ahead of post-colonial studies,7 and accompanied both the
dynamics and articulation of the “imperial situation”—“the vision of
society as an open system structured by coexisting and partially overlap-
ping incongruent categories of difference, each capturing only one type
of diversity,” in which structural relationships remain in place but are
“disentangled from any clear-cut and essentialised human collectivities,
whether these are ethnic or social groups.”8 The logic of the imperial
situation held true for the Soviet Union despite Stalinism and allowed
scholars and practitioners of Tibetan medicine to navigate the late Soviet
system, combining, for instance, a role of a modern medical scholar and
a folk healer, as exemplified by Galdan Lenkhoboev.
In the 1920s the Soviet Union had the potential to become a
world-leading centre of modernised Tibetan medicine. Many of some
17,090 (in the 1910s) Buryat and Kalmyk lamas (monks in the broad
sense) practiced Tibetan medicine in one form or another and hun-
dreds had the title of emchi-lamas (doctors). The place of Buddhism and
Tibetan medicine that were part of Buryat, Kalmyk, and Tuvan cultures in
the Soviet governance structure was debated during the 1920s. The toler-
ation of Buddhism was supposed to facilitate the export of socialist ideas
to Asia opening up an alternative way to decolonisation and including for-
mer dependencies of Western empires and those of China and Japan into
the Soviet sphere of influence. At the same time, the Renovationist move-
ment in Buddhism, which emerged in the early twentieth century and
was supported by Agvan Dorzhiev, Tsyben Zhamtsarano, Badma Bovaev,
Lubsan-Sharap Tepkin, and other religious and lay intellectuals in Buryatia
and Kalmykia, could reconcile Buddhism with Communism and modern-
isation at large.9 Modernised Tibetan medicine was part of the project.
As Martin Saxer has shown, the proponents of Tibetan medicine in the
late Russian Empire and the early Soviet Union viewed their activities as
modern and scientific.10 Furthermore, Fedor Ippolitovich Shcherbatskoi,
Sergei Fedorovich Ol’denburg, and other progressive Orientologists
of the late Russian Empire respected contemporary Asian cultures and
sought to establish dialogue with their representatives laying the founda-
tion for the inclusive Asian Studies in the Soviet Union. According to Vera
Tolz, this can be seen as an early post-colonial moment that reserved a
place for “living” non-Western cultures in global modernity.11
Although there was no consensus among Western researchers, with
many dismissing Tibetan medicine as useless, some of them underlined
84 I. SABLIN
its potential for enriching European medical knowledge or perhaps even

creating a synthetic new medicine. For some members of the Soviet
elite secularisation did not mean a break with everything connected to
Buddhism. As a centre of the (post-)European Enlightenment, the
Soviet Union claimed to collect and enrich the universal human knowl-
edge in which there was a place for Tibetan medicine, Buddhist litera-
ture and art, and even religion. Yet despite the possibility of compromise
enabled by Buddhist modernists and facilitated by inclusive Asian Studies
and international politics, many Bolsheviks considered the toleration of
Buddhism and Tibetan medicine a temporary measure on the way to full
secularisation in line with the Enlightenment’s obsession with rationality.
The moderate approach to secularisation came to an end after Joseph
Stalin consolidated his control of the Soviet government in 1928 and the
World Revolution stopped being a priority. Since 1928–1929 the gov-
ernment increasingly resorted to administrative pressure on Buddhism
that over the 1930s developed into a violent anti-religious campaign. By
the late 1930s and early 1940s the Soviet government had put Buddhism
and Tibetan medicine in Tuva, Buryatia, and Kalmykia on the brink
of complete eradication. Thousands of lamas and believers, including
Dorzhiev and Zhamtsarano, were killed. Others were imprisoned or
exiled. All temples and monasteries were closed.
Some lamas survived the tremendous violence of the regime.
Organised Buddhism was officially re-established already in 1944–1946
with the opening of two temples for Buryat Buddhists. This was a minor
concession, given that before 1928 there were well over 150 temples
and monasteries in Buryatia, Tuva, and Kalmykia; religion remained
under rigid state control. Despite the limitations imposed on institu-
tionalised Buddhism, in the 1960s and 1970s Soviet scholars were again
allowed and even encouraged to study Tibetan medicine. The 1920s
and 1930s ideas about synthetic knowledge returned to Soviet medical
studies. Herbal and non-medicinal therapy (spa, massage, and so on)
became increasingly popular since the 1950s and became widespread in
the 1980s.12 Although the legal use of alternative treatments was pos-
sible only through the state-run medical institutions, the latter did not
earn full popular trust even among the party leadership. Practitioners of
Tibetan medicine continued their activities unofficially, with some treat-
ing patients more or less openly since the 1960s. Furthermore, some of
the surviving emchi-lamas and other practitioners collaborated with sci-
entists in Buryatia and beyond. Yet in the mainstream discourse Tibetan
medicine was treated as a “dead” ancient tradition that was external to

the Soviet Union and had only some limited use for the advancement
of scientific medicine. It was not officially reconnected with Buddhism.
Practice was not legalised until the liberalisation in the Soviet Union.
Tibetan Medicine Before 1922

In the late nineteenth and especially early twentieth century Buddhism
was at peak of its spread in the Russian Empire. The number of mon-
asteries and temples in Buryatia and Kalmykia was well over a hundred.
The late nineteenth-century Russification and Christianisation efforts
of the Russian government gave way to some religious freedom during
the Revolution of 1905–1907. The increasing political and academic
interest in Inner Asia helped Dorzhiev and other Buddhist intellectuals
to justify the opening of new temples and monasteries, including one in
Saint Petersburg (then Petrograd) in 1915, the creation of a Buddhist
publishing house, and the intensified contacts with Mongolia and Tibet.
The Renovationist movement that sought to adapt Buddhism to moder-
nity and eliminate what was perceived as corruption and ignorance in
the ranks of the clergy laid the groundwork for synthetic post-Western
Enlightenment. The work of progressive Orientologists contributed
to the confidence of indigenous intellectuals in non-European cultural
produce. The quest for new spirituality that accompanied industrialisa-
tion and urbanisation stimulated broader public interest in non-Western
knowledge. All of these developments reserved a place for Tibetan med-
icine in a possible post-Western modernity. Institutionalised Buddhism
and Tibetan medicine were on the rise in the 1910s and early 1920s. In
Buryatia alone there were up to 15,000 lamas in the 1910s, with many
practicing Tibetan medicine in one form or another and hundreds having
the title of emchi-lamas; the number of datsans (monasteries) and dugans
(temples) reached 47 in the 1920s. The Kalmyks had 28 large and 64
small khuruls (temples) and some 2090 lamas in the summer of 1917.
In the Tuvan People’s Republic there were 26 khure (monasteries) and at
least 3500 lamas in 1928; the same year Buddhism was proclaimed state
religion there. Many of the monasteries and temples had some form of
medical education, while Kalmykia and Buryatia hosted several special-
ised schools of Tibetan medicine.13
Kalmyks (or Oirats then living in Dzungaria), Buryats, and Tuvans
encountered Tibetan medicine around the seventeenth (or even
86 I. SABLIN
sixteenth)14 century together with Buddhism. The heterogeneous

knowledge system relied on written Tibetan and earlier Chinese and
Indian (Sanskrit) traditions and incorporated a broad array of local
practices when it was being transferred and adapted to Mongolia,
Dzungaria, the Baikal region, Tuva, and Altai. The spiritual foundation
in Buddhism brought the diverse practices together, with the “Medicine
Buddha” Manla (Sangye Menla or Bhaiṣajyaguru) considered their
patron. The Four Tantras (Gyüshi or rGyu-bzhi), which were compiled
in Tibet around the twelfth century, became the main textual source of
Tibetan medicine. In the seventeenth century Tibetan authors produced
extensive commentary and illustrative materials—the Atlas of Tibetan
Medicine. Theoretically, Tibetan medicine was based on the Buddhist
ideas about being. Illness was understood as suffering prolonged or
shortened by karma. Ignorance that triggered the three poisons—
anger, fervour (lust), and foolishness—was the main reason for illness.
In physical terms, the human body, like the rest of the material world,
was understood as consisting of five elements—fire, wind, water, earth,
and space. Wind (gas), bile, and mucus (phlegm)—were the three body
humours that made up respective physiological systems.15
Health was understood as the balance between the elements and
humours. Violation of diet, external evil spirits, and excessive heat or
cold, and other physical factors were among possible reasons for imbal-
ance. Treatment was hence supposed to fix the balance rather than
eradicate an illness. Treatment included medications, diet, and proper
behaviour and lifestyle that would counter the cause of an illness.
Remedies were combinations of ingredients from the natural world—
herbs, animal products, and minerals—and were used according to their
particular qualities based on taste and theoretical connection to the ele-
ments (heavy, oily, cold or cool, weak, light, rough, hot, and sharp).
Like in Chinese medicine, there were cold and hot illnesses, that
were to be treated by hot and cold remedies respectively. Since both
health and medications depended on climate and the time of the year,
Tibetan medicine was strongly connected to astrology. The core ingre-
dients mentioned in the Tibetan sources originated from Tibet, Nepal,
China, India, and Persia and had Tibetan, Sanskrit, Chinese, Persian,
Arab, Turkic, and even Latin names. The diversity of local environ-
ments, family education, and indigenous healing traditions, with many
rooted in Shamanism, made the practices extremely heterogeneous and
flexible.16
Tibetan medicine among the Buryats and Tuvans was based on the
Tibetan texts that were translated and reworked in Mongolia and new
texts by Mongolian authors since the sixteenth century. The Four
Tantras were also translated into Oirat (Kalmyk) in the seventeenth cen-
tury before the Oirats resettled to European Russia. The third volume
of the Four Tantras, the Instructional Tantra that included descriptions
of illnesses and treatments proved especially important for the Tuvan,
Kalmyk, and Buryat “branches” of Tibetan medicine that emerged with
the broad spread of Buddhism in the eighteenth century and especially in
the nineteenth century. Local ingredients made up the bulk of regional
recipes, while practices remained highly heterogeneous locally and per-
sonalised. Buddhism, the Four Tantras, and the use of Tibetan language,
however, united the practices, at least loosely, into one system that
allowed specialisation and some degree of quality control. The study of
pulse was one of the main methods of diagnostics among emchi-lamas in
Buryatia, Tuva, and Kalmykia. Practitioners also examined the eyes and
the tongue of a patient and urine.17
While diagnostics among Tuvans, Buryats, and Kalmyks was sim-
ilar thanks to the Four Tantras, treatment was extremely diverse and
included non-medicinal forms of therapy. Ginseng, for instance, was used
as a universal remedy but general practice relied on local ingredients.
Tuvans, Kalmyks, and Buryats used raw meat and other animal products
that could be consumed or applied to body parts. Buryats and Kalmyks
extensively used kumis (fermented mare milk) as a remedy. Treatment at
mineral springs (arshan), both drinking and bathing, was part of medical
practice in Tuva and Buryatia. Tuvans, Kalmyks, and Buryats also shared
magical healing practices. A patient, for instance, could be “ransomed”
through substitution by a small figure made of flour to which the illness
was ritually transferred. The figure was then burnt, taken to cross-
roads, or buried. Some practices targeted the evil spirits that possessed
a patient. Practitioners also used physical treatment, such as massage,
bloodletting, and cauterisation. Bonesetters treated joint dislocations
in Tuva, Kalmykia, and Buryatia. Basic chirurgical instruments, such
as tweezers and needles, were also used, but invasive procedures were
uncommon. Most sources agree that treatment could be effective against
some complex diseases, including typhus and cholera. At the same time,
Kalmyk doctors could not cure smallpox.18
The main problem common for Tuva, Buryatia, and Kalmykia was
that many practitioners were undereducated, while some were outward
88 I. SABLIN
swindlers. In Buryatia there were also emtei-lamas who were not pro-
fessionally educated but had a limited number of proven recipes, which
were usually inherited. The conditions for professional development
of Tibetan medicine were different in the three regions. Although the
1727 border treaty between Russia and the Qing Empire impeded
the free movement of Buryats to Mongolia and Tibet, the contacts
remained stable until the early twentieth century allowing the import of
ingredients and texts and arrival of Mongolian and Tibetan doctors. The
independent religious authority of Buryat Pandito Khambo Lamas that
was recognised by the Russian Empire in the eighteenth century also
fostered the development of a strong independent medical tradition. All
this contributed to the immense specialisation and sophisticated devel-
opment of medical education in Buryatia, with the first medical school
(manba datsan) opening in the Tsugol’skii Datsan in 1869. Its curricu-
lum was modelled after the Labrang Monastery in Eastern Tibet. In the
early twentieth century medical education was available in the Aginskii,
Egituevskii, Tugnugaltaiskii, Dzhidinskii, Iangazhinskii, Kyrenskii,
and other datsans. In the second half of the nineteenth century Buryat
lamas launched major reforms of Tibetan medicine that sought to sub-
stitute unprofessional family education with proper schooling and stand-
ardised practices. The education in manba datsan lasted for 4–5 years
and involved learning the Four Tantras, commentary, and recipes by
heart and practicing under supervision. After a public examination
the student received the title of manramba, but practical education
often continued. The practice nevertheless remained heterogeneous.
According to some estimates, there were up to 700 emchi-lamas in
Transbaikalia alone in the late nineteenth century, but the number of
practitioners, including wandering monks, was much higher. Besides,
there were many handwritten recipe books (chzhor or zhor) that had dif-
ferent ingredients for the remedies with the same names and prescrip-
tions in Buryatia. A new reform effort was launched by Agvan Dorzhiev,
who in 1913 set up a new medical school at the Atsagatskii Datsan next
to an arshan, and other Renovationists. The school, which soon had
50–60 students, was set to become the centre of modernised Tibetan
medicine.19
The formal belonging of Tuva to the Qing Empire and religious
subordination of Tuvan Buddhists to the Mongolian Jebtsundamba
Khutuktu impeded the development of independent education. The
Tuvan doctors of Tibetan medicine—doorumba or manramba—were
usually educated in Mongolia, even though the basics were taught in

regional monasteries. Together with doorumbas, who were part of the
monastic elite in Tuva, there were travelling badarchy-lamas who had
only basic education but also engaged in curative practices. Unlike
Tuva and Buryatia, Kalmykia was separated from Mongolia and Tibet
by the long distance and the political barriers that followed the aboli-
tion of the Kalmyk Khanate in 1771. There is no strong evidence that
medical schools existed in Kalmykia before the late nineteenth century,
although there is some information about the Kalmyk Sandzhi-Aravga
who founded the Emchin Khurul in the eighteenth century. Many
Kalmyk doctors received their education in Tibetan monasteries. The
Maloderbetovskaia (built in 1906–1908) and Ikitsokhurovskaia (built
in 1907–1908) philosophical schools (tsanit-chore), which included
education in Tibetan medicine, opened already after the liberalisa-
tion of religious policies in the Russian Empire and owed much to the
efforts of Agvan Dorzhiev. In 1913 the Maloderbetovskaia School had
116 students, with 33 studying Tibetan medicine. Like the Atsagatskii
Datsan, the two schools became the centres of the Renovationist
movement. Despite the formalisation of education, Tibetan medi-
cine continued to coexist with local Shamanic practices and family
traditions.20
Scholars of the Russian Empire described Tibetan medicine since
the eighteenth century, about the same time other Europeans encoun-
tered it in Tibet, but proper interest came in the nineteenth century.
According to some sources, the Buryat lama Tsul’tim Tseden was
invited to practice Tibetan medicine in Saint Petersburg already in the
first half of the nineteenth century but died soon after his arrival. In the
middle of the nineteenth century Governor General of Eastern Siberia
Nikolai Nikolaevich Murav’ev-Amurskii invited Sul’tim Badma, who
treated Russian servicemen in the Baikal region, to Saint Petersburg.
Sul’tim Badma arrived in 1857 and joined the Nikolaevskii Military
Hospital as assistant physician. Later he ran a private pharmacy and
practice of Tibetan medicine. Both his engagement with European
medicine and baptism, after which he became known as Aleksandr
Aleksandrovich Badmaev (with Alexander III as formal godfather),
marked the first major effort of detaching Tibetan medicine from
Buddhism. A.A. Badmaev started translating the Four Tantras into
Russian but died before completing the task. His younger brother
Zhamsaran, who also came to Saint Petersburg and was baptised as
90 I. SABLIN
Petr Aleksandrovich, inherited his brother’s practice in 1873 and took

up the translation.21
P.A. Badmaev contributed to the Christianisation of Buryats and sup-
ported the Russian expansion to the Qing Empire.22 He also continued
the secularisation of Tibetan medicine. In 1898 P.A. Badmaev published
excerpts from the first two Tantras, which were translated into Russian
by him and several Buryat scholars. In his commentary he stressed that
the religious fragments were dropped in order to differentiate “mysti-
cism” and science. The second edition of the translation and his practice
soon attracted fierce criticism on behalf of European-educated doctors.
Isaak Solomonovich Kreindel’, for instance, maintained that Tibetan
medicine did not meet Western medical standards prompting P.A.
Badmaev to sue him for libel. Although P.A. Badmaev lost the case in
1904, he continued to practice becoming famous and planned to open
a proper hospital supporting the fusion of medical sciences of Europe
and Asia. Some European scholars, like the doctor Vasilii Pavlovich
Kashkadamov, supported studying and practicing non-European
medicine.23
A parallel effort in modernisation and legalisation of Tibetan medi-
cine did not imply its detachment from Buddhism. The emchi-lama of
the Erketenevskii khurul of the Don Region Dambo Ulianov translated
excerpts from Tibetan medical texts into Russian in 1902.24 During the
first Russian Revolution a group of Buryat and Kalmyk lamas, includ-
ing Agvan Dorzhiev, petitioned the government for official recogni-
tion of Tibetan medicine in Russia suggesting to establish five medical
schools with a seven-year programme and external examination com-
mittee. Despite the support of Aleksei Matveevich Pozdneev and other
progressive Orientologists, the appeal was rejected in 1906, with Lev
Bernardovich Bertenson of the Imperial Medical Council denying
Tibetan medicine the very status of medicine. Other critics pointed to the
high levels of mercury and arsenic in remedies and demanded disinfec-
tion of imported ingredients. Ironically, about the same time the arsenic-
based Salvarsan was being introduced as the first effective treatment
against syphilis proving the Orientalist bias of at least some “European”
doctors. Emchi-lamas were nevertheless allowed to treat people due to
the lack of access to other medical aid.25 Pozdneev continued to sup-
port recognition of Tibetan medicine. In 1908 he published his trans-
lation of the first two Tantras from Mongolian and Tibetan, which he
completed in Mongolia thirty years before and later amended in the
Gusinoozerskii Datsan and Urga, under the title of textbook. He stressed

that the text was inaccessible without the commentary of specialists in
Tibetan medicine. The publication reflected broader public interest in
Tibetan medicine and was commissioned by the businessman Aleksandr
Vasil’evich Kokorev who sponsored the trips necessary for amending the
text, so that it would suit the purpose of popularising Tibetan medicine
rather than simply being a source in language studies. Furthermore, in
order to make the book applicable, Pozdneev purchased a collection of
some 420 Tibetan medicaments in Urga and in Buryatia (from Emchi-
Lama Dzhadambaev) for the Museum of the Imperial Botanical Garden
for further research by Russian and European scholars. Its director
N.A. Monteverde headed the first major study of the herbal remedies.
Geologists and zoologists studied mineral compounds and animal prod-
ucts. Although Pozdneev did not define Tibetan medicine within the
realm of European science, he implied that it was a medicine.26
Following the February and October Revolutions of 1917, P.A.
Badmaev was exiled to Helsinki as one of the people close to the court.
The Soviet government imprisoned him in 1919 and he died in cus-
tody in 1920. The collapse of the Russian Empire stimulated Buryat and
Kalmyk national movements that included Buddhism into the respec-
tive national cultures. Agvan Dorzhiev participated in both movements
uniting them into a modernised Buddhist project. The Renovationist
movement became an important part of political modernisation, with
Buddhist matters discussed at Buryat and Kalmyk congresses in 1917.
Although some Kalmyk and Buryat temples were damaged during the
Russian Civil War, with Dorzhiev briefly arrested by the Soviet Cheka
(secret police), none of the warring parties carried out any consist-
ent anti-religious policy. Indeed, in 1918 the Soviet government pro-
claimed the separation of church from state. The initial anarchic violence
of the Soviet regime that inter alia brought about the plunder of the
Petrograd Datsan was not yet a consolidated policy. Over the course of
the Russian Civil War and due to the partial reorientation of the World
Revolution effort to Asia in 1920, however, the Bolsheviks opted for a
more nuanced approach towards religion. Many Kalmyks and Buryats
participated in the fighting on both sides.27 Transbaikalia was ruled by
the anti-Bolsheviks until 1920 and then became part of the Far Eastern
Republic. The latter was run by the Bolsheviks but posed as democratic
and proclaimed religious freedom of the population. Apart from the
pressure on the Balagad movement, which was launched by the dissident
92 I. SABLIN
Buddhist monk Lubsan Samdan Tsydenov, Buddhism was free from gov-
ernment control in the Far Eastern Republic.28 Agvan Dorzhiev was rec-
ognised as the Tibetan Representative in Soviet Russia and once again
used international agenda to support the spread of Buddhism. The
Petrograd Datsan was returned to the Buddhist community in 1921.29
Attempted Compromise, 1922–1928

In late 1922 the Far Eastern Republic was annexed by Soviet Russia,
and soon after that the USSR was formed. During the first decade of
the Soviet Union the Bolshevik leadership switched from tolerating
Buddhism as a means of exporting the revolution to Inner and East
Asia to open persecution of monks and believers. The religious com-
promise was dismantled in 1928–1929 with Stalin’s ascension to power
and the launch of his radical modernisation programme of collectivisa-
tion and industrialisation. The redefined Soviet version of post-Western
Enlightenment was to be fully secular and had no place even for the
modernised version of Buddhism and other religions.30 In secular cul-
tural terms, however, in the late 1920s the Soviet system was not yet
entirely Eurocentric. The policy of indigenisation (korenizatsiia) empow-
ered non-Russian political actors. The Bolsheviks continued to coop-
erate with anti-colonial nationalists from Asia through the Communist
International and the Communist University of the Toilers of the East.
The progressive Orientologists and ethnographers of the late Russian
Empire laid the foundation for Soviet Asian Studies.
Unlike Buddhism, which Buryat Bolsheviks were ready to discard
already in 1922, the role of Tibetan medicine and other knowledge
systems in the Soviet project was not yet decided. The opponents of
Tibetan medicine stressed that it was the basis of lamas’ influence and
therefore undermined the Bolshevik monopoly for power. Others viewed
it as part of the Buryat culture, which could be secularised and integrated
into hybrid modernity—the idea that progressive Orientologists devel-
oped in response to the diversity of the Russian Empire.31 This ambi-
guity reflected in the Bolshevik reports concerning Tibetan medicine
already in the Far Eastern Republic: “Lamas as doctors of Tibetan med-
icine provide huge service in treating the population. But this positive
role of lamas does not compensate for their negative influence.”32
The continued Renovationist effort seemed to leave some space
for compromise with Buddhism and Tibetan medicine. Following
the Renovationist programme, in October 1922 the first All-Buryat

Buddhist Congress in the Atsagatskii Datsan (then still in the Far Eastern
Republic) added Western anatomy and diagnostics to the curriculum of
the mamba datsan.33 The congress also resolved that private medical
education and family lineages were to be banned, while access to Tibetan
medicine was to be universal.34 In July 1923 Agvan Dorzhiev, Lubsan-
Sharap Tepkin, and other Renovationists promoted a similar programme
at a Buddhist congress in Kalmykia. The two congresses created regional
spiritual councils and new Renovationist regulations of religious prac-
tices, including medical education. Although the two congresses sup-
ported the modernisation of Tibetan medicine, Agvan Dorzhiev opposed
its full secularisation.35
The Buryat Academic Committee under Bazar Baradin became a
major advocate of Tibetan medicine in the newly formed Buryat-Mongol
Autonomous Socialist Soviet Republic (BMASSR). In 1924 the com-
mittee stressed that Tibetan medicine as “a kind of Oriental medicine”
was worth “large academic interest not only from the point of view of
the history of Oriental culture and general history of medicine but also
from a practical standpoint of contemporary therapy” since it was effec-
tive against some illnesses against which European medicine allegedly
proved useless. “Pathology, pharmacology, and therapy” were listed as
the most interesting sections of Tibetan medicine. Furthermore, Buryatia
and Mongolia were deemed the main contemporary centres of Tibetan
medicine in view of its crisis in Tibet. Buryatia that hosted several medi-
cal schools was described as the best place for scientific studies of Tibetan
medicine due to the availability of extensive literature in Tibetan and
Mongolian and expert emchi-lamas. The committee insisted that Tibetan
medicine was a science and not a set of empirical practices.36
Although education and practice also continued in Kalmykia and
Leningrad, Buryatia, with some 500 out of 9134 lamas being doctors in
1923, claimed a central role in the modernising effort of Tibetan medi-
cine. One of the founding members of the Buryat Scientific Committee
Gombozhab Tsybikov, a secular scholar, headed the Centre of Tibetan
Medicine and the first modernised medical school at the Atsagatskii
Datsan in 1924. The datsan also opened a hospital and hosted a con-
ference of Tibetan doctors under Agvan Dorzhiev in 1926. The con-
ference established the Central Committee on Tibetan Medicine under
Dondub Endonov.37 The following year the first All-Soviet Buddhist
Congress held in Moscow supported the establishment of the Institute
94 I. SABLIN
of Buddhist Culture under Shcherbatskoi in Leningrad. Although

Tibetan medicine as such was not on the agenda, the congress approved
the creation of a unified Soviet Buddhist administration—the Spiritual
Congress to assemble every three years—further centralising Buddhism
and related practices. Despite the split between Renovationists and con-
servatives, modernising efforts continued. In 1931 there were five doc-
tors and ten Buryat and Kalmyk students in the Atsagatskii Datsan and
it remained immensely popular among patients, receiving some 7862
in that year alone. Many emchi-lamas were opened to the methods of
European medicine. Furthermore, many lamas in Buryatia and Kalmykia
acknowledged the effectiveness of Soviet treatment of venereal diseases
and sought help from Soviet doctors.38
Despite the support of Buryat scholars and Agvan Dorzhiev’s
appeals to the role of Buddhism in Soviet Asian policies, which gave
Renovationists some backing among the Bolshevik leadership, both
Moscow and Buryat Bolsheviks remained ambivalent about the compro-
mise. Anti-religious propaganda was underway both in the BMASSR and
the Kalmyk Autonomous Region.39 The position of Gustav Gasparovich
Klinger, who was involved in both the Communist International and the
People’s Commissariat of Nationalities supervising the creation of the
BMASSR, left little hope for broader support in the party. In 1923 he
acknowledged the connections of the BMASSR to the Soviet efforts in
spreading the revolution to Mongolia, Tibet, and other Asian countries
but rebuked Tibetan medicine in a letter to the People’s Commissar for
Public Health Nikolai Aleksandrovich Semashko. Ironically, he men-
tioned Salvarsan as a prime weapon unmasking the powerlessness of
emchi-lamas against syphilis.40
The position of Klinger was similar to that of Mikhei Nikolaevich
Erbanov, who headed the BMASSR, and other Buryat Bolsheviks.
Already in the fall of 1923 a meeting featuring Baradin but mainly
consisting of Bolshevik hardliners resolved that the struggle against
lamas was to be undertaken with “full measures.” In order to mini-
mise the influence of lamas, Tibetan medicine had to be separated from
Buddhism. Since immediate secularisation was deemed unachievable and
politically damaging, the meeting resolved to regulate Tibetan medicine
through the Central Spiritual Council. The Bolsheviks opposed hybridity
and forbade combining Tibetan and European medicine. The inefficiency
of Tibetan medicine against “social” illnesses—tuberculosis, syphilis,
and tripper—had to be used against it. The Bolsheviks also refused to
sanction the creation of a centralised school of Tibetan medicine, which

could strengthen lamas.41 Despite the rigidity of local authorities that
banned Tibetan medicine in some parts of the BMASSR, the govern-
ment of the republic initially supported only peaceful measures against
it. In 1924 it allowed medical practice of lamas as a temporary meas-
ure before regulations on Tibetan medicine were adopted.42 Although
in 1925 the government of the BMASSR ordered the nationalisation
of datsans, in 1926 it reaffirmed that the influence of lamas through
Tibetan medicine was to be countered by the spread and improvement
of European medical and sanitary services.43
The newly acquired international connections of the Soviet gov-
ernment were supposed to help building the image of the USSR as
a centre of Enlightenment. In 1926 German doctors Karl Wilmanns
and Alfred Stühmer spent six weeks in Buryatia preparing for a larger
medical German-Russian expedition against syphilis that took place
in 1928. With syphilis making up a quarter of all cases of infectious
diseases in Buryatia in 1924–1925, its treatment would indeed be the
best demonstration of superiority of European medicine.44 Wilmanns
noted in his 1926 notes that lamas still played a major role as doc-
tors despite their ineffectiveness against syphilis. Although he did not
study Tibetan medicine, he used the derogatory term “Kurpfuscherei”
(quackery) denying the emchi-lamas any status comparable with that of
European doctors.45
Research and Repression, 1928–1944

During its second decade the Soviet project rapidly departed from the
inclusiveness, and most of the remaining compromises were disman-
tled. The anti-religious campaign took an extremely violent turn around
the middle of the 1930s in the USSR and the dependent Tuvan and
Mongolian People’s Republics. By April 1936 there were officially only
19 datsans and 923 lamas left in Buryatia. All Buryat datsans and dugans
were closed and destroyed by 1940. In Kalmykia 79 khuruls were closed
by 1937. After the state persecuted the Kalmyks as a nation during the
so-called Kalmyk deportations of 1943, all Buddhist temples were closed
in Kalmykia, the autonomy itself was abolished, and virtually all Kalmyks
were exiled to Siberia and Central Asia, with many dying on the way.
Despite the recognition of Buddhism as the state religion in Tuva in
1928, the anti-religious campaign was launched there as well. By 1937
96 I. SABLIN
there were only 5 khure with 67 lamas left in Tuva. By the early 1940s all
monasteries in Tuva were closed and destroyed.46
During the Great Purge of 1936–1938 most Buddhist intellectuals,
including those who were ready for compromise, were either killed or
imprisoned. The 1930s also marked an end to progressive Asian Studies
in the Soviet Union. Soviet academia returned to rigid Orientalism that
reserved no place for indigenous knowledge in Eurocentric modern
medicine.47 The schools of progressive Asian Studies were destroyed.
Andrei Ivanovich Vostrikov, a student of Shcherbatskoi who headed
the Tibetan Group at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy
of Sciences, was executed in 1937. Cultural production became
Eurocentric. The first wave of Soviet Russification involved the adop-
tion of Cyrillic script for Buryat48 and other languages that had their
own writing systems and the elevation of Russian literature, music, and
other arts as the core of the Soviet culture in the late 1930s. The sharply
Eurocentric version of Soviet modernity led to almost complete eradica-
tion of Buddhism and Tibetan medicine.
The peaceful ousting of Tibetan medicine through the spread of
European medicine did not succeed. Following the radicalisation of
anti-Buddhist policies in 1928–1929, the anticipated closure of datsans
became a further measure against Buddhist education in general and
medical education in particular.49 The Soviet government resorted
to administrative pressure limiting the amounts of ingredients that
Agvan Dorzhiev could import to the USSR in 1928. In 1930 Erbanov
requested Emel’ian Mikhailovich Iaroslavskii, who headed the anti-re-
ligious campaign, to ban Tibetan medicine. The same year several
emchi-lamas were arrested by local authorities in the BMASSR but were
soon released due to popular protests. In 1930 there were only 93 doc-
tors and 120 medical workers educated in European medicine and some
407 emchi-lamas in Buryatia. The next year, however, the propagan-
dists openly called the latter “vermin [detrimental to] the health of the
toilers.”50
The value of Tibetan medicine as a source for Soviet Enlightenment,
however, was not yet settled. Although during the Stalin “revolution
from above” indigenous knowledge was denied practical value in line
with conventional Orientalism, identification and preservation of human
cultural heritage and knowledge remained an important task for the
Soviet Union that claimed to become the cultural, political, and eco-
nomic centre of the world. Already in 1929 the Scientific Committee of
Mongolia suggested to the Academy of Sciences of the USSR to study

Tibetan medicine with European methods. The official policies towards
Tibetan medicine lagged behind the anti-religious campaign, with indi-
vidual scholars and enthusiasts hoping for a compromise in the first half
of the 1930s if the practice was secular and scientific. The school at the
Atsagatskii Datsan became the centre for Soviet studies of Tibetan medi-
cine. Endonov cooperated with European doctors in Saratov in 1930 and
1931. Endonov authored educational materials based on a combination
of Tibetan and European medicines in line with the modernising pro-
gramme of the Atsagatskii Datsan. Yet many of the European-educated
scholars remained sceptical about the prospects of research mirroring
the late imperial mainstream. In 1931 the Expedition of the Botanical
Garden studied Tibetan medicine in Transbaikalia. The expedi-
tion concluded that the value of Tibetan medicine was only historical,
demanded the closure of the school at the Atsagatskii Datsan, and sug-
gested disbanding the Committee on Tibetan Medicine. Furthermore,
Boris Vladimirovich Semichov, who accompanied the expedition as a
Tibetologist and ostensibly belonged to Shcherbatskoi’s progressive
school, joined the criticism dismissing Tibetan medicine as a non-science
and trickery and claiming that the school at the Atsagatskii Datsan
was not a real educational institution. The botanist Adel’ Fedorovna
Gammerman, who visited the Atsagatskii Datsan and other datsans with
Semichov, nevertheless continued to study the collected plants when
working on a Tibetan–Latin–Russian dictionary of medical herbs.51
Parallel to that, Nikolai Nikolaevich Badmaev, P.A. Badmaev’s
nephew, continued to practice Tibetan medicine in Leningrad and even
treated members of the Soviet elite. N.N. Badmaev appealed to the
Soviet government for opening a hospital in Leningrad where he would
teach Tibetan medicine and organising production of medications. In
1932 the All-Soviet Institute of Experimental Medicine in Leningrad
started its research of Tibetan medicine, formed a small clinic, and
even organised a new expedition to Transbaikalia in 1933.52 The writer
Aleksei Maksimovich Gorky was one of the main sponsors of the inclu-
sive medical research.53
When the anti-religious policy turned violent in the 1930s, the offi-
cial instructions on preserving cultural valuables were hardly followed.54
Local authorities enabled and fostered demolition of countless books.
G.D. Natsov, a former lama, and other museum employees could on
many occasions only document the destruction of cultural heritage and
98 I. SABLIN
managed to preserve a very limited number of books and other objects.55

The repressions against Buddhism involved persecution of emchi-
lamas and the closure of religious schools in Buryatia and Kalmykia.56
The Bolsheviks acknowledged that the closure of datsans, with only 27
remaining in January 1935, undermined education in Tibetan medi-
cine, while the limitation of contacts with Tibet hampered the import of
ingredients. At the same time, the government of the BMASSR informed
the central authorities that the existence of a Tibetan clinic in the
Institute of Experimental Medicine in Leningrad fuelled the campaign
for the revival of practice accompanied by rumours that “Stalin, Gorky,
and others received treatment there.”57
The effort to continue research persisted. In March 1935 N.N.
Badmaev suggested studying Indian and Tibetan medicine in an article
published in Izvestiia (News), the official Soviet newspaper. In November
1935 a group of enthusiasts featuring N.N. Badmaev and several schol-
ars, who became known as the Leningrad Initiative Group, started learn-
ing Tibetan under Vostrikov at the Institute of Oriental Studies.58 The
Leningrad Initiative Group attempted to unite interested scholars into
a special society for the study of “medicine, hygiene, and psycho-gym-
nastics of the peoples of the Orient.” In late 1935–1936 the matter was
discussed under the auspices of the Academic Medical Council of the
People’s Commissariat for Public Health of the RSFSR and the chair-
manship of Doctor S. Iu. Belen’kii. The discussions of Tibetan and
Chinese medicine involved members of the Leningrad Initiative Group
(N.N. Badmaev, V.P. Kashkadamov, and K.I. Povarnin), Gammerman,
and other scholars. The participation of the public company for export-
ing medical goods, Lektekhsyr’e, which also published some materials on
“Oriental” remedies, demonstrated that there was commercial interest.59
Yet the attempt to use Tibetan medicine in creating a hybrid medicine
failed. Following a conference on April 1, 1936, where N.N. Badmaev
and other members of the Leningrad Initiative Group presented their
views of Tibetan medicine as a scientific system and suggested synthe-
sising “Oriental and European medicine” and building on this synthe-
sis “a new medical science,” the Academic Medical Council refused to
recognise Tibetan medicine as a scientific practice. Tibetan medicine was
deemed exclusively empirical and as such had only limited potential as a
source for the advances of European medicine and history, if fully sec-
ularised. Pointing to the use of Tibetan medicine in the “attempts of
Buddhism and Lamaism to prevent the introduction of modern scientific

medicine into the everyday life of peoples of the Orient,” the Academic
Medical Council allowed its study only through the methods of mod-
ern biology and medicine by professional scholars.60 The direct connec-
tion of the Leningrad Group to the activities of the late P.A. Badmaev
through his nephew contributed to the political reasons for rejecting
Tibetan medicine, since the latter was seen as a reactionary.61
Consequently, the main suggestions of the Leningrad Initiative
Group—creating a special scientific society, a special institute, and an
independent clinic—were rejected. The Academic Medical Council nev-
ertheless resolved to support the education of several scholars in Tibetan
and Chinese at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of
Sciences, to sponsor the translation of the Four Tantras from Tibetan
and Li Shizhen’s Compendium of Materia Medica (Bencao Gangmu)
from Chinese, to continue research of “Oriental” medicine, pharmaco-
logical studies of the “most interesting” remedies, and botanical studies
of plants, and organise clinical trials under one of the existing medical
organisations under a special commission, including Gammerman and
members of the Leningrad Initiative Group. Nikolai Vladimirovich
Terziev, who headed the Academic Medical Council, stressed the com-
mercial relevance of potential exports of goods related to Tibetan
medicine.62
Although limited clinical trials of Chinese medicine and botanical
research were resumed in 1936, the Great Purge that began the same
year ended the remaining compromises with non-European knowl-
edge systems.63 In 1936 Tibetan medicine was outlawed in Buryatia
prompting many emchi-lamas continue their practices underground.
According to official data, in 1937 there were still 53 of them in the
BMASSR. In 1937 the centre of Tibetan medicine at the Atsagatskii
Datsan was destroyed. In 1938 N.N. Badmaev had to stop his prac-
tice in Leningrad. The government nevertheless still acknowledged
the survival of the practice in the BMASSR in 1939. The eradication
of Tibetan medicine was not accompanied by the anticipated spread
of European medicine in the 1930s, with many people left with-
out access to any kind of healthcare. Agvan Dorzhiev, Tsyben
Zhamtsarano, Bazar Baradin, N.N. Badmaev, and other proponents of
compromise with Buddhism and Tibetan medicine did not survive the
Great Purge. But neither did Erbanov who, ironically, was accused
100 I. SABLIN
of benevolence towards Tibetan medicine and other Bolshevik hard-

liners who sponsored the anti-religious campaign in the BMASSR.
The republic itself was divided into three parts in 1937. Books, art,
and other cultural valuables were massively destroyed in Kalmykia as
well. In 1940s there were no Buddhist temples in Buryatia, Kalmykia,
and Tuva anymore. With the exception of a few doctors who went
underground, institutionalised Tibetan medicine in the Soviet Union,
Mongolia, and Tuva ceased to exist.64
Revival, 1944–1991
The Soviet government changed its stance on religion already dur-
ing the Second World War when it allowed re-establishing organised
Buddhism together with Islam and Orthodox Christianity for the sake
of popular mobilisation. The few years of outlawed practices did not
eradicate the tradition. In Buryatia many sought help from surviving
emchi-lamas who continued practices underground despite the repres-
sions.65 The post-war decades demonstrated that the Eurocentric
project of substituting all healing practices with scientific medicine
failed. Furthermore, the official attempts to use Buddhism in order to
spread Soviet influence in Asia during the Cold War only legitimised
both the religion and Tibetan medicine for many Soviet citizens. All
this resulted in revival of research, religious practices, and even some
recognition of Tibetan medicine in the Soviet Union. Organised
Buddhism was officially re-established already in 1944–1945 with the
opening of the new Ivolginskii Datsan (temple) in Buryatia. The offi-
cial reestablishment of Buddhism in the Soviet Union also reflected
the state’s failure in eradicating religion that continued to be prac-
ticed. Since the 1950s the renewed efforts of advertising the Soviet
system to post-colonial Asia further helped the survival and revival of
Buddhism in the USSR. The Aginskii Datsan reopened as a temple in
1946. The same year the Provisional Central Spiritual Administration
of Buddhists of the USSR was formed with the seat at the Ivolginskii
Datsan. Yet no further temples were reopened in the Soviet Union
until the 1990s, even though Kalmykia was re-established as auton-
omy in 1957, and the pressure on religion continued.66
The involvement of Soviet Buddhist leaders in Moscow’s foreign
policy in Asia contributed to the survival of Buddhism and some of
the related knowledge. Since 1956 the exchanges in Buddhist delega-

tions between the USSR and a number of Asian states became regular,
as Moscow aspired to prove the existence of religious freedom under
state socialism. Although the intended effect remained limited, the out-
ward official respect to Buddhist cultural heritage helped Soviet Buddhist
leaders return some of the remaining texts from secular institutions.
Furthermore, Buryat and Mongolian Buddhists succeeded in establish-
ing an institution of Buddhist education, the Buddhist Institute, in Ulan-
Bator in 1970, which offered some basic education in Tibetan medicine.
The policy towards Buddhism was, however, far from tolerant and state
anti-religious campaigns continued. The very existence of the Ivolginskii
and Aginskii Datsans was not part of general knowledge.67 Furthermore,
in 1972 a dissident Buddhist monk Bidiia Dandaron was accused of
forming a sect and imprisoned. Four of his followers were confined to
mental facilities.68
According to an official report, there were no registered religious
societies in the BMASSR in early 1945, but religious practice contin-
ued illegally. Following a decision in Moscow, the Buryat authorities
allowed the establishment of one temple, the future Ivolginskii Datsan,
with 10–15 registered lamas who would service the whole republic. The
legalisation of limited practice was supposed to “paralyse the activities
of unregistered or so-called steppe lamas.” The plan also involved the
reestablishment of the Renovationist Buddhist organisation, the Central
Spiritual Council of the Buddhists, and the restoration of the Pandito
Khambo Lama as the leader of Soviet Buddhists. Lubsan-Nima Darmaev
was elected the first post-war Khambo Lama in May 1946. Although two
Tuvan Buddhists participated in forming the Provisional Central Spiritual
Administration, the compromise was not extended to the recently
annexed Tuvan Autonomous Region. The Ivolginskii and the Aginskii
Datsans remained the only legal temples until the 1990s.69
The legalisation of Buddhism did not achieve the objective of its grad-
ual elimination through focused propaganda. Even the anti-religious
campaign of 1958–1964, which reflected the Communist attempts to
create a fully atheist society, did not stop religious activities. The number
of lamas registered at the Ivolginsky Datsan increased to 26 by 1962.
The supervising officials admitted that the number of visits “did not
decrease significantly,” that rural people, even the Communists, contin-
ued to keep devotional objects, that believers continued to visit sacred
sites, and that “local wandering lamas” continued to perform religious
102 I. SABLIN
rites. Furthermore, all this happened “in front of local party and soviet
authorities.”70 The authorities were also aware that the practice of
Tibetan medicine continued but did not undertake any major repressive
measures. Zhimba-Zhamso Tsybenov, who studied in Mongolia in the
1920s and specialised in medicine, and Zhondui Zhapov were among
the surviving emchi-lamas who not only continued to practice, but also
taught Tibetan medicine.71
The research of plants used in Tibetan medicine was resumed by
Klavdiia Fedorovna Blinova, a student of Gammerman, already in the
1950s, while the recognition of Tibetan medicine as an object of study
and even practice resumed in the 1960s. Blinova and V.B. Kuvaev
interviewed emchi-lamas in the Ivolginskii and Aginskii Datsans on the
matter.72 In 1963, the Buryat Composite Research Institute published
Gammerman’s dictionary.73 The same year the famous Chukchi writer
Iurii Sergeevich Rytkheu wrote an article about Galdan Lenkhoboev in
Literaturnaia gazeta (Literary newspaper). Lenkhoboev, who received
medical training from his family and practiced widely, was presented as
an artist, but Rytkheu also mentioned that he was knowledgeable in
“folk medicine” and adopted recipes of Tibetan medicine. On February
19, 1967, Pravda Buriatii (Truth of Buryatia), the official republican
newspaper, reported that Lenkhoboev was invited as consultant to the
Chair of Pharmacognosy at the Leningrad Chemical Pharmaceutical
Institute. The same year Blinova, who held the chair, published a pop-
ular science article on medicinal bitumen received from Lenkhoboev
noting that a similar substance received from Central Asia was already
being tested under the official permission. In 1967 Lenkhoboev
acknowledged that he practiced Tibetan medicine for many years to
the Secretary of the Buryat Regional Committee of the Communist
Party D.-N.T. Radnaev.74 According to his grandson, Lenkhoboev
treated members of the Soviet elite, including Marshal Georgii
Konstantinovich Zhukov and the opera singer Galina Pavlovna
Vishnevskaia. At the same time, there was no official information about
his practice, since he became known by word of mouth and made
appointments at secret apartments. In the 1980s he already received
many patients at home.75
The revival of Tibetan medicine involved commercial aspects. On
April 17, 1964, Vladivostok hosted the Extended Conference on the
Organisation of Production and Export of Goods of Tibetan Medicine
that was planned by the Main Administration of Hunting Economy
and Natural Reserves under the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR and
united some 125 participants from the Tuvan and Kazakh Republics, the
Altai Territory, the Maritime Territory, and other regions of the RSFSR.
Neither Buryat nor Kalmyk representatives participated in the meeting
that discussed Tibetan medicine in completely secular and economic
terms. Just like in the 1930s, the All-Soviet Corporation Medeksport
was one of the key actors in the discussions of commercialising Tibetan
medicine.76 Red-deer farmers, hunting officials, and employees in export
trade mainly discussed red-deer breeding and preservation and export of
red-deer velvet antlers and ginseng but other ingredients were also men-
tioned. The resolution of the conference positioned the production of
ingredients for Tibetan medicine into the larger context of developing
all spheres of Soviet economy. Acknowledging that they were not only
exported but also used for production of medications within the country,
the conference resolved that production could be expanded, for red-deer
breeding remained disorganised, poachers undermined legal hunting,
while natural resources, including medicinal herbs, were not used at full
potential. Suggesting centralising and standardising production of velvet
antlers, the conference inscribed Tibetan medicine into Soviet planned
economy without any reservations.
We, the participants of the conference, urge all employees of reindeer and
red-deer soviet farms […] to broaden the socialist competition for achiev-
ing existing objectives and successful implementation of the state plan for
curing goods of Tibetan medicine for the year 1964.77
All these developments culminated in the establishment of the specialised

group of researchers at the recently renamed Buryat Scientific Centre of
the Siberian Branch of the Academy of Sciences in Ulan-Ude who were
tasked with the study “Description of Medical Properties of Medications
of Tibetan Medicine” in 1968. The main goal of the group was to start
the systematic studies of Tibetan medicine, which by then had attracted
international scholarly attention, in order to integrate its positive expe-
rience into modern healthcare practice. In 1970 a special laboratory of
physiologically active substances was incorporated into the project. In
1975 the newly formed Department of Tibetan Medicine of the Buryat
Scientific Centre invited lamas and other practitioners of Tibetan med-
icine, including Zhapov, Lenkhoboev, Tsybenov, M.D. Dashiev, Dashi-
Nima Badmaev, Chimit-Dorzhi Iampilov, and others, as consultants.
104 I. SABLIN
Even though the break in the studies between the 1930s and the 1960s
was relatively short, very few written sources survived the eradication
of Buddhism. There were no Buryat studies of local ingredients and
Mongolian albums left; only a few reference recipe books survived. All
this made the input of the surviving practitioners invaluable.78
The first results of the project on the acute diseases of the abdomi-
nal cavity organs were published in 1976 in Russian and then translated
into English and published in India. Semichov, who was also persecuted
in the 1930s, served as the volume’s editor despite his earlier position
on Tibetan medicine.79 The centre published the first full and anno-
tated translations of the main Tibetan medical texts into Russian in the
1980s. In 1983 the centre launched the study of pulse diagnostics prov-
ing the effectiveness of some techniques. Since 1986 the centre started
cooperating with the republican hospital that became its main clinic.80
Lenkhoboev published several pre-prints with the Siberian Branch of
the Academy of Sciences in which he laid out the basic principles of
Tibetan medicine and discussed such aspects as “hot” and “cold” fea-
tures of foodstuffs and remedies and pulse diagnostics in more detail.
Lenkhoboev continued to adapt the methods of Tibetan medicine to
contemporary conditions classifying, for instance, new foodstuffs like
bananas or mustard into the traditional hot-cold system.81 Other scholars
studied the possibility of replacing traditional ingredients in the remedies
and found new uses for known plants. The centre’s activities that con-
tinued after the collapse of the USSR resulted in a new comprehensive
list of ingredients used in the Buryat branch of Tibetan medicine. Other
results involved new discoveries related to a series of known diseases,
as well as new rehabilitation and disintoxication methods. The schol-
ars of the centre also submitted several remedies for clinical studies.82
Another major result of the centre was the first full annotated transla-
tion of the Four Tantras into Russian that was completed by Dandar
Bazarzhapovich Dashiev.83
The activities of the centre prompted the return of Tibetan med-
icine into mainstream discussions. In 1979 Soviet scholars published
the first popular science book on Tibetan medicine. The chemist Marks
Vasil’evich Mokhosoev defined Tibetan medicine as a system of medical
knowledge and as a branch of science that disposed of a huge number of
natural medications and physical methods of treating different illnesses.
Although the authors did not put it on equal footing with scientific
medicine, they noted that its remedies underwent trials on millions of
people throughout the centuries and stressed its international signifi-

cance proven by the contemporary studies in India, Europe, the USA,
and Mongolia. In line with the renewed global interest in synthetic med-
icine, Mokhosoev mentioned the ethical aspects of Tibetan practice, but
the study of Tibetan medicine was presented as fully secular and discon-
nected from religion. Although it was presented as an ancient practice,
the authors implied the potential for further progress. Furthermore,
the authors not only acknowledged the failure of modern medicine to
achieve universal health but also pointed to the increasing global sickness
rates prompted by modern lifestyle. One of the main benefits of Tibetan
medicine was seen in its reliance on herbal medications.84
In the 1980s Tibetan medicine entered the mainstream discourse.
Lenkhoboev openly published on it in press, stressing, for instance, its
potential for the adaptation of new settlers to the Siberian climate and
connecting it thereby to the idea of Soviet progress understood through
industrial development.85 In 1983 the Sverdlovsk Studio made a doc-
umentary on Tibetan medicine. The film Tainy tibetskoi meditsiny (The
mysteries of Tibetan medicine) relied on the results of the studies in the
Buryat Scientific Centre and included footage from it. At the same time,
in its music and images it appealed to mysticism and evoked Orientalist
images of Tibet as a forbidden land. The film discussed the Four Tantras,
the Atlas of Tibetan Medicine, and other texts. On several instances
it praised Tibetan medicine for its holistic approach to health and fea-
tured the trials proving the effectiveness of remedies against hepatitis
and gastric ulcer. At the same time, the film completely dismissed the
history of Tibetan medicine in the Russian Empire and the early Soviet
Union. Gombozhab Tsybikov, who brought Tibetan books from his
expedition in the early twentieth century, was presented as the importer
of the ancient knowledge to the country, while nothing was said about
Buddhism in Transbaikalia and other regions. The studies were hence
presented not as continuation of the pre-war efforts, but as rediscovery
of external ancient knowledge.86
Conclusion
The inclusive academic discourse went well with the Soviet claims to
leadership in the global transition to a hybrid post-Western moder-
nity. Even though the start of the Cold War is usually dated to 1946,
the Bolsheviks claimed their opposition to both imperialist (European)
106 I. SABLIN
and liberal (American) versions of capitalist world-order already in

1917. Apart from restructuring the world order, the Soviet system
was supposed to provide a model of modernisation, diversity manage-
ment, and decolonisation that would be alternative to the Western cap-
italist approaches, both imperialist and liberal.87 Yet the Bolsheviks
(Communists) explicitly appealed to the Eurocentric Enlightenment dis-
course and embarked on a civilising mission in the former empire and
beyond. Socialism, like liberalism, appealed to the ideas of European phi-
losophers of the eighteenth and nineteenth century and stressed the piv-
otal need for global modernisation—that is approximation of the rest of
the world to the often imagined economic, social, and cultural standards
of Europe. At the same time, the survival of European empires well into
the twentieth century and the increasing tensions related to anti-colonial
nationalism and decolonisation made the USSR and the USA distance
themselves from European imperialism, albeit rhetorically.88 In this
respect the Cold War between them was essentially a war of succession to
the Western European Enlightenment, while the Bolshevik Revolution
launched a radical Westernisation.
The limited revival of Buddhism in the Soviet Union in the
1940s–1980s and the resumed studies of Tibetan medicine contributed
to its rising popularity in the Russian Federation. Following Mikhail
Gorbachev’s reforms, the first Buddhist community was registered
in Kalmykia in 1988.89 In 1990 the first group of 25 Buddhists regis-
tered in Tuva, set up several yurts as a temple in Kyzyl, and sent the
first students to Mongolia and India.90 The same year a Buddhist school
opened at the Aginskii Datsan. In 1993 it was reformed into a Buddhist
institute with a medical department that in 1994 became a branch of
the Institute of Tibetan Medicine and Astrology of Dharamsala, India.
In 1992 the Buddhist Institute Dashi Choinkhorling at the Ivolginskii
Datsan, which opened in 1991, set up a department of Tibetan medi-
cine with 47 students; 13 of them graduated in 1996. The first teach-
ers came from Inner Mongolia, China.91 Buddhism experienced a broad
revival. Practitioners of Tibetan medicine in post-Soviet Russia recon-
nected to Tibetan and Mongolian communities in India and China, but
little remained from the 1920s potential to lead the global postmodern
medical effort.
In the 1990s the secularised scientific studies and practice, connected
once again with Buddhism, continued to develop parallel to each other.
Over the past thirty years practice became widespread and decentralised,
with some centres hiring Tibetan doctors and importing medication

from the factories in Dharamsala and others working with Chinese cen-
tres. In 1993 the government licenced some forms of manual therapy
and some methods of phytotherapy in 2003. The latter nevertheless did
not acquire professional medical status due to the problems with licens-
ing imported herbs and the lack of guidelines. The government of the
Republic of Buryatia included the basics of Tibetan medicine into repub-
lican healthcare. The Faculty of Medicine of the Buryat State University,
for instance, introduced courses in Tibetan medicine and Buddhism as
part of the project of “integral medicine” that would synthesise Western
and “Oriental” cultural, medical, and scientific systems. The relations
with Chinese and Indian institutions, however, demonstrate that the
Russian Federation is not a leader in the development of Tibetan med-
icine.92 Despite some revival since the 1960s, the devastating conse-
quences of the anti-religious campaigns and the Great Purge remained
pressing, while the post-Soviet transition added further problems to
medical studies and practice, such as the lack of funds in the first place.
Notes
1. The archival research for this paper was partly sponsored by the German
Historical Institute in Moscow. Some of the writing was completed
at the Linnaeus University Centre for Concurrences in Colonial and
Postcolonial Studies in Växjö, Sweden.
2. Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and
Historical Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000).
3. Volker Scheid, Chinese Medicine in Contemporary China: Plurality and
Synthesis (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002), 12–39.
4. L.V. Aiusheeva, ‘Tibetskaia Meditsina v Buriatii’, in Buddizm v Istorii I
Kul’ture Buriat, edited by I.R. Garri (Ulan-Ude: Buriaad-Mongol Nom,
2014), 252, 264; Craig R. Janes, ‘Buddhism, Science, and Market:
The Globalisation of Tibetan Medicine’, Anthropology & Medicine 9
(2002): 267–289; Bhushan Patwardhan, Dnyaneshwar Warude, Palpu
Pushpangadan, and Narendra Bhatt, ‘Ayurveda and Traditional Chinese
Medicine: A Comparative Overview’, Evidence-Based Complementary and
Alternative Medicine 2 (2005): 465–473; ‘Youyou Tu – Facts’, https://
www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2015/tu-facts.
html. Accessed 24 April 2017.
5. Buryatia and Kalmykia were institutionalised as Soviet autonomies in the
early 1920s. Tuva was officially independent between 1921 and 1944, but
108 I. SABLIN
in practice it was under Soviet control. In 1944 it was formally annexed to

the USSR. In this chapter Buryatia, Kalmykia, and Tuva refer to both the
institutionalised polities and the lands of the respective ethnic groups.
6. G. Bodeker, C.K. Ong, C. Grundy, G. Burford, and K. Shein, eds., WHO
Global Atlas of Traditional, Complementary and Alternative Medicine,
vol. 2 (Kobe: WHO Centre for Health Development, 2005), 2: vii–viii,
135; Janes, ‘Buddhism , Science, and Market’.
7. Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994).
8. Ilya Gerasimov, Sergey Glebov, and Marina Mogilner, ‘Hybridity: Marrism
and the Problems of Language of the Imperial Situation’, Ab Imperio
2016, no. 1 (2016): 27–28.
9. N.G. Ochirova, ed., Istoriia Buddizma v SSSR I Rossiiskoi Federatsii v
1985–1999 Gg (Moscow: Fond sovremennoi istorii, 2010), 44, 51.
10. Martin Saxer, ‘Tibetan Medicine and Russian Modernities’, in Medicine
Between Science and Religion: Explorations on Tibetan Grounds, edited
by Vincanne Adams, Mona Schrempf, and Sienna R. Craig (New York:
Berghahn Books, 2011), 58.
11. For more, see Vera Tolz, Russia’s Own Orient: The Politics of Identity and
Oriental Studies in the Late Imperial and Early Soviet Periods (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2011).
12. L.B. Mal’chukovskii and N.P. Povolotskaia, ‘Iz Istorii Razvitiia Fitoterapii
Na Kurortakh Kavkazskikh Mineral’nykh Vod’, Kurortnaia Meditsina 3
(2012): 72–81.
13. L.L. Abaeva and N.L. Zhukovskaia, eds., Buriaty (Moscow: Nauka,
2004), 456–457; M.V. Mongush, Lamaizm v Tuve: Istoriko-
Etnograficheskoe Issledovanie (Kyzyl: Tuvinskoe knizhnoe izdatel’stvo,
1992), 119; Ochirova, ed., Istoriia Buddizma, 49, 55.
14. O.D. Tsyrenzhapova, ed., Tibetskaia Meditsina U Buriat (Novosibirsk:
Izd-vo SO RAN, 2008), 27.
15. According to some sources, medical practices among the Kalmyks drew
heavily on Chinese ideas, including a different set of elements—earth,
water, fire, wood, and iron—and the Taoist concept of two energies—
male and female. The abovementioned five elements from the Four
Tantras were nevertheless also important for the Kalmyks, see E.P.
Bakaeva and N.L. Zhukovskaia, eds., Kalmyki (Moscow: Nauka, 2010),
305–306, 309.
16. Abaeva and Zhukovskaia, eds., Buriaty, 451–453; Aiusheeva, ‘Tibetskaia
Meditsina v Buriatii’, 249–254; Bakaeva and Zhukovskaia, eds., Kalmyki,
304, 306, 309–311; G.R. Galdanova, K.M. Gerasimova, D.B. Dashiev, and
G.Ts. Mitupov, Lamaizm v Buriatii XVIII - Nachala XX Veka: Struktura
I Sotsial’naia Rol’ Kul’tovoi Sistemy, edited by V.V. Mantatov (Novosibirsk:
Nauka, 1983), 192; G.L. Lenkhoboev and N.Ts. Zhambaldagbaev, ‘O
Teplykh I Kholodnykh Svoistvakh Pishchevykh Produktov I Lekarstvennykh

Sredstv (1980)’, in Galdan Lenkhoboev: Blagoslovennaia Sud’ba, edited
by Galdan Lenkhoboev (Ulan-Ude: Buriaad-Mongol Nom kheblel,
2014), 20, 22–23; G.L. Lenkhoboev, ‘Prichiny Vnutrennikh Boleznei
(Nekotorye Svedeniia Tibetskoi Meditsiny) (1981)’, in Galdan Lenkhoboev:
Blagoslovennaia Sud’ba, edited by Galdan Lenkhoboev, translated by N.Ts.
Zhambaldagbaev (Ulan-Ude: Buriaad-Mongol Nom kheblel, 2014),
56–66; G.L. Lenkhoboev, ‘Nekotorye Svedeniia O Pul’sovoi Diagnostike
(Fragmenty Traktatov O Tibetskoi Meditsine) (1981)’, in Galdan
Lenkhoboev: Blagoslovennaia Sud’ba, edited by Galdan Lenkhoboev, trans-
lated by N.Ts. Zhambaldagbaev (Ulan-Ude: Buriaad-Mongol Nom kheblel,
2014), 81–83; Mongush, Lamaizm v Tuve, 109–110.
17. Abaeva and Zhukovskaia, eds., Buriaty, 317, 453; Bakaeva and
Zhukovskaia, eds., Kalmyki, 306, 309; Mongush, Lamaizm v Tuve, 112–
113; Ochirova, ed., Istoriia Buddizma, 31–33, 48.
18. Bakaeva and Zhukovskaia, eds., Kalmyki, 305–307; Mongush, Lamaizm
v Tuve, 110–114; Lenkhoboev and Zhambaldagbaev, ‘O Teplykh I
Kholodnykh Svoistvakh Pishchevykh’, 17, 21.
19. Abaeva and Zhukovskaia, eds., Buriaty, 456–457; Aiusheeva, ‘Tibetskaia
Meditsina v Buriatii’, 259; Saxer, ‘Tibetan Medicine and Russian
Modernities’, 64–65, 68; N.V. Tsyrempilov, Buddizm I Imperiia:
Buriatskaia Buddiiskaia Obshchina C v Rossii (XVIII - Nach. XX v.)
(Ulan-Ude: IMBT SO RAN, 2013).
20. Abaeva and Zhukovskaia, eds., Buriaty, 420–421, 432, 445; Bakaeva and
Zhukovskaia, eds., Kalmyki, 304–305; G.Sh. Dordzhieva, Buddiiskaia
Tserkov’ v Kalmykii v Kontse XIX - Pervoi Polovine XX Veka (Moscow:
Izdatel’skii tsentr Instituta rossiiskoi istorii RAN, 2001), 18–19;
Mongush, Lamaizm v Tuve, 52–54, 57, 114–115; Ochirova, ed., Istoriia
Buddizma, 41.
21. GARF, f. A-482, op. 25, d. 1146, l. 1 (Report on the studies of Tibetan
medicine, Prof. V. P. Kashkadamov, March 1936); Aiusheeva, ‘Tibetskaia
Meditsina v Buriatii’, 253; Lodon Linkhovoin, Lodon Bagshyn Debterhee:
Materialy Na Buriatskom I Russkom Iazykakh, 2nd ed. (Ulan-Ude:
Buriaad-Mongol Nom kheblel, 2014), 336–338; Tsyrenzhapova, ed.,
Tibetskaia Meditsina U Buriat, 29.
22. P.A. Badmaev, Rossiia I Kitai: K Voprosu O Politiko-Ekonomicheskom
Vliianii, 3rd ed. (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo LKI, 2011).
23. GARF, f. A-482, op. 25, d. 1146, l. 2 (Report on the studies of Tibetan
medicine, Prof. V. P. Kashkadamov, March 1936).
24. Dambo Ul’ianov, ed., Perevod Iz Tibetskikh Meditsinskikh Sochinenii Dzhe-
Duning-Nor, Gl. 91 I Khlan-Tab, Gl. 30: Lechenie Chumy, Kholery I Prokazy
(Saint Petersburg: Parovaia skoropech. “Vostok” M. M. Gutzats, 1902).
110 I. SABLIN
25. Bakaeva and Zhukovskaia, eds., Kalmyki, 402; Dordzhieva, Buddiiskaia

Tserkov’ v Kalmykii v Kontse, 26–27; Saxer, ‘Tibetan Medicine and
Russian Modernities’, 59–68.
26. A.M. Pozdneev, trans., Uchebnik Tibetskoi Meditsiny, vol. 1 (Saint
Petersburg: Tip. Imp. Akad. nauk, 1908), 1: i–viii.
27. John Snelling, Buddhism in Russia: The Story of Agvan Dorzhiev, Lhasa’s
Emissary to the Tsar (Shaftesbury: Element, 1993), 174–176, 182–189.
28. GARB, f. R-994, op. 1, d. 9, l. 20–20 rev. (Order No. 1 of Member of
the Government of the FER D. Shilov, Bada, July 8, 1921).
29. GARB, f. R-643, op. 1, d. 7, l. 7–7 rev. (Appeal of Secretary of the
Representative of the Tibetan Government in the RSFSR Galan Galzotov
to the Administration of the Petrograd Municipal Military Engineering
Unit, August 20, 1921).
30. Edward E. Roslof, Red Priests: Renovationism, Russian Orthodoxy, and
Revolution, 1905–1946 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002).
31. Ilya Gerasimov, Sergey Glebov, and Marina Mogilner, ‘Hybridity: Marrism
and the Problems of Language of the Imperial Situation’, Ab Imperio
2016, no. 1 (2016): 27–68.
32. GARB, f. R-248s, op. 1, d. 82, l. 54–54 rev. (Iz dokladnoy zapiski sek-
retariata Burrevkoma BMAO DVR o teokraticheskom dvizhenii – lam-
stve, 18 maya 1922 g).
33. The reformed medical school in the Atsagatskii Datsan functioned since
1921, see Aiusheeva, ‘Tibetskaia Meditsina v Buriatii’, 261–262.
34. Saxer, ‘Tibetan Medicine and Russian Modernities’, 69.
35. Aiusheeva, ‘Tibetskaia Meditsina v Buriatii’, 255, 261–262, 269;
Dordzhieva, Buddiiskaia Tserkov’ v Kalmykii v Kontse, 37–41.
36. GARB, f. R-248s, op. 1, d. 82, l. 111–112 (Iz tezisov po voprosu o tibet-
skoy meditsine v BMASSR, 21 maya 1924 g).
37. Lobsan Dolgor and V.L. Chimitdorzhiyev, eds., Buddizm: Personalii
(Chita: Ekspress-izdatelstvo, 2011), 147–148; F.L. Sinitsyn, Krasnaia
Buria: Sovetskoe Gosudarstvo I Buddizm v 1917–1946 Gg (Saint
Petersburg: Izd-e A. A. Terent’eva, 2013), 178.
38. Abaeva and Zhukovskaia, eds., Buriaty, 456–459; Dordzhieva, Buddiiskaia
Tserkov’ v Kalmykii v Kontse, 55–58; Saxer, ‘Tibetan Medicine and Russian
Modernities’, 70; Sinitsyn, Krasnaia Buria, 178–179.
39. GARB, f. R-248s, op. 1, d. 86, l. 20 (Appeal of Representative of Tibet
Khambo Agvan Dorzhiev to the Department of the Far East of the
People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, July 18, 1924).
40. GARF (State Archive of the Russian Federation), f. 1318, op. 1, d. 269, l.
120 (To People’s Commissar for Public Health Semashko from Klinger,
August [23], 1923).
41. GARB, f. R-248, op. 1, d. 14, l. 9–11 (Protokol obyedinennogo sove-

shchaniya Burrevkoma i byuro buryat-mongolskogo obkoma RKP(b) o
lamaistskom dukhovenstve, Sovershenno sekretno, g. Verkhneudinsk, 10
oktyabrya 1923 g).
42. GARB, f. R-248s, op. 1, d. 71, l. 3–3 rev. (Tsirkulyar sovnarkoma
BMASSR aymispolkomam i aykomam RKP(b) o primenenii postanovleny
BurTsIK i Sovnarkoma ot 05.03.24 g. №35 “O tibetskoy meditsine”,
Sovershenno sekretno, 29 avgusta 1924 g).
43. GARB, f. R-248, op. 1, d. 186, l. 39–40 rev. (Decree No. 221 of the
Central Executive Committee and the Council of People’s Commisars
of the BMASSR, December 17, 1925); GARB, f. P-1, op. 1, d. 864, l.
76–77 (Iz rezolyutsii po dokladu M.N. Yerbanova o kulturno-natsional-
nom stroitelstve BMASSR na I kulturno-natsionalnom soveshchanii res-
publiki, 27 sentyabrya 1926 g).
44. V. Iu. Bashkuev, ‘V. M. Bronner I Ego Vklad v Ozdorovlenie Buriatskogo
Naroda’, Vlast’ 7 (2013): 181–183.
45. Karl Wilmanns, Lues, Lamas, Leninisten: Tagebuch Einer Reise Durch
Russland in Die Burjatische Republik Im Sommer 1926 (Pfaffenweiler:
Centaurus-Verlagsgesellschaft, 1995), 116.
46. Mongush, Lamaizm v Tuve, 119; Ochirova, ed., Istoriia Buddizma, 49,
54–55.
47. Terry Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in
the Soviet Union, 1923–1939 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001).
48. Latin script substituted Old Mongolian in 1931; in 1939 it gave way to
Cyrillic.
49. GARB, f. GARB, P-1, op. 1, d. 1396, l. 9–10 (Minutes No. 2 of the Anti-
Religious Commission of the Buryat-Mongol Regional Committee of the
VKP(b), March 28, 1928).
50. Sinitsyn, Krasnaia Buria, 183–185.
51. Dolgor and Chimitdorzhiyev, eds., Buddizm: Personalii, 147–148;
Sinitsyn, Krasnaia Buria, 183–186; Tsyrenzhapova, ed., Tibetskaia
Meditsina U Buriat, 67.
52. N.N. Badmaev admitted that the effort of the institute brought little, for
it failed to produce medication from the collected ingredients, while the
“clinic” was simply a section in the abortion department in the Lenin
Hospital that worked for three months and treated eight patients, see
GARF, f. A-482, op. 25, d. 1146, l. 25–25 rev. (Report on Tibetan medi-
cine, Doctor N. N. Badmaev, April 1, 1936).
53. T.I. Grekova and K.A. Lange, ‘Tragicheskie Stranitsy Istorii Instituta
Eksperimental’noi Meditsiny (20-30-E Gody)’, in Repressirovannaia Nauka,
edited by M.G. Iaroshevskii (Saint Petersburg: Nauka, 1994), 2: 9–23.
112 I. SABLIN
54. GARB, f. R-475, op. 9, d. 13, l. 39–39 rev. (Decree No. 307 of the
Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the BMASSR, May 16,
1934).
55. GARB, f. R-475s, op. 1, d. 1, l. 59–62 (Report from Director of the
Anti-Religious Museum A. I. Gerasimova to Chairman of the TsIK and
Sovnarkom of the BAMSSR D. D. Dorzhiev, July 14, 1934); GARB,
f. R-248, op. 3, d. 21, l. 46–48 (Information of the Anti-Religious
Museum to the TsIK of the BMASSR); Galdanova, Gerasimova, Dashiev,
and Mitupov, Lamaizm v Buriatii XVIII, 58.
56. Dordzhieva, Buddiiskaia Tserkov’ v Kalmykii v Kontse, 95.
57. GARB, f. R-248, op. 3, d. 166, l. 1–1 rev. (Information of the TsIK of the
BMASSR, January 21, 1935).
58. GARF, f. A-482, op. 25, d. 1146, l. 4–6 (Report on the studies of
Tibetan medicine, Prof. V. P. Kashkadamov, March 1936).
59. GARF, f. A-482, op. 25, d. 912, l. 1 (To the People’s Commissariat of
Public Health from the Public Health Department of the Leningrad
Soviet, December 14, 1935); GARF, f. A-482, op. 25, d. 912, l. 8 (To
Lektekhsyr’e from the Academic Medical Council, Terziev); GARF, f.
A-482, op. 25, d. 912, l. 14 (To Doctor S. Iu. Belen’kii from Terziev,
May 11, 1936); GARF, f. A-482, op. 25, d. 912, l. 19 (To Prof. A. F.
Gammerman from Belen’kii, July 3, 1936); GARF, f. A-482, op. 25,
d. 1145 (To the Academic Medical Council from the Initiative Group,
March 5, 1936).
60. GARF, f. A-482, op. 25, d. 1143, l. 3–4 (Tibetan (Oriental) Medicine,
Resolution of the Academic Medical Council, April 10, 1936).
61. GARF, f. A-482, op. 25, d. 1150, l. 2–2 rev. (Report to the People’s
Commissar for Public Health G. N. Kaminskii, September 29, 1936).
62. GARF, f. A-482, op. 25, d. 912, l. 30–30a (Steps for the implementation
of the Resolution of the Academic Medical Council from April 1, 1936,
Terziev).
63. GARF, f. A-482, op. 25, d. 912, l. 40 (To Gammerman from the
Academic Medical Council, October 5, 1936); GARF, f. A-482, op. 25,
d. 912, l. 48 (To Terziev from Li Songzuo, November 2, 1936).
64. Sinitsyn, Krasnaia Buria, 187–190; A.A. Terent’ev, Buddizm v Rossii
– Tsarskoi I Sovetskoi (Starye Fotografii) (Saint Petersburg: Izdanie A.
Terent’eva, 2014).
65. Aiusheeva, ‘Tibetskaia Meditsina v Buriatii’, 263.
66. Ochirova, ed., Istoriia Buddizma, 56–57.
67. Interview with A.A. Terent’ev, Saint Petersburg, October 13, 2015.
68. B.D. Dandaron, Izbrannye Statyi, Chyornaya Tetrad, Materialy K
Biografii, Istoriya Kukunora Sumpy Kenpo, edited by V.M. Montlevich
(Saint Petersburg: Evraziya, 2006).
69. GARB, f. R-248, op. 4, d. 68, l. 8а–11 (Information report from

Representative of the Council on Relgious Affairs under the Sovnarkom
of the USSR in the BMASSR N. G. Garmaev to Chairman of the Council
D. S. Polianskii, May 23, 1945); GARB, f. R-248, op. 4, d. 71, l. 170
(Information on the conference of Buddhists of the BMASSR, the Chita
and Irkutsk Regions, and the Tuvan Autonomous Region).
70. GARB, f. R-1854, op. 1, d. 33, l. 8, 10, 12–14 (Information from
Representative of the Council on Relgious Affairs under the Council of
Ministers of the BurASSR D. B. Ochirzhapov to Secretary of the Buryat
Regional Committee of the CPSU D. D. Lubsanov, April 3, 1962).
71. Interview with A.A. Terent’ev; Aiusheeva, ‘Tibetskaia Meditsina v
Buriatii’, 264; Dolgor and Chimitdorzhiyev, eds., Buddizm: Personalii,
44; Terent’ev, Buddizm v Rossii, 160.
72. Tsyrenzhapova, ed., Tibetskaia Meditsina U Buriat, 67.
73. A.F. Gammerman, Slovar’ Tibetsko-Latino-Russkikh Nazvanii Lekarstvennogo
Rastitel’nogo Syr’ia, Primeniaemogo v Tibetskoi Meditsine (Ulan-Ude: Buriat.
kompleksnyi nauch.-issled. in-t., 1963).
74. K. Blinova, G. Iakovlev, and N. Syroezhko, ‘Brakshin - Zabaikal’skoe
Mumie’, Nauka I Zhizn’ 5 (1968): 116–117; Galdan Lenkhoboev, ed.,
Galdan Lenkhoboev: Blagoslovennaia Sud’ba (Ulan-Ude: Buriaad-Mongol
Nom kheblel, 2014), 122–123, 150–155, 367.
75. Lenkhoboev, ed., Galdan Lenkhoboev, 8, 11.
76. GARF, f. A-358, op. 5, d. 304, l. 1–2 (To the Main Administration of
Hunting Economy and Natural Reserves under the Council of Ministers
of the RSFSR from the Director of the Administration of Hunting
Economy under the Maritime Rural Territorial Executive Committee,
April 27, 1964).
77. GARF, f. A-358, op. 5, d. 304, l. 7 (Resolution of the Conference on the
Organization of Production and Export of Goods of Tibetan Medicine,
Vladivostok, April 17, 1964).
78. Abaeva and Zhukovskaia, eds., Buriaty, 459; Dolgor and Chimitdorzhiyev,
eds., Buddizm: Personalii, 145, 148; Tsyrenzhapova, ed., Tibetskaia
Meditsina U Buriat, 74.
79. B.D. Badaraev, E.G. Bazaron, M.D. Dashiev, T.A. Aseeva, and S.M.
Batorova, Langtkhaby I Ikh Korrigirovanie: Ostrye Zabolevaniia Organov
Briushnoi Polosti, edited by B.V. Semichov (Ulan-Ude: Buriat. kn. izd-vo,
1976).
80. Aiusheeva, ‘Tibetskaia Meditsina v Buriatii’, 265–268.
81. Lenkhoboev and N.Ts. Zhambaldagbaev, ‘O Teplykh I Kholodnykh
Svoistvakh’; Lenkhoboev, ‘Prichiny Vnutrennikh Boleznei’; Lenkhoboev,
‘Nekotorye Svedeniia O Pul’sovoi Diagnostike’.
114 I. SABLIN
82. Tsyrenzhapova, ed., Tibetskaia Meditsina U Buriat, 120–134, 147–151,

172–285.
83. D.B. Dashiev, ed., “Dzhud-Shi”: Kanon Tibetskoi Meditsiny, 3 vols. (Ulan-
Ude: Resp. tip., 2003).
84. L.L. Khundanova, L.L. Khundanov, and E.G. Bazaron, Slovo O Tibetskoi
Meditsine (Ulan-Ude: Buriatskoe knizhnoe izdatel’stvo, 1979).
85. Lenkhoboev, ed., Galdan Lenkhoboev, 99.
86. L. Efimov, Tainy Tibetskoi Meditsiny. Sverdlovskaia kinostudiia, 1983.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ2DYK_Ci78.
87. Donald E. Davis and Eugene P. Trani, The First Cold War: The Legacy
of Woodrow Wilson in U.S.-Soviet Relations (Columbia: University of
Missouri Press, 2002).
88. Prasenjit Duara, ‘The Imperialism of “Free Nations”: Japan, Manchukuo
and the History of the Present’, in Imperial Formations, edited by Ann
Laura Stoler, Carole McGranahan, and Peter Perdue (Santa Fe: School
for Advanced Research Press, 2007), 211–239.
89. Ochirova, ed., Istoriia Buddizma, 55.
90. Mongush, Lamaizm v Tuve, 119–121.
91. Ochirova, ed., Istoriia Buddizma, 105–106.
92. Ochirova, ed., Istoriia Buddizma, 264–265, 270–273.
CHAPTER 5
Contestation, Redefinition and Healers’

Tactics in Colonial Southern Africa
Markku Hokkanen
In 1964, Michael Gelfand (a physician, medical historian and amateur

anthropologist) published Medicine and Custom in Africa, based on
a series of lectures he held at the University College of Rhodesia and
Nyasaland. At times Gelfand had earlier emphasised the superiority of
Western medicine while giving ‘witch doctors’ short shrift.1 However in
Medicine and Custom Gelfand’s ethnographic approach and more pos-
itive interest in Shona healers was evident. Shona healers were referred
to as medicine men, who could be roughly divided into ‘herbalists’ and
‘diviners’ (although Gelfand also pointed out that many healers did in
fact practise both herbalism and divination). Because Shona medi-
cines could be used either to heal or to harm, the distinction between
the terms ‘healer’ and ‘witch’ could sometimes be blurred. Although he
maintained that (given the extent to which Shona healing practice dealt
with ‘witchcraft’) the title ‘witch doctor’ could sometimes be an appro-
priate one, Gelfand acknowledged that Shona healers were very much
M. Hokkanen (*)
Department of History, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland
e-mail: Markku.Hokkanen@oulu.fi

116 M. HOKKANEN
opposed to the term because of its apparent association with witches and
that it was ‘out of respect’ for these healers that he sought to limit its
use.2
This chapter is a longue durée exploration (from the late eighteenth
century to the 1960s) of selected Southern African healers and medi-
cines in colonial contexts that roughly extended from the Cape Colony
to Zambia and Malawi which were incorporated into the British Empire
during the nineteenth century.3 It draws upon recent scholarship and
focuses on conflicts, exchanges and co-existence between African and
Western medical practitioners.4 Given its long-standing regional mobil-
ities and border-crossing influences, a regional approach to histories of
healing is arguably particularly useful in the case of Southern Africa.5
Different ways of contesting colonial power, and the definition and
redefinition of vocabulary (a process apparent in Gelfand’s discussion of
healers) will be highlighted along with mobility, particularly of medicines
(as objects of trade, exchange, hybridisation and contestation in the colo-
nial period).
Indigenous, Migrant and Mobile Medicines and Healers

The co-existence of healing and harming medicines within a medical
culture creates potential challenges for historians interested in how med-
icine connects with power, politics and religion. Part of this problem of
perspective stems from the complex history and terminology of healing
and healers. Megan Vaughan has warned of the problems of definition
and use of the English words ‘healing’ and ‘curing’ in colonial history:
‘healing’ can be too easily understood to be solely beneficial (risking
romanticised images of vernacular therapeutics).6 Our current concepts
of ‘African healer’ in turn are partly outcomes of the very history that
we are investigating, and in this history a crucial question has been how
acceptable and unacceptable healing has been defined. Whilst this defi-
nition was arguably a long-standing process stemming from pre-colonial
times, colonial rule brought about powerful initiatives to define legal and
illegal healing by the state, missionaries and the Western medical pro-
fession. In particular, anti-witchcraft legislation introduced new ‘layers
of acceptable and unacceptable healing’ from the late nineteenth cen-
tury onwards.7 This chapter seeks to unpick and analyse these complex
processes of redefinition.
5 CONTESTATION, REDEFINITION AND HEALERS’ TACTICS … 117
I will use ‘African healer’ as a generic umbrella term that covers a

wide range of practitioners who dealt with medicines. Although the term
particularly signifies those people who dealt with illnesses, the sphere of
healers and medicines is much broader: healers provided medicines for
luck, success and wealth in practically all areas of human life from repro-
duction to death. As Karen Flint has noted, ‘African healers’ can be also
referred to as ‘traditional’, ‘indigenous’ and ‘popular’ healers.8 The term
‘traditional’ has been problematic in historical usage, as it easily gives an
impression of unchanging, monolithic traditions, and tends to overlook
both the dynamism and the invention of tradition in medicine.9 The
focus here is on those healers who were to some extent ‘specialists’, in
the sense that they had knowledge and resources that were beyond what
might be considered common, and were able to deal with more than just
one or a couple of ailments or problems. Following Steven Feierman,
these healers can be called ‘peasant intellectuals’: people whose soci-
etal responsibility was to discover and maintain knowledge about the
world.10
The broad group of healers includes those who were primarily con-
cerned with discovering causes of illness or misfortune and those who
focused on treatment of such ills (and those who practised both). The
basic distinction between ‘diviners’ and ‘herbalists’ has been made in
many ethnographies of Southern African healing, but this line is seen
often as blurred or artificial. The categories of healer, diviner, herbal-
ist, medicine man/woman or ‘witch doctor’ are partly productions of
colonial encounters, knowledge-production, translation, definition and
redefinition of rich variety of vernacular terms. Such terms include Zulu
inyanga (translated variously as healer, herbalist), isangoma (healer,
diviner), Xhosa igqirha (healer, diviner), varieties of nganga (for exam-
ple, sing’anga in Southern Malawi: healer, herbalist), ngaka (Tswana
of Botswana and South Africa, also in Barotseland in Zambia), nchimi
(Malawi—diviner). What is common to all these specialists is expert
knowledge of and access to medicines (umuthi in the Zulu-speaking
world, muti among the Shona, mankhwala or mankwala among the
Chewa and Tumbuka).11
There are many ways of categorising healers in the past and the pres-
ent. For example, according to Robert Thornton, in many parts of
modern South Africa three main forms of ‘traditional healers’ are sango-
mas (who have a particular path of ‘graduation’ to ‘healership’), inyan-
gas (herbalists; those who use or sell herbal medicines) and amaprofeti,
118 M. HOKKANEN
practitioners of syncretic Christian faith healing. However, as Thornton

notes, ‘none of these categories is exclusive’.12 Furthermore, the termi-
nology of healers and medicine was in a state of change already before
the colonial conquest, partly as a result of increasing African mobility,
trade and conquest. As Gloria Waite has pointed out, the Ngoni who
crossed the Zambesi heading north, and conquered large areas in today’s
Malawi, Zambia and Mozambique, took on terminology from the agri-
culturalists that they subjugated, changing their term for medicine from
muthi to mankhwala and adopting sing’anga for healer.13
In some cases, the oldest inhabitants of a country retained a rep-
utation for knowing the best medicines. David Livingstone believed in
1841 that among the Tswana, the best doctors came from the group
Livingstone called Bakalihari. According to Isaac Schapera, these were
the BaKgalagadi, the oldest Tswana-speaking settlers in Bechuanaland,
who were subsequently subdued by later groups.14 In Malawi, the Ngoni
conquerors acknowledged the healers of the Chewa, the Tumbuka and
the Phoka.15 In a recent biography of Khotso Sethuntsa (1898–1972),
perhaps the best known ‘medicine man’ in apartheid-era South Africa,
it was noted that some of Khotso’s medicinal knowledge and power was
attributed to his alleged contacts with the San, the oldest inhabitants of
the country, in his youth.16 The idea that the oldest inhabitants of a land
would have knowledge of its best medicines could be based on empiri-
cism: Southern African flora is diverse and locals would usually have the
most detailed knowledge of medicinal plants in their area.17
However, another idea that seems to have been relatively widespread
in Southern and Central Africa is that some of the most powerful med-
icines are to be found from strangers, and some of the most potent
healers are outsiders or distant figures. This was the tradition that also
benefited Europeans claiming to have new and powerful medicines,
knowledge or powers.18 As Roy Willis has pointed out in his discussion
of healing in modern northern Zambia, there are also pragmatic grounds
for consulting distant healers with no prior contact to the sufferer’s life:
this can be seen as protection against fraudulent healers.19 Consulting
more distant healers became easier with the increasing mobility, urbanisa-
tion and population growth in the early twentieth century.
Medicinal plants in Southern Africa have probably been traded, trans-
ported, and transplanted, like other useful plants, for millennia. There is
comparably little direct evidence of this so far, but for instance, we know
that Swahili traders in nineteenth-century South-Central Africa took
many plants with them from the coast of East Africa. Plants introduced
this way included citrus fruits that were used medicinally as well as con-
sumed as foodstuffs.20 When British imperial scientists analysed medi-
cines and suspected poisons from Nyasaland in the interwar era, it was
discovered that they included plants used as food and medicine elsewhere
in the Empire. For example, Khamkhandi was identified as Zizyphus
jujube, the ‘Indian jujube’ tree found and cultivated in both Africa and
Asia, and Kakubwe, a suspected poison, was identified as Pistia stratiotes,
used in Hindu medicine to treat dysentery, cough and anaemia (among
other ailments), as well as for purifying water and as famine food.21 By
1940, African healers in Durban listed wild species such as jalap (orig-
inally from South America) and male fern (from Europe and North
America) as ‘native medicines’. By this time, these plants had established
Zulu names (jalembu and nkomankoma respectively). As Flint has shown,
these medicines were now contested substances in the struggle over
defining what was acceptable ‘native’ or ‘traditional medicine’ in colonial
Natal.22
The examples cited above point to the importance of the Indian
Ocean connections for the medical history of Southern Africa. From the
early pre-colonial trade on the east coast of the region to the import of
slaves from the east to the Cape and, of course, to the migration of thou-
sands of Indians during the British rule, the medical world of Southern
Africa had important eastern influences. These influences were particu-
larly pronounced in Natal, as Flint demonstrates. Indian-owned muthi
shops were a prime example of an African—Indian medical pluralism of
which most Europeans knew very little of.23 It is plausible that such plu-
ralism emerged broadly across Southern Africa, not only at the Cape or
on the Rand, but also, for example in those Rhodesian and Nyasaland
towns with a growing Indian presence. Medicines were objects of global
trade. From the tobacco used by the Khoi to the male fern found in
Durban healers’ dispensaries, and from Halle patent medicines to mer-
cury, Southern Africans gradually accessed more medicines from Europe
and the Americas as well.24
Conversely, some Southern African substances also spread into the
increasingly global medical market. Aloe and buchu were two med-
icines used by indigenous healers in the Cape that were exported and
recognised in the British pharmacopeia in the nineteenth century. Aloe
juice had many uses, one of which (among the Khoi) was the treat-
ment of stomach disorders. Buchu, which was used for headaches
120 M. HOKKANEN
(among other ailments) was later claimed to have been discovered

by Afrikaner trekkers, in a way that erased indigenous knowledge of
the medicine.25 Settlers at the Cape had learnt about medicines from
the Khoi; female Khoi servants were a particularly important group of
informants for colonialists.26 Aloe and buchu were known by indigenous
Khoi and San healers, but it is unclear whether another Cape export to
British medical markets, the excrement of the rock hyrax (dassie) was an
invention of white medicine traders in the early nineteenth century.27
From the Cape and South-Western Africa, a significant group of
plants with both nutritional and medicinal properties were succulents,
known as highly effective quenchers of thirst by the San, including hoo-
dia or ghaap. By the 1770s, such plants were used by San, the Khoi and
the Dutch-speaking settlers. Combined with alcohol, by the late nine-
teenth century hoodia was used by both Afrikaner and British settlers to
cure piles and stomach ache. As Abena Dove Osseo-Asare has pointed
out, the knowledge about hoodia spread to the West as an outcome of a
particular history of knowledge-appropriation, circulation and hybridisa-
tion.28 Whilst the ‘exotic’ origins of the exported medicines sometimes
played an important part in their reputation (and marketing),29 they
were gradually erased as the medicine became an established part of local
pharmacopoeias. Thus jalap grown in Natal, or strophanthin produced
in Britain from Central African kombe, became just a ‘normal’ medicine,
unless there was some doubt or contest over its use. Arguably, most
medicines, as most everyday practices of healing, were not contested to
the extent that they would surface regularly in many historical records.
Medicines and healers tended to become noticeable when there was
some trouble about them, be it political, religious or legal.30
As a more mundane medicine with multiple uses and sources, the
history of castor oil illuminates plural medicine as well as contests over
cures. Castor oil was widely used by both Africans and Europeans in
the treatment of stomach disorders, including constipation, diarrhoea
and many worm infestations. Europeans imported it, and it was one of
the cheaper medicines frequently given to African patients; the oil of an
indigenous variety was also known. In the Malawi region, it was used to
treat snake bites, scalds and retained placenta.31 In one case of poisoning
in 1895, both European-sourced and indigenous castor oil were given
to a patient, resulting in extensive vomiting.32 Imported castor oil was
an example of a ‘Western’ drug that was not, in local perceptions, alien
in its operation or outlook. Europeans generally considered it a popular
drug among Africans, although there was some evidence that European
‘stomach medicine’ (this category also included Epsom Salts) was per-
ceived as ‘cheap’ in a pejorative sense.33 However, by the 1930s the dis-
semination of castor oil had become a matter of contestation in parts of
South Africa. The Pharmaceutical Society of Durban at this time were
strongly pressing for a ban on the sale of a category of ‘European med-
icines’ from African herbalist shops. As Flint shows, white pharmacists
increasingly sought control over any medicine with alcohol or preserva-
tives, or ‘European medicines’. This was part of an ongoing contest over
medicinal market in Natal, where African herbalists’ professionalisation
had been particularly successful.34
Healing, Medicines and Politics in Early Nineteenth

Century
As Hunt has pointed out, healing, medicines and politics have important
interconnections in African history.35 Longue durée studies (particularly
from the Great Lakes region) have provided insight into the ways in
which the specialist roles of a healer and a king or a chief have emerged
and diverged in sub-Saharan Africa over time.36 However, medical and
political authorities alike have had access to particular medicines to deal
with various threats to society, from drought to disease and war.
One early nineteenth-century example of interplay between medi-
cines and high politics comes from the court of Tshaka (Shaka) in the
Zulu empire. According to Nathaniel Isaacs, a European trader at the
court, the Zulu ruler was interested in medicines that the Europeans
might provide. (Zulu doctors, in turn, successfully treated Isaacs, who
suffered from a painful boil in the foot.) When given a gift of European
medicines, Tshaka swiftly distributed them himself. In so doing, Tshaka
seems to have combined healing and politics with a particular purpose
of demonstrating power, goodwill and access to new European medical
sources.37
Flint has usefully analysed the centrality of medicines (muthi) and
roles of healers in the power politics of the Zulu kingdom. In Zululand,
the power of the chiefs came in important ways from chiefship medi-
cines. Possession of the most powerful chiefship medicines, which linked
the chief with the ancestors, was seen as both legitimation of rule and
a practical way to beat rivals in power struggles. During Tshaka’s rule
122 M. HOKKANEN
(1816–1828), the political rituals involving medicines were, as Flint

argues, ‘elevated…to a national level’.38
During the last months of his rule Tshaka seems to have been keen
to obtain medicines that would provide him with long life. According
to Isaacs’ much quoted narrative, the king requested medicine to turn
‘white hairs black’. Later, he asked explicitly for medicine ‘to make him
live until he was very old’.39 In 1828, the king was given a European
medicine chest, but Isaacs tried not to make exceptional claims for the
hair medicine, given Tshaka’s increasing obsession with it. Isaacs’ narra-
tive highlights both African rulers’ interest in European medicines and
the fragile position of the early Europeans in the courts of African rul-
ers. After the death of British officer King, Tshaka told Isaacs that surely
some African had poisoned King.40 Poisoning was a widespread fear
among both Africans and Europeans, with travellers feeling particularly
vulnerable in the nineteenth century.41
As Flint points out, medicines and poisons play a central role in Zulu
oral histories and traditions of how chiefs, kings, healers and commoners
fought and jostled for power. In these oral histories, powerful and clever
healers with specific muthi occupy a prominent position. Flint argues
that in South African historiography, the role of healers in the birth and
expansion of the Zulu empire have been overlooked, partly because these
contested histories are difficult to unpick.42 It is clear that the power
of medicines used for killing or overthrowing of opponents was widely
believed in and generally considered politically acceptable. Medicines
explained victories as well as defeats, usurpation as well as long reigns of
rulers. Kings and chiefs could legitimately use medicines that resembled
witchcraft, as their actions were generally seen to benefit the community
at large. Furthermore, they claimed to possess the most powerful medi-
cines and to ‘own and control all medicines within [their] jurisdiction’.43
In the dynamic, tumultuous and unpredictable conditions of
nineteenth-century Southern Africa, medicines and specialists providing
healing, protection, power and increase of resources were widely sought
after. Up-and-coming rulers could seize and strengthen their positions
by claiming medical powers. In the late 1850s, chief Chibisa in the Shire
river valley (in today’s southern Malawi), was one of these new leaders
who combined medicine with politics. According to British missionaries
who befriended Chibisa, the chief claimed to be the ‘most powerful
medicine man in the country’. Chibisa was not from a chiefly lineage,
and in fact seemed to be a newcomer among the small group of mostly
Mang’anja people that he led. Chibisa was said to have been a slave in
the Portuguese settlement of Tete on the Zambesi. Chibisa claimed
that he had been possessed by a spirit of a female prophetess, taking her
name, and that he possessed many medicines, including war medicines
that blocked bullets.44 Chibisa enjoyed brief local success but was even-
tually killed by a Portuguese trader in the violent conditions of the early
1860s.45 Chibisa’s particular blend of medicine and politics built upon
not only medicines and spirit possession, but also the powerful tradi-
tion of prophetesses and spirit cults in the Zambesi and Shire regions.46
He seems to have been a dynamic, hybrid practitioner who sought
power and medicines from indigenous traditions, a long-standing Afro-
Portuguese zone of cultural contact and the few British incomers.
Colonial Influences, Impacts and Challenges

Colonialism shook up, uprooted and reorganised centres and practices
of political power in Southern Africa, often radically as when capitals
were overrun and leaders killed, imprisoned or driven into exile. But
some African leaders made deals with the Europeans, retaining some
of their power. The Xhosa lost most of their political independence by
the mid-century, the Zulu lost their empire but retained their kingdom
into the 1900s, and the Tswana kingdom of Khama emerged as a largely
autonomous, modernising polity within the British Empire.47 As the
‘Scramble for Africa’ gathered pace, fuelled by discoveries of diamonds
and gold, the British annexed by treaties and wars the majority of terri-
tory in Southern Africa in the 1880s and 1890s, culminating in the con-
quest of the Afrikaner republics in the war of 1899–1902.48 Colonialism
transformed much of the political landscape of Southern Africa, but
there were also important continuities with the past in the healers’ world.
Religious change, particularly the spread of Christianity, was another
fundamental factor that impacted upon healing in colonial Southern
Africa. In many areas, Christianity preceded colonial rule by decades.
The complex relationships between varieties of Christianity and colo-
nialism remain subjects of scholarly debate,49 as is the question of what
exactly was the meaning of medicine and bodily healing for Christian
conversion and religious change (and vice versa).50 Generally, it is agreed
that healing and religion, the bodily and the spiritual, were often inti-
mately connected in Southern African cultures. Equally, it can be
argued that the spread of mission Christianity posed some challenges
124 M. HOKKANEN
to indigenous healing, and that these challenges intensified towards

the end of the nineteenth century. The contact zone between mission
Christianity, medical missions and African healing grew notably with the
increasing conversion rates, and colonial population movements: whilst
for much of the nineteenth century, mission stations were small enclaves
dotted across Southern African landscape, by the mid-twentieth cen-
tury Christianity had become a mass religion in most parts of the region.
Generally, most Africans’ first encounter with Christianity came through
meetings with other Africans, rather than directly through the contact
with the European missionaries.51
The religious realm of nineteenth-century Southern Africa became
increasingly complicated with waves of religious movements. Generally,
the tendency was for relative openness to new spiritual and medical ele-
ments. Healers were often swift to adopt medicines, symbols and mate-
rials that promised access to sources of power, cures and prophylaxes.
‘Witch doctors’ were certainly useful enemies of Christianity and med-
icine in missionary discourse.52 However, even in the more ‘aggres-
sive’ forms of mission Christianity with a strong medical arm, usually
only some forms of African healing came under concentrated attack.
Particularly spirit possession healing and practices regarding witchcraft
were intolerable to missionaries, as they were seen as utterly incompati-
ble with Christianity. By contrast, herbal medicines, massage or dry-cup-
ping might be criticised as ineffectual and unscientific, but they did not
pose a similar threat to missionaries.53 Perhaps the most extreme attacks
on healers came not from colonial missionaries, but from anti-medicine
movements that from the early twentieth century onwards condemned
both African and Western medicines and accepted only faith healing.54
Besides political and religious changes, colonialism impacted upon the
world of the healers in various ways. Colonial rule caused or co-occurred
with major ecological, economic, cultural and societal changes at various
speeds and intensities across Southern Africa. The loss of cattle and the
best farmlands, together with the rise of an industrial colonial economy
meant that even those African regions that retained political autonomy
became in practice dependant on colonial centres, particularly the mines,
cities and farms of South Africa and Rhodesia. By the early twentieth
century, the introduction of money, taxation and migrant labour were
perhaps more important factors driving changes in healing than the fall
of African polities. In those societies (including Xhosa, Zulu, Ndebele
and Ngoni) where wealth was mainly held in the form of cattle, the
deadly cattle diseases such as rinderpest caused a terrific blow.55 The dec-
imation of herds must have also impacted upon those wealthier healers,
who had been paid in cattle for their practice.56
Attacks on ‘Witch Doctors’, Tolerance of ‘Herbalists’

Nathaniel Isaacs was one of the first Europeans in Southern Africa to
use the term ‘witch doctor’ to refer to Zulu healers, whom he variously
described as sometimes competent, sometimes ignorant, and sometimes
as ‘imposters’.57 However, it was not until the second half of the nine-
teenth century that the term ‘witch doctor’ started to become increas-
ingly common in European discourse about African healers, appearing
alongside less pejorative terms such as ‘native doctors’ or ‘African doc-
tors’ that nevertheless persisted.58 The figure of the witch doctor was in
many ways useful in general colonial discourse. It provided an exotic,
primitive counterpart for European self-images. As an ‘enemy’ of science,
progress and Christianity it provided justified colonialism, missionary
work and the expansion of Western medicine.59 However, colonialists
interested in exoticism could also see healing as cultural performance, as
Flint notes. Healers could be invited to perform at tea-parties or to be
part of colonial exhibitions.60
Alongside a colonial focus on witchcraft and divination, positive inter-
est in indigenous medicinal plants continued. Divination and detection
of witches tended to be separated from the knowledge and use of medic-
inal herbs, although it was frequently noted that many healers dealt with
both spheres. The idea of some African healers as ‘herbalists’, a term
that had some positive currency in the Victorian era (as the plant origin
of many medicines was broadly recognised) allowed the redefinition of
healers in a way that some of them became accepted, or at least tolerated,
in colonial thought.61 This conceptual fracture in colonial discourse,
which generated both ‘witch doctor’ and ‘herbalist’ in the imagery of
African healing, by the late nineteenth century created a framework that
the healers themselves could utilise in defending and redefining their sta-
tus, practice and role in society.
This fracture was long-lasting, despite many ethnographers’ point-
ing out that frequently same people practiced divination and used a
wide range of medicines with ingredients from plants, animals and min-
erals. A new layer in colonial perceptions on African healing was added
by psychological and psychiatric interpretations, which became more
126 M. HOKKANEN
prominent in the early twentieth century. These views enabled both the
pathologisation of African patients and healers as mentally ill, and the
explanation of witchcraft beliefs and the practice of healers in the frame-
work of placebo- and nocebo-effects. Psychological interpretations, how-
ever, did not tend to extend to the herbalists’ practice. The notions of
placebo and nocebo (or, in older interpretations, mental, nervous or
moral factors) allowed, in addition to herbal remedies (with presupposed
pharmaceutical agents), another ‘Western’ explanation of how healers’
treatments could ‘really’ work.62 An early psychological explanation of
witchcraft beliefs was put forth by the British colonial official Theophilus
Shepstone in Natal in 1851, when he advised British magistrates to tread
carefully with witchcraft cases in courts, and noted that a belief in witch-
craft could be genuinely dangerous to health.63
Colonial Legal Challenges

If African healing had been generally regarded as simply ‘herbalism’ or
‘folk medicine’, it is unlikely it would have been challenged by colonial
rule. The establishment of witchcraft legislation, which was carried out
in British-ruled areas gradually in the late nineteenth and early twenti-
eth century, stemmed originally largely from judicial and security con-
cerns. Influential ‘witch doctors’ were seen as potential security threats,
and their activities, it was believed, could lead to violent attacks on the
alleged witches, disturbance of peace and colonial order.64 The per-
ceived role of Xhosa prophets and diviners in the wars and uprisings
against the British in the 1850s was important backdrop for this pro-
cess. Furthermore, witchcraft accusations were seen as key part of the
power of African kings and chiefs, and criminalising such accusations
was one way of weakening their power. In Natal, the healers’ activities
were increasingly under scrutiny from the 1860s onwards, and this policy
spread to Zululand in the 1880s with the British rule. However, in prac-
tice, healers continued to deal with cases of suspected witchcraft in these
areas.65
The ‘native laws’ in British African empire were a particular hybrid
outcome of colonial invention of tradition and negotiation between
imperial and local agents. The colonial justice system was also an out-
come of negotiation, collaboration and contest. In colonial courts,
judges or magistrates wielded crucial power, but African agents
also impacted upon the processes and outcomes, in many roles as
translators, clerks, local chiefs, police, informants and witnesses. In cases

of suspicious illness or death, Africans noted early on that although the
British administrations did not believe in, and outlawed, witchcraft, the
British did believe in poisoning. Poisoning and witchcraft did not, in
Southern African medical cultures generally, have a strict conceptual dif-
ference: both could be caused with ‘bad medicines’ that could be placed
in victim’s food or drink. Thus by recourse to the charge of ‘poison-
ing’ Africans could bring to colonial courts cases that belonged to the
sphere of healers and medicine and sidestep the outlawed concept of
witchcraft.66
As the Cape Colony expanded with colonial conquest, anti-witchcraft
activities were gradually outlawed, with the 1886 African Territories
Penal Code and the 1895 Witchcraft Suppression Act as key pieces of
legislation. Witchcraft legislation was set up in Southern Rhodesia
(Zimbabwe) in 1895, Nyasaland (Malawi) in 1911, Bechuanaland
(Botswana) in 1927 and in Southwest Africa (Namibia) in 1933.67
These laws and ordinances did not simply spread from south to north: in
Nyasaland the draft ‘Ordinance to deal with Trial by Ordeal, Witchcraft
and the use of Charms’ was modelled along the lines of similar ordi-
nance in Southern Nigeria.68 In Southern Rhodesia, a harsher law was
introduced in 1899, as it was believed that ‘witch doctors’ had caused
several problems in Mashonaland in particular. (The Shona uprising in
1896–1897 formed part of the context for this particular law.) According
to the 1899 law, witch doctors in Rhodesia could be sent to maximum of
three years in prison, physical punishment by lashing, or a fine of up to a
hundred pounds. This law was in force until 1963, when it was replaced
by similar legislation.69 In Rhodesia, people were convicted on the basis
of these laws regularly still in the early 1960s. According to Gelfand,
Rhodesian officials dealt with 90 such cases during three and a half years
in 1959–1963.70 Not all of the accused were healers, of course, but
the laws put many healers under a direct threat across the Anglophone
Southern Africa.
In the late colonial period, suspected cases of ‘medicine murder’ (peo-
ple killed for their body parts to be used as medicine) and the potential
toxicity of some healers’ medicines prompted official concern, investi-
gation and enforcement from time to time. Concerns about ‘medicine
murders’ in particular underlined the connections between medicines
and politics. Probably the most prominent investigations took place in
Basutoland in the 1940s (with some 70 killings reported during the
128 M. HOKKANEN
decade) and culminated with the trial and execution of 2 chiefs by the
British authorities. As Digby has pointed out, the redistribution of polit-
ical power in colonial Basutoland formed an important context for these
cases.71
During the interwar period, the Western medical profession came
forth increasingly publicly against African healers in South Africa and
Southern Rhodesia. This added a new layer to the older pressures
on healers. Cape Colony had had a particularly strict medical legisla-
tion since 1807: in principle all unregistered medical practitioners who
had received pay for their work could be charged. In practice ‘alterna-
tive’ practitioners (regardless of their background) were rarely taken to
court in the nineteenth century.72 Although white doctors criticised and
mocked African practitioners, it should be noted that their major com-
petitors were various medicine traders, peddlers and ‘quacks’.73 By the
early twentieth century, however, African healers were increasingly tar-
geted. White doctors formed in 1926 an influential South African
Medical Association which sought to ban African doctors from public
hospitals and to prohibit the practices of African healers in the Union
of South Africa. In 1928 their lobbying bore fruit as the Medical Dental
and Pharmacy Act banned all kinds of healers throughout the Union,
with one important exception: the previously licenced inyanga—
herbalists in Natal.74 Here the strategy of professionalisation by heal-
ers, discussed further below, worked as preventive and protective move
against an all-out assault by the white doctors’ lobby.
Industrialising, urbanising and comparatively wealthy South Africa
with its large white population was very different from the overwhelm-
ingly rural protectorates of Nyasaland or Bechuanaland, with few or
no European settlers. In these protectorates, there was never enough
Western doctors to try to take over medical ‘market’, or a will to pub-
licly ban general practice of healers.75 Rhodesia, with considerable set-
tler presence in the south, but smaller medical market than South
Africa, was somewhere between South Africa and the protectorates. In
Northern Rhodesia, Gloria Waite held that the colonial policy towards
healing was mainly of ‘benevolent neglect’.76 The Western medical pro-
fession in Southern Rhodesia, however, organised along South African
lines, and exerted pressure on healers. By the 1960s and early 1970s, the
Medical Council of Rhodesia was certainly considered powerful accord-
ing to G.L. Chavunduka’s study of Shona healers. The Council did not
recognise healers, its members ‘insulted’ patients that consulted healers,
and threatened any of its members who would have collaborated with
healers. The professionalisation of healers was seen as a response to these
challenges.77 It is illuminating, however, that Rhodesian medical coun-
cil threatened its own members against collaboration with healers: this
suggests more a position of weakness than strength by the late colonial
period.
Confrontation, Conflict and Questioning Western

Medicine
In charting healers’ responses to colonial pressures and societal change,
firstly it should be noted that many healers probably continued their
practice much as before. In her long-term study of healing in Zambia
and Tanzania, Waite argued that there was little or no change in African
healing in direct response to Western medicine.78 In many rural areas,
there was no mission, colonial official, or least of all, a Western physi-
cian.79 However, some healers did have to engage with significant colo-
nial change, in which Western medicine played a part. Such changes were
most prominent in colonial centres, and contact zones where healers had
to choose how to respond to newcomers from early on.
African healers were often portrayed in European and South African
writings as influential, hostile individuals towards Western medi-
cine, Christianity and general progress. Medical historians Leidler and
Gelfand, for instance, argued that ‘witch doctors’ simply prevented
many Africans from coming to Dr. Fitzgerald’s hospital in the Transkei
in 1860s and 1870s.80 In early twentieth-century Southern Rhodesia,
powerful healers were claimed to have powers of ‘mass suggestion’ over
many Africans.81 Whilst some of this was doubtlessly colonial propa-
ganda or phobia, direct confrontation and hostility towards colonialists
was one of the tactics available to Southern African healers, particularly
during early contacts and colonial conquest. In late nineteenth cen-
tury Natal missionaries complained that influential healers made African
Christians to flee mission stations and convert back to ‘paganism’ under
threat of death.82 However, direct reports of healers physically attack-
ing Europeans are rare. One of the very few articles in which The Lancet
mentioned ‘witch-doctors’ in the 1890s was in its reporting of a case in
Rhodesia where ‘witch doctors’ had attacked a medical missionary sta-
tion, causing a brief siege. Despite its support for the missionaries, the
Lancet was not entirely without sympathy to the ‘witch doctors’: the
130 M. HOKKANEN
journal acknowledged that they had a sound principle of charging for

their healing, which had been undermined by missionaries’ offering
treatment for free.83
There is little doubt that as peasant intellectuals whose views often
carried weight in local communities, healers were in a good position to
question, criticise or outright demonise Western medicine—often sim-
ply by pointing out its obvious shortcomings. Surgical practices, includ-
ing amputations, and generally the handling of blood and body parts in
hospitals fuelled, for their part, fears of doctors, medical assistants and
hospital staff (European and African) as cannibals, vampires or witches.84
By cutting up bodies and accessing symbolically and literally powerful
bodily fluids, Western medics set themselves up for fears and accusations
that drew upon older African suspicions of Europeans as evil beings.
Oral tradition in Northern Malawi suggests that failed colonial-era
treatment of venereal diseases, for example, could drive African patients
back to local healers. Stories of such failures could include the mutilation
or damaging of patients’ genitals,85 which again linked Western medi-
cine with grievous bodily harm, in this case threatening the reproductive
capacity and sexuality of people. A more empiricist tactic that demon-
strated the weakness of Western medicine was to send those patients
deemed to be incurable to the hospitals. Whilst this tactic arguably runs
the risk of backfiring in the case of unexpected recovery, at least some
colonial doctors thought that African healers used it effectively. Walter
Gopsill, a medical officer in Nyasaland in the 1920s thought that ‘witch
doctors’ were quick to seize upon the failures of European doctors and
advertised these as examples of the fate that awaited Africans who went
to European hospitals.86
The image of powerful healers’ direct resistance to Western medicine
and colonialism generally was however often exaggerated. Such images,
as Flint has pointed out, were useful in colonial discourse to provide an
explanation for various difficulties encountered by the colonialists.87 If
healers would have been as powerful as they were often portrayed, and if
they had been decidedly set against the Europeans, many early European
settlements would arguably not have been tolerated in the first place.88
It should also be noted that although some healers clearly wielded nota-
ble influence in Southern African societies, they were usually advisors to
political rulers, not rulers themselves. Furthermore, the scope of heal-
ing and healers was so diverse that whilst some healers wielded power
and influence, others were in lower positions. By about 1900, open and
armed resistance against colonial rule had largely ended in defeat, and
those healers who had to deal with colonialism directly, had to take dif-
ferent routes.
Accessing New Powers and Protecting Own Knowledge:

Engagement, Avoidance, Secrecy
In the Northern Ngoni kingdom in Malawi, according to oral tradi-
tion, leading diviners predicted the arrival of Europeans and advised
the chiefs to avoid military confrontation with them. After the estab-
lishment of early mission stations, some healers were clearly interested
to acquire European knowledge and medicines. This was apparent, for
example, in the sending of healers’ children to mission schools, and in
some cases, in training for mission medical assistants. Established, older
healers seem to have rarely gone to school themselves, but their children
provided an important link of learning and exchange between older vil-
lage intellectuals and mission communities.89
In Botswana, Paul Landau has highlighted the dynamic exchanges
between Tswana healers and mission Christianity. When lay missionaries
gained prominence as both new healers and advisors to king Sekgoma
in the 1860s, Tswana healers sought to accept them in the society as
new kinds of priest-healers (dingaka). As Christian prayers became
more popular in the community, ‘traditional’ dingaka emphasised that
they too prayed to God through their herbal medicines, drawing paral-
lels between their practice and the Europeans’ prayer through books.90
After Sekgoma’s son Khama led a Christian revolution in his kingdom,
established healers lost some of their position and prestige, particularly
as leaders or communal rituals aimed at securing rain. Most of the heal-
ers became herbalists who had modest ‘private practice’, but who also
attracted Christian patients and customers. However, many new Tswana
evangelists came from healer families, and some of them took up faith
healing in the early twentieth century. Praying for rain or for healing
offered practice and language that could bring together both Christian
and non-Christian healing culture, in Botswana and more generally in
Southern Africa.91
The connections between medicines, prayer and written word gained
new significance in the changing medical world in colonial Southern
Africa. All of them signified knowledge, power and potential to tran-
scend boundaries of the ordinary and to connect with higher spiritual
132 M. HOKKANEN
power. In this context, texts, particularly Biblical ones, could liter-

ally become medicines, as could spoken prayer. Likewise, prayer could
empower or guarantee herbal or other kinds of medicines, and lack of
God’s blessing could undo the best medicines of men. The idea that ulti-
mately God heals (or not) and that the healer and medicines are mere
conduits can be located in pre-colonial African, Christian and Islamic
traditions.92 Practically, such an idea could be seen as an ‘insurance pol-
icy’ for healers, as claiming the entire cure would mean shouldering the
entire blame in case of failed healing.
Engaging with colonialists, some healers attempted to learn of
the secrets of European medical knowledge, technology and materi-
als. Secrets in medical knowledge, as Elaine Leong and Alisha Rankin
have pointed out, can refer to either more esoteric, mystic knowledge,
or more pragmatic trade secrets.93 This mystical-trade secret division is
useful in considering healers’ engagements with colonialism. Religious
elements in cross-cultural exchanges, for example, could be considered
more mystical, that could be accessed by conversion to Christianity or
accessing religious texts and symbols, whilst knowledge of Western phar-
macy and treatment techniques, could be seen more as ‘trade secrets’
that could be learned by apprenticeship in dispensaries or hospitals. The
latter was generally an option only available to a younger generation of
healers who accessed mission education. Whilst it is impossible to assess
how many healers had Western education, it is clear that by the early
twentieth century some did. By the interwar era, missionary-anthro-
pologist T.C. Young believed that many practicing healers in Nyasaland
worked in the church and colonial administration, but their healing role
was mainly hidden from Europeans.94 More evidence of how healers
accessed new elements to their practice can be seen in the incorporation
of Christian, Islamic and Watch Tower texts, prayers, hymns, and sym-
bols such as crosses, in healing in the late nineteenth and twentieth cen-
turies.95 However, some imported elements of ‘Western’ medicine could
be simply bought, notably patent but also some ‘regular’ medicines, tins,
glass bottles and other vials for storing medicines. ‘Modern’ healers who
increasingly decanted their medicines into bottles might not be identifi-
able from the visible medicine horns that some early twentieth-century
colonialists wished to collect.96
Simply avoiding, or concealing healing activities from, colonial-
ists may well have been one of the most common tactics of healers
(although these tactics are by definition difficult to assess). Avoidance
and concealment were in principle easy in most rural areas, but growing
cities also offered space to practise healing away from the colonial ‘gaze’
of officials or missionaries. Moreover, concealing some medicines and
practices, and being open about others, was also an option. Eighteenth-
century Khoi healers had been regarded as secretive about their cures,
but it seems clear that the colonial criminalisation of witch-finding and
divination, in particular, contributed to increasing secrecy and clandes-
tine practices among some late nineteenth-century healers.97 Secrecy
was also typical of those migrant mineworkers that Michael Vane, a
mines doctor in the Rand in the 1930s and 1940s, thought had con-
sulted an African healer. Scars on the skin where muti had been rubbed
were tell-tale signs of such consultation, and Vane thought that most of
his patients had gone to a healer first. They were generally reticent to
reveal any details of their treatment, however.98 Dickson Sakala, who was
a Malawian migrant and healer in the Rand in the 1950s, practised clan-
destinely among the workers, and concealed the medicines he brought
from home.99 The vitality of African healing in mining compounds,
which in principle were among the most controlled and surveyed colo-
nial and apartheid-era spaces,100 suggests that secrecy and concealment
remained potent tactics for healers and sufferers in the mid-twentieth
century.
However, certain forms of healing, particularly those involving com-
munal or group rituals, drumming and dancing (typical of ngoma-type
of healing and varieties of spirit possession healing101) were more diffi-
cult to conceal. Disputes and revelations over healing usually surfaced
through informants (African and European) who notified officials, mis-
sionaries or the churches of suspicious practices. For example, in the
Presbyterian church in Malawi, African church leaders were instrumental
in negotiations that de facto accepted most forms of healing, with the
important exceptions of spirit possession and explicit treatment of witch-
craft cases.102
Redefinition of Vocabulary of Healing and Identity

of Healers: Professionalisation
Healers and their supporters could at times defend themselves against

colonial attacks publicly, by redefining themselves and their practices. In
Natal in the early 1880s, it was argued that sangomas no longer ‘smelled
out’ witchcraft, but illnesses, in an attempt to protect divination against
134 M. HOKKANEN
colonial rule.103 A landmark decision in 1891 saw the British license the
inyanga herbalists in Natal, and this decision was extended to Zululand
in 1895, creating an important distinction between ‘herbalism’ and other
kinds of healing. The motives for licensing (and thus legalising) inyanga
was to allow the least problematic form of healing, from a colonial stand-
point, in conditions under which Western medicine was not widely avail-
able, and in a situation where healers were no longer considered such a
security threat. As Flint has shown, this decision had many consequences
in the medical culture: for example, collaboration between different
kinds of healers became more difficult, and some ‘diviners’ (isangoma,
isanuse) strove to be licensed as inyanga. Many Africans complained
that the new system could not deal with problems related to witchcraft.
Nevertheless, an exceptional group of mostly Zulu licensed herbal-
ists emerged, and some of them formed in 1931 Natal Native Medical
Association (NNMA) as their professional body.104
Licensed herbalists could openly compete with western doctors and
pharmacies. These responded with political campaigns, which stoked
fears of ‘degenerative’ effects of inyanga on the white population. The
herbalists responded in turn by professionalisation and seeking official
recognition from the state. The NNMA represented the elite herbalists,
who were well connected with both Zulu chiefs and educated Christians
in towns. They set up urban muthi stores, advertised in the press and
sold medicines by mail order. They emphasised that they were trained
inyanga herbalists and strove to distinguish themselves from the isan-
goma healers whom they called ‘witch doctors’, employing colonial
vocabulary for their own purposes. Although the NNMA was not offi-
cially recognised, their active campaigning added to the herbalists’ popu-
larity, and those of its members that were taken to court received minor
fines at worst.105 Outside of Natal and Zululand, however, the open pro-
fessionalisation of healers was less successful in the interwar period. In
Johannesburg, a society set up in 1937 for dingaka, herbalists, midwives
and isangoma was short-lived, as Digby has shown: in 1940 its founder,
Mr. S.P.D. Madiehe, was convicted of selling medical certificates and sen-
tenced to six years hard labour.106
Redefinition of specialisms took place also in the protectorates. When
in Nyasaland the colonial administration and missionaries combined their
forces to prevent ‘witch doctors’ practices (in the context of the Spanish
influenza pandemic), many healers registered themselves with the
British and renounced witchcraft detection. However, one of the more
famous healers announced to missionary Donald Fraser that he was a

professional doctor who specialised in treating infertility. Fraser, who led
the campaign against ‘witch doctors’, called the healer a trickster who
had merely ‘changed the lines of his deception’, but had to admit that
the man was not doing anything illegal.107
Selective, hybrid and creative appropriation of Western elements was
part of many healers’ strategies in the changing and modernising cul-
ture. The old idea of African thought systems as ‘closed’ and Western
as ‘open’ has been turned on its head in more recent studies of heal-
ers’ encounters with Western medicine.108 Appropriation of imported
medicines, especially those that were more easily available (such as pat-
ent medicines) and sometimes combining them with herbal medicines
was possible to increasing numbers of healers. European medicines were
often considered to be potent for treating new illnesses associated with
Europeans (such as tuberculosis) that became more widespread with
increasing labour migration. Part-time healer Kas Maine, for example,
used Dutch and other patent medicines alongside indigenous herbs.109
Healers could acknowledge the value of Western medicine in treat-
ing certain kinds of illnesses, whilst arguing that Africans also suffered
from ills that Europeans did not understand and could not deal with.110
This allowed the healers to define areas of specialisation and cultural
(or racial) illnesses in which Europeans could not effectively compete
with them or challenge them. These included illnesses associated with
spirit possession, such as indiki in Zululand or vimbuza in Northern
Malawi.111 The confident Natal inyanga challenged the Western doctors
in 1930 to compete openly in the treatment of ‘South African native dis-
eases’ and see who would be more effective, a challenge which the white
doctors declined.112
Healers and medicines also adapted to the changing settings of disease
and illness in more mobile, urban and industrial society. While tuberculo-
sis, for example, was sometimes regarded as ‘a disease of civilization’ that
Malawian healers found difficult to treat, sexually transmitted diseases
(STDs) were treated by both indigenous and Western practitioners and
therapies. These diseases became more widespread with migrant labour
and moving armies of the colonial conquest and the First World War.113
Gloria Waite noted that the Ngoni in Zambia adapted a previously
known plant, Diospyros mespiliformis into a new cure for gonorrhoea114
Healers studied by T.C. Young in the 1930s had a strong emphasis on
the treatment of STDs.115 Importantly, as Waite points out, healing also
136 M. HOKKANEN
changed ‘in response to the poor socioeconomic conditions’, both in

towns and countryside. By the late twentieth century, healers in urban
settings such as Lusaka addressed malnutrition by adding ‘powdered
milk and other protein substitutes’ to medicines given to infants.116 As
Kylli and Sablin note in this collection, healing, medicines and ideas
about a healthy diet are frequently intertwined in medical cultures: this
was also the case for Southern African healers.
Mobility, Migrancy, Commercialisation

Increasing mobility, and labour migrancy, in particular, framed the
needs and strategies of healers and their clients in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries. Migrant workers, who were mostly young
men, faced a number of threats and risks in their travels and work in
mines, towns and plantations, and sought medicines to deal with these
dangers. Specific medicines to protect travellers were known in the
pre-colonial era, but the establishment of new migrant labour culture
brought with it particular rituals and treatments to prepare and pro-
tect outgoing migrants. Medicines were needed for protection, healing,
strength, and good luck; more specifically, some medicines were given to
protect migrants from deportation, others to secure a good job.117 More
generally, in growing cities such as Durban, as T.T. Xaba has shown,
healers responded to the needs of an increasing African population under
conditions in which the colonial state largely ignored them.118
Whilst conditions were frequently harsh in the hubs of the new colo-
nial economy, and generally, the African population probably suffered
from worsening health in the late nineteenth and early twentieth cen-
tury,119 there was money to be made in towns and mines. The more
successful migrant workers and urban dwellers could pay for their med-
icines in cash, and up front, which had an impact upon healers’ prac-
tices. Digby has argued that migrant labour played an important part in
the commercialisation of African medicine.120 Whilst some nineteenth-
century healers had been wealthy, and paid in cattle, often the healers’
payment had been more modest: fowls were the usual form of fee in
Malawi, for example.121 Colonial observers often believed that healers
were paid more than Western practitioners, and some missionary doctors
complained bitterly about this.122
Western medics usually offered treatment for free, or charged upfront,
rather than by results, making it easier for patients to consult several
practitioners at the same time. Although the case quoted by the Lancet
above suggests that free Western treatment could in some circumstances
be a problem for local healers, I suspect that in most cases the ‘medical
market’ had ample room for several practitioners for most of the colo-
nial period. There is also some evidence that cheaper Western medicines
were strongly criticised by Africans,123 and in any case, the efficacy of
Western treatment was quite limited before the Second World War, with
some notable exceptions such as ophthalmology, vaccination and salvar-
san injections.124
The idea that the healer should be paid according to results seems to
be old and widespread throughout Southern Africa. Often the healer was
initially paid a small gift or token, but the main payment would follow
only after the sufferer was satisfied.125 The practice can arguably be seen
partly as insurance policy for healers: claiming the fee in advance meant
that the healer risked being held responsible if the patient became worse
or died. In the commercialisation of healing, the changes in payment
practices were arguably as important as the introduction of cash. It seems
clear that the commercialisation was gradual and uneven process, and that
some medicines become more commercial earlier than others. Medicines
for luck (and perhaps also for love) may have been easier and safer to
charge beforehand than medicines against illness. Regionally famous
Malawian healer Chikanga (1934–1994), did not charge for healing, but
did charge for luck medicines, much sought by migrant workers and oth-
ers as far as South Africa and Botswana in the 1950s and 1960s.126
Despite increasing mobility, professionalisation and some economic
prospects, most healers remained part-time practitioners into the twen-
tieth century, and probably earned only modest fees. Kas Maine (1894–
1985) was a sharecropper, for whom healing was one practice among
many.127 Chikanga, one of the most famous healers of his time, had a
tobacco farm and a van that he rented for extra income.128 But in South
Africa at least, it was possible to become ostensibly wealthy and famous
‘medicine man’ whose clientele crossed racial and class lines, as the
exceptional career of Khotso Sethuntsa attests. Khotso, who moved to
South Africa from Lesotho as a young man, was somewhat a national
celebrity in his 30s. His practice covered bodily healing, sexual potency,
ensuring wealth and weather control (his early claim to fame was to
cause a tornado to destroy the farm of a white farmer who had abused
him). In the beginning of apartheid, Khotso claimed that he had made
contact with the spirit of Paul Kruger, the Afrikaner national hero,
138 M. HOKKANEN
blending effortlessly spiritual and political realms. Khotso was able to

maintain good relations with white national politicians as well as black
leaders in Transkei Bantustan. He portrayed himself as a millionaire and
carefully managed his public image, as his biographers have shown. The
apartheid state used Khotso’s highly visible apparent success as evidence
of the possibility of ‘separate development’ in the Bantustans, but after
his death, much of his wealth turned out to be illusory.129
Established mid-twentieth century healers such as Khotso or
Chikanga were often settled figures: they had homesteads, farms, some-
times with ‘hospitals’ for their patients, who would be brought to them.
But increased healer mobility was also a feature of the late colonial,
apartheid and early independence eras. Natal herbalists, the inyanga,
became more openly mobile following their official recognition in the
1890s. Medical pluralism in colonial Natal and Zululand was most appar-
ent in Durban, where Afro-Indian exchanges added a new layer to medi-
cal culture in the early twentieth century: medical hybridity took shape in
the muthi shops that tended to be owned by Indians.130
Flint has suggested that the numbers of female healers increased in
Natal in the late nineteenth century.131 This may have been the case
in Malawi as well: certainly the importance of women healers in spirit
possession has been noted.132 Becoming a healer may have offered new
resources for both men and women in the face of labour migration and
money economy, and a profession that could provide access to cash
especially in urban areas. After the Second World War, younger healers
increasingly studied across national or ethnic lines: a Xhosa healer could
study in Zimbabwe, and a Tswana in Namibia, for example.133 With the
spread of literacy and the establishment of healers’ associations, mod-
ern healers started to have more certificates with them, and such papers
could help them in crossing of national borders.134
Conclusion: Contests, Redefinitions, Mobilities

In the foreword of Michael Gelfand’s Witch Doctor: Traditional Medicine
Man of Rhodesia (published in the same year as Medicine and Custom),
the premier of Rhodesia, Roy Welensky, praised the author for exploding
the ‘Hollywood version’ of witchdoctors, and for showcasing the heal-
ers’ herbalist skills, communal importance and roles in the prevention of
illness.135 Whilst this praise for healers from the Rhodesian leader may be
taken with a pinch of salt, it is illustrative of partial victories for healers in
terms of recognition. It also shows how the division between herbalism

and divination had become deep-rooted and how the healers themselves
sought to define their practice in English as well as the vernacular.
It is clear that in many situations when healers were faced with attempts
of control, denigration or outlawing of their practices, and appropriation
of their medicines, they had options available. Their strategies included
open resistance, avoidance, secrecy, creative adoption of new medicines
and symbols, professionalisation and redefinition of healers’ image and
practice. Overall, open resistance seems to have been less pronounced
than colonial discourses suggested. Healers were bolstered by the fact that
the needs and demands for their craft and medicines continued, and argu-
ably grew further with colonial impacts, demographic changes, urbanisa-
tion, industrialisation, modernisation and increasing mobility. Generally,
despite their undeniable expansion and power, the colonial state, Western
medicine and mission Christianity never offered sufficient health, wealth,
security or growth to dominate the ‘marketplace’ in medicine and heal-
ing. However, their impacts and impulses (both intentional and uninten-
tional) shaped the responses of healers and the development of a medical
culture with increasingly hybrid and pluralistic traits. This medical culture
was also shaped by mobilities and medical exchanges across Southern
Africa, the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean worlds that extended clearly
beyond colonial or imperial control, as the history of medical ‘hubs’ such
as Durban, Johannesburg and Cape Town attests. Varieties of conflicts,
hybridisation and co-existence between medical systems, practitioners and
patients could all be found in colonial hubs and frontier zones, but colo-
nial sources tended to overplay conflict and pigeonhole healers in stereo-
typical ways. Attention to healers’ agency and opportunities, even when
mostly studied through biased colonial sources, reveals something of their
capacity to actively engage with, and at times subvert, colonial power and
language. This approach can also highlight the easily overlooked, more
‘passive’ tactics of avoidance, secrecy and concealment that arguably con-
stitute significant parts of histories of healing in colonial situations.
Notes
1. See, for example, Michael Gelfand, Lakeside Pioneers: Socio-Medical Study
of Nyasaland (1875–1920) (London: Blackwell, 1964).
2. Michael Gelfand, Medicine and Custom in Africa (London: E&S
Livingstone, 1964).
140 M. HOKKANEN
3. Earlier cases of Afro-European medical encounters in Southern Africa

took place on the coasts of Angola and Mozambique, where Portuguese
sought frequently local healers and treatments in the early modern era.
See, for example, David Birmingham, Portugal and Africa (Basingstoke:
Palgrave MacMillan, 1999), 20; Kalle Kananoja, ‘Bioprospecting and
European Uses of African Natural Medicine in Early Modern Angola’,
Portuguese Studies Review 23 (2015): 45–69; Kalle Kananoja, ‘Healers,
Idolaters and Good Christians: A Case Study of Creolization and
Popular Religion in Mid-Eighteenth Century Angola’, International
Journal of African Historical Studies 43 (2010): 443–465.
4. Karen Flint’s history of healing in KwaZulu Natal and Anne Digby’s
history of healthcare in South Africa have sited healers more centrally
within holistic historiography of medicine over a longer period. Anne
Digby, Diversity and Division in Medicine: Health Care in South Africa
from the 1800s (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2006); Karen Flint, Healing
Traditions: African Medicine, Cultural Exchange, and Competition
in South Africa, 1820–1948 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2008).
On healers and medicines in South-Central Africa, this chapter builds
upon Gloria M. Waite, A History of Traditional Medicine and Health
Care in Pre-Colonial East-Central Africa (Lampeter: Edwin Mellen
Press, 1992); Markku Hokkanen, Medicine, Mobility and the Empire:
Nyasaland Networks, 1859–1960 (Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 2017).
5. T. Luedke and H. West, eds., Borders and Healers: Brokering Therapeutic
Resources in Southeast Africa (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 2006); Leroy Vail, ‘Introduction: Ethnicity in Southern African
History’, in The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1989), 1–20.
6. Megan Vaughan, ‘Healing and Curing: Issues in the Social History
and Anthropology of Medicine in Africa’, Social History of Medicine
7 (1994): 283–295. On the harming register of healing, see Nancy
Rose Hunt, ‘Health and Healing’, in The Oxford Handbook of Modern
African History, edited by J. Parker and R. Reid (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2013), 378–385.
7. Hunt, ‘Health and Healing’.
8. Karen Flint, ‘Competition, Race and Professionalisation: African Healers
and White Medical Practitioners in Natal, South Africa in the Early
Twentieth Century’, Social History of Medicine 14 (2) (2001): N11
p. 202. A more comprehensive survey than this chapter would discuss
various ‘alternative’ or ‘folk’ white colonial practitioners in Southern
Africa. According to Harriet Deacon, in modern South Africa ‘tradi-
tional’ has come to mean black healers, ‘folk’, poorer white healers
while those healers who treat wealthier clientele are termed ‘alternative’.
Harriet Deacon, ‘The Cape Doctor and the Broader Medical Market,
1800–1850’, in The Cape Doctor in the Nineteenth Century: A Social
History, edited by H. Deacon, H. Phillips, and E. van Heyningen
(Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2004), 48–49.
9. Steven Feierman, ‘Struggles for Control: The Social Roots of Health
and Healing in Modern Africa’, African Studies Review 28 (1985):
110–112.
10. Steven Feierman, Peasant Intellectuals: Anthropology and History in
Tanzania (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990).
11. Digby, Diversity and Division; Flint, ‘Competition, Race and
Professionalisation’; Flint, Healing Traditions. For Zulu healers, see
Harriet Ngubane, Body and Mind in Zulu Medicine (London: Academic
Press, 1977). For healing specialisation in South-Central Africa, see, for
example, Markku Hokkanen, Medicine and Scottish Missionaries in the
Northern Malawi Region, 1875–1930: Quests for Health in a Colonial
Society (Lampeter: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2007), 47–54. For pres-
ent-day isangoma and igqirha see Jo Wreford, ‘Missing Each Other:
Problems and Potential for Collaborative Efforts Between Biomedicine
and Traditional Healers in South Africa in the Time of Aids’, Social
Dynamics 31 (2005): 55–81. For healers and medicines in Zimbabwe,
see G.L. Chavunduka, Traditional Healers and the Shona Patient
(Gwelo: Mambo Press, 1978).
12. Robert Thornton, ‘The Transmission of Knowledge in South African
Traditional Healing’, Africa 79 (2009): 17–21.
13. Waite, A History of Traditional Medicine, 81–82; Hokkanen, Medicine,
Mobility and the Empire, 27–29.
14. David Livingstone to Janet Livingston 8 December 1841, in David
Livingstone: Family Letters 1841—1856, Volume 1, edited by I. Schapera
(London: Chatto & Windus, 1959), 46.
15. Hokkanen, Medicine, Mobility and the Empire, 28.
16. Felicity Wood with Michael Lewis, The Extraordinary Khotso: Millionaire
Medicine Man from Lusikisi (Auckland Park: Jacana Media, 2007). As
his biographers have shown, the legend and reputation of Khotso and
his medicines drew from multiple sources. For the positive reputation of
San medical knowledge, see Digby, Diversity and Division, 55.
17. On acquisition of plant knowledge at the colonial Cape, see
E.G. Musselman, ‘Plant Knowledge at the Cape: A Study in African
and European Collaboration’, The International Journal of African
Historical Studies 36 (2003): 367–392.
18. Terence Ranger, ‘Introduction’, in Themes in the Christian History of
Central Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), 5.
142 M. HOKKANEN
19. Roy Willis, Some Spirits Heal, Others Only Dance: A Journey into Human
Selfhood in an African Village (Berg: Oxford, 1999), 197.
20. Hokkanen, Medicine, Mobility and the Empire, 29–30.
21. Malawi National Archives, S1/425/25/13. Ernest Goulding to the
Chief Secretary, Nyasaland, 10 September 1929. Hokkanen, Medicine,
Mobility and the Empire, 228–229.
22. Flint, Healing Traditions, 2–3.
23. Karen Flint, ‘Indian-African Encounters: Polyculturalism and African
Therapeutics in Natal, South Africa, 1886–1950s’, Journal of Southern
African Studies 32 (2006): 367–385; Flint, Healing Traditions.
24. For mercury, see Flint, Healing Traditions, 3.
25. Russel Viljoen, ‘Medicine, Medical Knowledge and Healing at the
Cape of Good Hope: Khoikhoi, Slaves and Colonists’, in Medicine and
Colonialism: Historical Perspectives in India and South Africa, edited by
Poonam Bala (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2014), 51–53; Deacon,
‘The Cape Doctor and the Broader Medical Market’, 45–46, 57–59;
Christopher H. Low, ‘Different Histories of Buchu: Euro-American
Appropriation of San and Khoekhoe Knowledge of Buchu Plants’,
Environment and History 13 (2007): 333–361.
26. Viljoen, ‘Medicine, Medical Knowledge and Healing’, 50–51.
27. Percy Laidler and Michael Gelfand, South Africa: Its Medical History,
1652–1898: A Medical and Social Study (Cape Town: C. Struik, 1971),
348–349. In the early nineteenth century, European medicine traders
and peddlers were probably the greatest competitors to university-edu-
cated physicians and professional surgeons at the Cape. Harriet Deacon,
‘Introduction: The Cape Doctor in the Nineteenth Century’, in The
Cape Doctor, 35–36.
28. Abena Dove Osseo-Asare, Bitter Roots: The Search for Healing Plants in
Africa (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 165–173.
29. Markku Hokkanen, ‘Imperial Networks, Colonial Bioprospecting and
Burroughs Wellcome & Co.: The Case of Strophanthus Kombe from
Malawi, 1859–1915’, Social History of Medicine 25 (2012): 589–607.
30. See, for example, chapters by Hokkanen and Kananoja, Sablin and
Simonsen in this collection.
31. David Kerr Cross, Health in Africa: A Medical Handbook for European
Travellers and Residents (London: Nisbet, 1897), 36, 48–54; John Kirk,
‘Account of the Zambezi District, in South Africa, with a Notice of Its
Vegetable and Other Products’, Transactions of the Botanical Society 8
(1866): 197–202; Hokkanen, Medicine, Mobility and the Empire, 133.
32. Life and Work in British Central Africa (LWBCA), January 1895.
33. LWBCA, April 1899; Hokkanen, Medicine, Mobility and the Empire,
133–134.
34. Flint, ‘Competition, Race, and Professionalisation’, 217; Flint, Healing

Traditions.
35. Hunt, ‘Health and Healing’. For the war medicines and ‘war doctors’ in
Xhosaland, see J.B. Peires, The House of Phalo: A History of Xhosa People
in the Days of Their Independence (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1981), 136–138.
36. Neil Kodesh, Beyond the Royal Gaze: Clanship and Public Healing in
Buganda (Charlottesville: The University of Virginia Press, 2010);
David Schoenbrun, ‘Conjuring the Modern in Africa: Durability and
Rupture in Histories of Public Healing Between the Great Lakes of East
Africa’, The American Historical Review 111 (2006): 1403–1439.
37. Nathaniel Isaacs, Travels and Adventures in Eastern Africa, Descriptive
of the Zoolus, Their Manners, Their Customs, etc., 2 vols. (London:
Churton, 1836): Vol. I, 50–52, 99–101, 109–110, 139–140, 194–195.
39. Isaacs, Travels and Adventures, 232–233, 246–247; Flint, Healing
Traditions, 96. Flint notes that while Isaacs and other early Europeans
in Zululand were prone to exaggeration and embellishment, their nar-
ratives do credibly highlight the importance of medicine in early Afro-
European encounters.
40. Isaacs, Travels and Adventures, 290–301, 310, 314–335.
41. For Xhosa tradition of providing protective medicines against poisoning
to travellers, see Peires, The House of Phalo, 6.
44. Henry Rowley, The Story of the Universities’ Mission to Central Africa
(London: Saunders, Ottley & Co., 1866), 111–116; Hokkanen,
Medicine, Mobility and the Empire, 122.
45. Rowley, The Story of the Universities’ Mission. See also Landeg White,
Magomero: Portrait of an African Village (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1987).
46. Matthew Schoffeleers, River of Blood: The Genesis of a Martyr Cult in
Southern Malawi, c. A.D. 1600 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press,
1992).
47. J.B. Peires, The Dead Will Arise: Nongqawuse and the Great Xhosa
Cattle Killing Movement of 1856–1857; Flint, Healing Traditions; Paul
Landau, The Realm of the Word: Language, Gender, and Christianity in
a Southern African Kingdom (London: Heinemann, 1995).
48. Leonard Thompson, A History of South Africa (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2000); E.D. Omer-Cooper, A History of Southern
Africa (London: Heinemann, 1994).
144 M. HOKKANEN
49. See, for example, John L. Comaroff and Jean Comaroff, Of Revelation

and Revolution Vol. 2: The Dialectics of Modernity on a South African
Frontier (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1997), cf. Andrew Porter,
Religion Versus Empire? British Protestant Missionaries and Overseas
Expansion, 1700–1914 (Manchester: Manchester University Press,
2004).
50. See, for example, Robin Horton, Patterns of Thought in Africa and
West: Essays on Magic, Religion and Science (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1993); Bengt Sundkler, Bantu Prophets in South Africa
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961). See also Hokkanen, Medicine
and Scottish Missionaries, 591–593.
51. Adrian Hastings, The Church in Africa, 1450–1950 (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1994); Bengt Sundkler and Christopher Steed, A History of the
Church in Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
52. Megan Vaughan, Curing Their Ills: Colonial Power and African Illness
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991); Alexander Butchart, The
Anatomy of Power: European Constructions of the African Body (London:
Zed Books, 1998).
53. Markku Hokkanen, ‘Quests for Health and Contests for Meaning:
African Church Leaders and Scottish Missionaries in the Early
Twentieth-Century Presbyterian Church in Northern Malawi’, Journal
of Southern African Studies 33 (2007): 733–750. For the limitations of
missionary medicine in Khama’s kingdom, see Landau, The Realm of the
Word, Ch. 5.
55. Feierman, ‘Struggles for Control’; Gloria Waite, ‘Public Health in
Precolonial East-Central Africa’, in The Social Basis of Health and
Healing, 228–230; Flint, Healing Traditions, 131–132.
56. See, for example, Hokkanen, Medicine and Scottish Missionaries, 298.
57. Isaacs, Travels and Adventures, vol. 2, 303–312. Usually, Isaacs wrote of
Zulu ‘doctors’.
58. Flint, Healing Traditions; Hokkanen, Medicine, Mobility and the Empire,
118.
59. Digby, Diversity and Division, 302–303; Flint, Healing Traditions, 126.
61. See, for example, Flint, Healing Traditions; Markku Hokkanen, ‘Scottish
Missionaries and African Healers: Perceptions and Relations in the
Livingstonia Mission, 1875–1930’, Journal of Religion in Africa 34
(2004): 320–347. On herbalism in Britain, see Mary Chamberlain,
Old Wives’ Tales: The History of Remedies, Charms and Spells (Stroud:
Tempus, 2006).
62. Digby, Diversity and Division, 309–311; Hokkanen, Medicine, Mobility

and the Empire, 102–103.
64. Martin Chanock, Law, Custom and Social Order: The Colonial Experience
in Malawi and Zambia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1985); Flint, Healing Traditions; Vaughan, Curing Their Ills.
66. Chanock, Law, Custom and Social Order; Vaughan, Curing Their
Ills; Hokkanen, ‘Quests for Health’; Max Marwick, Sorcery in Its
Social Setting: A Study of the Northern Rhodesian Cewa (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1970).
67. Digby, Diversity and Division, 319–320; Martin Chanock, The Making of
South African Legal Culture, 1902–1936 (Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, 2000), 250–256.
68. Acting Governor of Nyasaland to the Secretary of State for the Colonies
3 December 1910. The National Archives, Kew, CO 525/33, 470.
69. Michael Gelfand, The African Witch (London: E&S Livingstone, 1967),
4–5.
70. Gelfand, The African Witch, 81–85.
71. Digby, Diversity and Division, 323–326
72. Deacon, ‘The Cape Doctor’, 48; Digby, Diversity and Division,
144–145.
73. Anne Digby, ‘Self-Medication and the Trade in Medicine Within a
Multi-Ethnic Context: A Case Study of South Africa from the Mid-
Nineteenth to Mid-Twentieth Centuries’, Social History of Medicine 18
(2005): 439–457; Deacon, ‘The Cape Doctor’.
74. Flint, Healing Traditions, 147.
75. Landau, The Realm of the Word; John McCracken, A History of Malawi,
1859–1966 (Woodbridge: James Currey, 2012).
76. Waite, A History of Traditional Medicine, 101.
77. G.L. Chavunduka, Traditional Healers and the Shona Patient (Gwelo:
Mambo Press, 1978), 79–80.
79. In South Africa, 87% of Western practitioners were based in urban areas
in 1911, and by 1975, about three quarters of physicians remained
urban practitioners. Digby, Diversity and Division, 190–191.
80. Laidler and Gelfand, South Africa, 299.
81. R.T. Mossop, A History of Western Medicine in Zimbabwe (Lampeter:
The Edwin Mellen Press, 1997), 14.
83. The Lancet, 25 September 1897, 831.
146 M. HOKKANEN
84. See, for example, Luise White, Speaking with Vampires: Rumor and
History in Colonial Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press,
2000); Hans Coudenhove, My African Neighbors: Man, Bird and Beast
in Nyasaland (London: Jonathan Cape, 1933), 26.
85. Interview, Hangton C.S. Nkhata, 12 July 2009. Interviews were con-
ducted in Northern Malawi in Muzuzu and Zubayumo, Mzimba, by
the author and Harvey C. Chidoba Banda, Mzuzu University, in 2009
and 2010. Interviews in chiTumbuka were translated by Harvey C.C.
Banda. Material in possession of the author. Copies of field notes are
also deposited in the History Department, Mzuzu University.
86. W. Gopsill, ‘A Few Notes of My Life in Zanzibar and Nyasaland from
1926 to 1945’, undated typescript, Rhodes House Library, Oxford,
MSS. Afr.s.883.
88. Hokkanen, Medicine and Scottish Missionaries, 369–370.
89. Yesaya Mbnyeni Chibambo, My Ngoni of Nyasaland, translated by
Charles Stuart (London: Heinemann, 1941), 52–53; Hokkanen,
Medicine and Scottish Missionaries, 369–374.
90. Landau, The Realm of the Word, 13–14.
91. Landau, The Realm of the Word, 24–29, 123–127. Cf. Flint, Healing
Traditions, 112; Hokkanen, Medicine, Mobility and the Empire,
105–108.
92. Hokkanen, Medicine, Mobility and the Empire, 95–108; Landau, The
Realm of the Word, 123–127.
93. Elaine Leong and Alisha Rankin, ‘Introduction’, in Secrets and
Knowledge in Medicine and Science, 1500–1800, edited by E. Leong and
A. Rankin (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), 7–8.
94. Thomas Cullen Young, Notes on the Customs and Folk-Lore of the
Tumbuka-Henga Peoples (Livingstonia: Livingstonia Mission Press,
1931), 29–30.
95. Hokkanen, Medicine, Mobility and the Empire, 137; Comaroff and
Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution, 362; Steven M. Friedson,
Dancing Prophets: Musical Experience in Tumbuka Healing (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1996), 47–51.
96. Digby, Diversity and Division, 363–369; ‘Self-Medication and the Trade
in Medicine’. On collection of medicine horns, see Hokkanen, ‘Scottish
Missionaries and African Healers’.
98. Michael Vane, Black Magic and White Medicine (London: Chambers,
1957), 25, 38–39.
99. Interviews with Dickson Sakala, 16 July 2009 and 20 June 2010.
100. On mining medicine as part of ‘industrial Panopticon’, see Butchart, The
Anatomy of Power.
101. The Quest for Fruition Through Ngoma: The Political Aspects of Healing
in Southern Africa, edited by Rijk van Dijk, Ria Reis, and Marja
Spierenburg (Oxford: James Currey, 2000).
102. Hokkanen, ‘Quests for Health’.
104. Flint, Healing Traditions, 93–94, 128–131. See also Digby, Diversity
and Division, 298.
106. Digby, Diversity and Division, 301.
107. Donald Fraser, African Idylls (London: Seeley, Service, 1923), 110–112;
Hokkanen, ‘Scottish Missionaries and African Healers’.
108. Digby, Diversity and Division, 93–95. See also Comaroff and Comaroff,
Of Revelation and Revolutions.
109. Digby, Diversity and Division 366–367; on Kas Maine see Charles van
Onselen, The Seed Is Mine: The Life of Kas Maine, a South African
Sharecropper 1894–1985 (Oxford: James Currey, 1997), 490; Charles
van Onselen, ‘Race and Class in the South African Countryside:
Cultural Osmosis and Social Relations in the Sharecropping Economy
of the South-Western Transvaal, 1900–1950’, The American Historical
Review 95 (1990): 116.
111. Julie Parle, ‘Withcraft or Madness? The Amandiki of Zululand,
1893–1914’, The Journal of Southern African Studies 29 (2003):
105–132; Digby, Diversity and Division, 286–287; Friedson,
Dancing Prophets.
115. T.C. Young, ‘Three Medicine Men from Northern Nyasaland’, Man 32
(1932): 229–234.
116. Waite, A History of Traditional Medicine, 108–109.
117. Anne Digby, ‘Bridging Two Worlds: The Migrant Labourer and Medical
Change in Southern Africa’, in Migration and Health in Southern
Africa, edited by R. Cohen (Bellville, 2003); Hokkanen, Medicine,
Mobility and the Empire, 42–46; JoAnn McGregor and Terence Ranger,
‘Displacement and Disease: Epidemics and Ideas About Malaria in
Matabeleland, Zimbabwe, 1945–1996’, Past and Present 167 (2000):
244; Patrick Harries, Work, Culture and Identity: Migrant Labourers in
Mozambique and South Africa, c. 1860–1910 (London: James Currey,
1994).
148 M. HOKKANEN
118. T.T. Xaba, ‘“Witchcraft, Sorcery, or Medical Practice?” The Demand,

Supply and Regulation of Indigenous Medicines in Durban, South
Africa (1844–2002)’, Ph.D. thesis, University of California at Berkeley,
2004. See also Flint, Healing Traditions, 132–135.
119. Bruce Fetter, ‘Colonial Microenvironments and the Mortality of
Educated Young Men in Northern Malawi, 1897–1927’, Canadian
Journal of African Studies 23 (1989): 399–415.
120. Digby, ‘Bridging Two Worlds’. See also Flint, Healing Traditions,
131–135.
121. Hokkanen, Medicine and Scottish Missionaries, 298–299.
122. Ibid.; Coudenhove, My African Neighbors.
124. See, for example, Vaughan, Curing Their Ills; Digby, Diversity and
Division.
125. Ngubane notes that inyanga in Zululand charged about £1 to prepare
medicines, and a cow or equivalent on recovery. Ngubane, ‘Aspects of
Clinical Practice’, 363.
126. For Chikanga, see Boston Soko, Nchimi Chikanga: The Battle Against
Witchcraft in Malawi (Blantyre: CLAIM, 2002), 12.
127. van Onselen, The Seed Is Mine.
128. Soko, Nchimi Chikanga, 12.
129. Wood, The Extraordinary Khotso.
130. Flint, ‘Indian-African Encounters’.
131. Flint, Healing Traditions.
132. Friedson, Dancing Prophets; Leroy Vail and Landeg White, Power and the
Praise Poem: Southern African Voices in History (London: James Currey,
1991), 231–243.
134. Interview, Hangton C.S. Nkhata, 12 July 2009.
135. Roy Welensky, ‘Foreword’, in Michael Gelfand, Witch Doctor:
Traditional Medicine Man of Rhodesia (London: Harvill Press, 1964).
CHAPTER 6
Complicating Hybrid Medical Practices

in the Tropics: Examining the Case of São
Tomé and Príncipe, 1850–1926
Rafaela Jobbitt
In 1869, Manuel Ferreira Ribeiro, a Portuguese official serving in

the Health Service of São Tomé and Príncipe, wrote a medical report
describing the colony’s inhabitants as “superstitious” and “back-
ward” people.1 Ribeiro was equally critical of the local African healers
or curandeiros that also provided medical care to residents in São Tomé
and Príncipe. In the doctor’s opinion, the healers posed a “grave danger
to the public’s health,” not simply because of their large numbers, but
mainly because they acted with what he regarded as incredible “audac-
ity” and “impunity.” Ribeiro then complained that the Health Service
only had two other doctors, namely José Correia Nunes, the director of
the service, and a physician he referred to simply as “the doctor from
Goa.”2
Ribeiro’s remarks show that, in the late nineteenth century, medical
officials in São Tomé and Príncipe operated in an environment in which
people could have access to various types of treatments prescribed by
R. Jobbitt (*)
Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, ON, Canada
e-mail: rjobbitt@lakeheadu.ca

150 R. JOBBITT
different health practitioners, both foreign and local. Furthermore, by

mentioning that the service only had three doctors at the time, the phy-
sician was not merely drawing attention to its limited resources, but also
emphasising the fact that health officials formed a small minority when
compared to other medical practitioners in the colony.
Drawing on archival sources, mostly in the form of reports and let-
ters emanating from the Health Service of São Tomé and Príncipe,
along with several monographs, the present chapter examines the coex-
istence and adaptation of medical practices in the colony from the mid-
nineteenth century until the first two decades of the twentieth century.
It discusses evidence of these processes of interaction involving medical
practices in São Tomé and Príncipe, when colonial and medical author-
ities were attempting to implement a number of measures designed not
only to “modernise” medicine in the colony, but also to impose Western
medicine as a hegemonic form of medical knowledge and practice.
Prior to discussing medical practices and practitioners in São Tomé
and Príncipe during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
however, it is worthwhile to focus briefly on the earlier history of this
former Portuguese colony. According to historical sources, the islands
of São Tomé and Príncipe were deserted when Portuguese mariners
stepped on their shores in 1471 or 1472. Despite this official date of dis-
covery, the initial attempt by the Portuguese to settle the islands with
colonists met with little success. Efforts to create a settlement in the
northwestern part of the island of São Tomé between 1486 and 1490
failed, largely due to disease and lack of food.3 It was only in 1493,
under the leadership of Álvaro Caminha, the third Captain (capitão-
donatário) of the new colony that the first permanent settlement began
to grow. It was located in the northeastern part of the island of São
Tomé, in what would eventually become the city of São Tomé (where
a Misericórdia hospital was also founded in 1504).4 Given the difficul-
ties in settling colonists on the islands, in part due to high death rates
attributed to local diseases, the Portuguese Crown decided to include
convicts, as well as children who had been taken away from Jewish fam-
ilies in Portugal, among the European settler population.5 Slaves from
the African mainland were the other unfree segment of the population
that completed this puzzle.
During the sixteenth century, sugar cane cultivation began in the new
colony, with the technology required to establish the sugar mills having
been transplanted from Madeira. Enslaved Africans from the mainland
6 COMPLICATING HYBRID MEDICAL PRACTICES … 151
formed the backbone of the sugar cane economy, although the African
population of São Tomé and Príncipe was not exclusively made up of
enslaved individuals.6 The cycle of prosperity based on the cultivation of
sugar was nevertheless fairly short-lived. In effect, São Tomé sugar was
considered to be of inferior quality when compared to the sugar that
was produced elsewhere, including Brazil and Madeira. Above all, slave
revolts in São Tomé prompted the planters to abandon their estates on
the island.7 It is because of this decline in large-scale plantation agricul-
ture that, in more traditional histories that have been written about this
former Portuguese colony, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are
depicted as centuries of stagnation and even of economic decline, an idea
that was very much in vogue in the writings of Portuguese commenta-
tors of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.8
From the onset of colonisation and settlement, the hot and humid
climate, together with a host of local diseases, gave São Tomé and
Príncipe a reputation as a lethal destination, particularly for Europeans.
Even so, the Santomean population made use of an array of local and
imported remedies in order to treat various ailments. Almada Negreiros,
the author of an ethnographic history of São Tomé, first published in
1895, listed some of the medicinal plants that the initial settlers brought
to São Tomé and Príncipe in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centu-
ries and maintained that the local African healers had learned how to use
them.9 To him, the appropriation of knowledge with respect to healing
was unidirectional, meaning that Europeans had brought remedies with
them to the new colony, which Africans then became familiar with. This
view does neither capture the reality of the interchange of ideas about
health and healing that occurred at that time, nor does it give credit
to the African contribution, because Africans also brought their own
medical knowledge with them to São Tomé and Príncipe. The extant
sources point to the co-existence of medical practices and practitioners
from Europe and Africa. For example, in one early source, the author
described how commonplace bloodletting was, particularly during the
hot season when many Europeans felt “sickly,” had great difficulty mov-
ing, and lost their appetite.10 Africans also made use of the procedure,
as attested by the early sources.11 Likewise, the remedies that were used
reflected the medical pluralism that existed in the colony, since local
medicinal substances were employed simultaneously with others that
had originated from Portugal and from different parts of the Portuguese
empire.12
152 R. JOBBITT
The Health Service and the “Re-colonisation” of São

Tomé and Príncipe in the Nineteenth Century
The nineteenth century witnessed a revival of the Santomean plan-
tation economy, this time centered on coffee and cocoa. Interestingly,
though, the earliest nineteenth-century plantations came to occupy the
land of the former sugar mills, located near the ocean and mainly situ-
ated in the northeastern part of the island of São Tomé.13 Coffee was
first cultivated on the island of São Tomé in 1800 after the Governor
of the colony at the time, João Baptista da Silva Lagos, had acquired
Coffea arabica seeds from Brazil.14 The early efforts to cultivate coffee
did not produce good results, though, as disease decimated the plants.
In 1878, the Coffea liberica variety began to be cultivated, after having
been introduced by the planter Alfredo dos Santos Pinto.15 As for cocoa,
its cultivation began in 1822 on the island of Príncipe where it expanded
greatly.16 One of the “cocoa pioneers” of the islands was João Maria de
Sousa e Almeida, a former slave-trader who had been born of Brazilian
parents on Príncipe. After the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade, he had
decided to invest in agriculture.17
The re-colonisation of São Tomé and Príncipe depended largely on
the influx of foreigners into the colony, in particular African slaves and,
after 1876, of contract labourers brought from mainland Africa (pri-
marily from Angola) to work on the agricultural estates.18 The Angolan
contract labourers or serviçais, as they were known in São Tomé and
Príncipe, vastly outnumbered colonists from Portugal, although there
was an increase in the number of Europeans who came to settle in the
colony in the second half of the nineteenth century. In spite of this influx
of people, settlement was fraught with difficulties. One of these was the
existence of diseases that claimed the lives or ruined the health of many
of the colony’s residents; staggering morbidity and mortality rates made
São Tomé and Príncipe live up to the image of West Africa in general as a
“white man’s grave.”19
It is therefore not surprising that health officials saw themselves as
individuals who had an essential role to play in the re-colonisation of
São Tomé and Príncipe, a view that underscores the links between med-
icine and the colonising mission. When reading the doctors’ reports and
letters, they admitted that people (including Europeans) had survived
in São Tomé and Príncipe for centuries, but emphasised that residents
waged a constant struggle to survive in a “lethal” climate and to cope
with harsh living conditions. Be that as it may, doctors were generally

optimistic when they stated that “modern” medicine was the key to São
Tomé and Príncipe’s transformation from a place of decay and disease
into the developed, healthy, and prosperous “Madeira of the Tropics.”20
Given its small size and remote location, the colony was allocated a
reduced number of medical personnel. The Santomean medical service
came into existence in the wake of legislation approved in Portugal on
September 14, 1844. In accordance with the law, São Tomé and Príncipe
would receive a head-surgeon, along with two first- and second-class
surgeons, as well as a head pharmacist. These members of the Health
Service would supplement the military surgeons that also served in the
colony.21 In addition, the 1844 legislation also stipulated that the teach-
ing of medicine would be part of the duties exercised by medical pro-
fessionals who would be posted to the colony.22 Accordingly, any locally
trained surgeons would then become eligible to work for the Health
Service, although they would be classified as third-class medical profes-
sionals and would be barred from working in Portugal or in other parts
of the Portuguese Empire (although they could serve within particular
regions of the empire: for instance, medical practitioners trained in Cape
Verde and Angola would be entitled to work in São Tomé and Príncipe).
The restrictions placed on locally trained physicians and surgeons did not
apply to those trained in Portugal, who were allowed to practice any-
where in the empire.23
The intention of training medical professionals in the African colo-
nies did not come into effect during the nineteenth century. The only
de facto attempt at creating a local programme of medical training had
in fact occurred in the late eighteenth century, with the establishment
of a medical class in the hospital of Luanda, in Angola. According to
Cristiana Bastos, José Pinto de Azeredo, a doctor of mixed Brazilian-
Portuguese ancestry, who had studied medicine in Edinburgh and
Leiden, spearheaded the initiative.24 As Bastos points out, the “experi-
ment” was short lived because Azeredo decided to return to Portugal.
However brief, his contribution was not entirely forgotten. Jaime
Walter’s, Um Português Carioca Professor da Primeira Escola Mêdica de
Angola: as Suas Lições de Anatomia, 1791 includes Azeredo’s anatomy
lessons in Angola.25
The Health Service of São Tomé and Príncipe sought to recruit doc-
tors who had been trained in medical schools in Portugal and in Goa.
When they began to arrive in São Tomé and Príncipe from the middle of
154 R. JOBBITT
the nineteenth century onwards, what kind of medical training had they
received that would prepare them for the islands’ disease environment?
With regard to Portugal, the teaching of medicine in the country had
undergone significant reforms in the nineteenth century. In 1825, two
surgical schools were founded in Porto and Lisbon, eventually challeng-
ing the monopoly held over the teaching of medicine by the University
of Coimbra.26 However, doctors who were trained in the two schools
only began to enter the public service as late as 1866, meaning that it
was only after that date that they could form part of the overseas public
health services.27 After the Portuguese civil war of 1832–1834, further
important public health reforms were introduced in Portugal.28 In 1836,
the surgical schools of Porto and Lisbon were then renamed medical-
surgical schools.29
Questions regarding the nature of medical training in Portugal
that would prepare medical professionals to serve in the African col-
onies would assume a growing relevance after Brazil’s independence in
1822, when the Portuguese began to look at the African territories with
renewed interest. Physicians were regarded as individuals who would play
a crucial role in the new colonisation efforts in the territories claimed by
Portugal on the African continent. From the sources available for São
Tomé and Príncipe, it is clear that some of the physicians posted to the
colony realised that their medical training had not adequately prepared
them for the practice of medicine in the colony. One of the most influen-
tial doctors to serve in São Tomé and Príncipe during the second half of
the nineteenth century, Manuel Ferreira Ribeiro, admitted that he had a
very limited knowledge of local diseases and treatments, which he attrib-
uted to the lack of studies on Santomean geography, botany, and climate.
For Ribeiro, in order for a doctor to gain an understanding about the
diseases of a particular place, he first had to become familiar with that
location’s geology, geography and meteorology.30 Since these kinds of
studies did not exist for São Tomé and Príncipe, he argued that medical
officials such as he could not determine the causes of endemic diseases
in the colony.31 Given that tropical regions like São Tomé and Príncipe
were regarded as dangerous to the health and well-being of individuals,
particularly of Europeans, their exploration was therefore intrinsically
connected with medicine.
Apart from studies on geology, geography and meteorology, Ribeiro
also emphasised the importance of researching medicinal plants in
São Tomé and Príncipe. The doctor was familiar with some of the
plant-based medicinal substances, including astringents and purgatives,

which were used locally by healers, but pointed out that doctors did
not know much how most of the medicinal substances were employed.
The result was that the usage of certain local remedies, as he put it, was
“imbued” with mystery.32 His insistence on the importance of studying
native plant species also had a more pragmatic reason. The pharmacy
in São Tomé was usually poorly stocked since it relied on shipments of
medicines from Portugal, so finding indigenous plant-based substances
would guarantee a domestic supply of remedies.33
As a believer in the miasmatic theory of disease, Ribeiro maintained
that the local environment and conditions impacted one’s health.34 The
doctor also claimed that a person’s health was dictated by that individu-
al’s “moral conditions,” including religion, cultural traditions, language,
character and intellectual state.35 Furthermore, Ribeiro clearly under-
stood disease in racial terms. Whereas Europeans were mainly affected
by malaria and gastrointestinal ailments, he argued, Africans in São Tomé
and Príncipe frequently fell victim to respiratory illnesses such as bron-
chitis and tuberculosis.36 This type of correlation between certain groups
of people and disease was common at the time. As Alan Bewell main-
tains, “during the colonial period, susceptibility to specific diseases was
one of the primary means by which differences between peoples were
conceptualised.”37 Also, Ribeiro adhered to the humoral medical tradi-
tion, which, according to medical historian William Bynum, “embodied
a theory of temperaments, which provided a guide to human personality
and susceptibility to disease.”38 The humours were also associated with
properties such as heat, cold, dryness, and moistness as well as the ele-
ments of fire, air, earth and water. As Bynum points out, humoralism
remained “the most powerful explanatory framework of health and dis-
ease available to doctors and laymen until scientific medicine began grad-
ually to replace it during the 19th century.”39
Medical officials also disclosed that Portuguese physicians rarely dealt
with African patients. Ribeiro, for example, treated African soldiers and
convicts who resided in the capital, São Tomé, but most of his patients
were Europeans who were admitted to the city’s hospital where he
worked. By comparison, he saw few African plantation labourers because
the agricultural estates had their own private hospitals and infirma-
ries. Ribeiro’s lack of access to African patients had implications for his
knowledge of endemic diseases and treatments (oddly enough, most of
the plantation labourers were not originally from São Tomé and Príncipe
156 R. JOBBITT
but from Angola). Most notably, treating “native diseases” meant that
doctors like Ribeiro could build a reputation based on their ability to
study diseases that were not well known to Portuguese physicians in the
metropole. They could therefore make a mark in the emerging field of
tropical medicine, which was generating such keen interest in Portugal
and in other European countries.
The gaps in Ribeiro’s knowledge were compensated by a clear desire
on his part to learn and gather local knowledge about diseases, even
though this did not mean acquiring it from African healers. Ultimately,
for Portuguese physicians, the question of learning about indigenous
medicine was tied to the question of medical competition in the colo-
nies. In an early twentieth-century contribution intended as a pedagogi-
cal manual for medical students in Portugal who, in all likelihood, would
be posted in the colonies after graduating from medical school, João
Cardoso Júnior disclosed that the Portuguese had a limited knowledge
of medicinal plants and their uses in the colonies: as a result, only the
indigenous populations knew how to use them, often with “disastrous”
results.40 He warned that unless the Portuguese learned about the prop-
erties of native medicinal plants, the traditional healers of the various col-
onies would continue to be the sole possessors of this kind of medical
knowledge, and could thus claim to be able to treat and cure local dis-
eases more efficiently than Portuguese doctors.41
In 1887, the first subjects in the emerging field of Tropical Medicine
began to be taught in Lisbon’s Navy School.42 The two subjects
comprised of “Exotic Pathology” and “Naval Hygiene.” In 1902,
the School of Tropical Medicine was founded in Lisbon.43 Its cur-
riculum included three subjects: “Clinical and Exotic Pathology,”
“Hygiene and Climatology” and “Bacteriology and Parasitology.”
In 1920, the curriculum was revised and re-organised into four sub-
jects, namely “Climatology and Geographic Medicine,” “Hygiene and
Bacteriology,” “General Medicine and Pathology,” and “Parasitology
and Entomology.”44
Bernardo Francisco Bruto da Costa, who served in São Tomé and
Príncipe during the first two decades of the twentieth century, was in the
first cohort of medical students to graduate from the Lisbon School of
Tropical Medicine. In his memoirs, published after he left the colonial
medical service, Costa mentioned that he had graduated at the top of his
class in 1905, an achievement that gave him the right to be placed in a
more “agreeable” colony.45 His intention was to return to Goa, where
he was originally from, and where he hoped to return in order to teach

in the medical school. However, his plans were foiled when he discov-
ered that he was being sent to São Tomé and Príncipe instead.46 The
differences between the two physicians: Ribeiro, on the one hand, and
Costa, on the other, are remarkable. Whereas Ribeiro was concerned
with the impact of the environment on the health of individuals and
showed an interest in undertaking local botanical explorations in order
to find local plant-based remedies, Costa’s memoirs contain descriptions
of diseases that existed in São Tomé and Príncipe, along with details con-
cerning the kinds of remedies and therapies that physicians employed. In
a stark contrast with Ribeiro’s numerous published works, what is miss-
ing in Costa’s memoirs, letters, and reports are references to the local
healers and their refusal to divulge their medical “secrets,” or to the
effects of the climate on people, or to the humoral tradition for that mat-
ter, which by then was being discredited.
As mentioned, the Health Service of São Tomé and Príncipe also
relied on the hiring of doctors from Goa, in India, where a medical
school had been founded in 1842. From the middle of the nineteenth
century onwards, Indo-Portuguese doctors were to play an impor-
tant role in the understaffed Portuguese medical services in Africa. In
fact, the Portuguese lauded the Goan medical school as a successful
Portuguese initiative. Cristiana Bastos has looked critically at studies that
depict the Goan school as a “vehicle of transmission of the Portuguese
imperial mission,” and its doctors as “agents of imperial biopower.”47
She argues that one has to tread carefully here and that a close reading
of the sources reveals a much more complex situation.48 The founding of
the school itself reveals some of the complexities. Instead of having been
a Portuguese initiative directed from the metropole, the building of the
school was the result of the negotiation between the Portuguese author-
ities and Goan elites, on whom the school depended. Rather than being
regarded as “an arm of empire,” Bastos states that the school should
instead be seen as an institution that articulated both “local and colonial
interests.”49
In reality, the institution’s future was not guaranteed and at times it
faced the possibility of having to close its doors because of the lack of
metropolitan support. According to Bastos, historical sources pertaining
to the medical school include reports that point to a “continued lack of
resources: insufficient funding, personnel, books, corpses for anatomi-
cal dissection, and other items considered fundamental for the teaching
158 R. JOBBITT
of medicine and related sciences.”50 Apart from these deficiencies, the

teaching of medicine in Goa had to attend to traditions and values of
the colony, largely because the school itself had been a local initiative.51
Although the school had a curriculum that was in many ways similar to
those taught in Portuguese medical schools during the nineteenth cen-
tury, because the institution had been supported by Indo-Portuguese
elites, they had the ability to determine “how far they wanted to go in
following the Western-style medical education.”52
While the Goan medical school itself was often criticised for not liv-
ing up to standards when it came to the teaching of Western medicine,
its graduates were also “acquainted with local practices and bodies of
knowledge rooted in non-European traditions, either Ayurvedic med-
icine, practiced by vaidyas in India, or Goan folk-healing practices, or
occasionally the Arab tradition of Unani medicine, practiced by hakims,
which was not very different from the European tradition.”53 Bastos has
uncovered evidence for Goa in the mid-nineteenth century, which sug-
gests that many of the doctors who attended the school practiced indige-
nous medicine on a part-time basis.54
When these doctors began to be relocated to the African colonies
from the middle of the nineteenth century onwards, would they have
continued to practice medicine that incorporated popular healing prac-
tices from Goa? It stands to reason that, if they drew on this knowledge
when practicing in India, they would have taken it with them to the
African colonies. However, at least in the case of São Tomé and Príncipe,
the sources do not contain any evidence of this. Referencing popular
healing from India did not make sense in the African context and would
likely be damaging to the career prospects of Goan physicians in the col-
onies, especially because they already had to counter the perception that
their training was of inferior quality. Also, the Goans were able to use
local medical knowledge when practicing in their own communities in
India because it was socially acceptable to do so, even if it attracted crit-
icism from Portuguese officials. By contrast, in Africa, they were on for-
eign soil and had to conform to the policies of the medical services they
worked for. Also, the fact that some Goan physicians had used popular
medicine in Goa did not make them more tolerant of medical pluralism
in the African colonies.55
Regardless of their medical training, the presence of the physicians
from Goa not only adds complexity to the practice of medicine in São
Tomé and Príncipe, but also provides an example of the connections that
existed between the Portuguese territories in India and this small West
African colony, thus providing a bridge between the Atlantic and Indian
Ocean Worlds. Furthermore, the reliance of the Health Service on the
Goan physicians serves to downplay the influence that Portugal itself
played as far as the service was concerned. Instead of focusing almost
exclusively on the links between Portugal and the empire, it would be
useful to research in greater depth the connections and linkages that
existed between people who were themselves from colonial outposts and
not from the metropole.
The Physicians of the Health Service and the Realities

of Serving in São Tomé and Príncipe
When surveying primary source materials from the Health Service of

São Tomé and Príncipe, one is struck by the ambitious scope of some
of the public health projects that the service was responsible for draft-
ing and proposing over the years. The public health officials involved in
drawing up these projects often stated that their mission was to trans-
form the colony from a “primitive” place to a modern one, which also
implied its transformation from an “unhealthy” to a healthy space. It is
in light of these kinds of ideas that one understands the importance that
such commentators attached to the role that medicine should play as a
colonising, and civilising, force. However, it is difficult to see how the
Health Service of São Tomé and Príncipe would be capable of living up
to such high expectations as far as radical improvements in public health
were concerned. Aside from budgetary constraints, from its inception in
1844 the service met with tremendous obstacles concerning the hiring
and retaining of personnel. Alongside problems with filling vacant posts,
the Health Service had to contend with the frequent leaves requested
by its employees once they found themselves in São Tomé and Príncipe.
Officials in charge of assessing leave requests had no difficulty granting
medical leaves. In fact, they argued that leaves were necessary in order
to prevent the declining health of all civil servants. In his 1869 medical
report, Ribeiro referred to the question of medical leaves. In his opinion,
civil servants should be allowed to return to Portugal every three years
and remain there for six months so that they could fully recover from the
colony’s debilitating climate.56
160 R. JOBBITT
A decree approved on December 2, 1869 re-organised the

Portuguese overseas medical services. With respect to the Health
Service of São Tomé and Príncipe, the law stipulated that the colony
would be allocated a total of five doctors and three pharmacists, repre-
senting various categories and ranks.57 Most of them would still reside
in the capital, São Tomé, which meant that the areas outside the city
would continue to be extremely underserved by the Health Service.
Furthermore, between the two islands, Príncipe was the most neglected
because it received only one doctor and one pharmacist who would
live and work in the city of Santo António. The members of the Health
Service were aware of their limited presence beyond the urban areas, and
occasionally complained about it. In a report submitted to the Governor
of the colony in 1903, the service’s director disclosed that the residents
of the parish of das Neves, on the island of São Tomé, rarely saw a doc-
tor.58 In medical emergencies, he informed the Governor that the inhab-
itants of the town were forced to summon doctors from the city of São
Tomé or to rely on the assistance of a private physician who worked for
the nearby Boa Esperança plantation. If the plantation doctor happened
to be away from the agricultural estate, then the wait would likely be a
long one. As the director noted, this delay could and often did result
in the death of the person who was in need of urgent medical care. He
suggested hiring a doctor who would be required to live in the town
permanently.59
The fact that most health officials were located in the capital, São
Tomé, meant that the medical service exercised very little influence on
the plantations and in the more remote regions of the colony. If the
plantations hired doctors to provide some health care on the agricultural
estates, often they did not reside on the estates and visited them occa-
sionally. As a result, plantation doctors were not responsible for provid-
ing day-to-day medical care to workers on the plantations. Beyond the
world of the plantations, there were also other remote regions where
medical personnel of the Health Service had little influence. It was
precisely in these more isolated areas that healers could act with what
medical officials perceived as “impunity.” When reading through the
documentation pertaining to the medical service, a number of discipli-
nary cases involving several of its officials included some who had been
posted to Príncipe, for example, where they had free reign to act as
they saw fit because they lacked supervision from their superiors in the
service.
Difficulties with recruiting and retaining personnel also meant that

the regulations that were applicable to the Health Service were fre-
quently disregarded, which at times created controversy in the colony.
For instance, differences of opinion often surfaced regarding the hiring
and promotion of medical professionals that had graduated from med-
ical schools outside of mainland Portugal, specifically those who had
received their training in the Goan medical school. Portuguese com-
mentators in São Tomé and Príncipe remarked that their training was
sub-par because the school did not have the same academic rigor as
medical schools in Portugal. These prejudices were also reflected in leg-
islation approved in Portugal designed to regulate the colonial medical
services. A case in point was the 1869 decree reorganising the overseas
health services, which gave hiring preference to physicians who had grad-
uated from medical schools in mainland Portugal over those who had
been trained in India.60 A specific discriminatory feature of the legisla-
tion that impacted physicians from Goa was that they would retain the
lower rank of second-class doctor in the colonial medical hierarchy until
they retired, at which time they would be promoted to the rank of first-
class doctor, whereas a physician trained in Portugal could be hired in
the second-class category but promoted to the category of first-class doc-
tor after five years of service in the colonies.61
Cristiana Bastos argues that physicians sent from Goa to Portugal’s
colonies in Africa from the mid-nineteenth century onwards came to
occupy a rather ambiguous position in the health services.62 She explains
how this ambiguity derived mainly from their role as intermediaries
between the Portuguese as colonisers and the people they supposedly
ruled over.63 The Santomean sources support the notion that doctors
from Goa were largely regarded as second-rate physicians in the colony.
For instance, Vicente Almada, who served as Governor of São Tomé and
Príncipe between 1880 and 1882, was clearly against the advancement
of Goan physicians in the hierarchy of the Health Service.64 Promoting
doctors from Goa, he said, would have a “damaging” effect in the col-
ony because the school did not offer adequate training.65 However,
despite having to contend with discriminatory attitudes and regulations,
opportunities arose for Goan doctors in the colony. Even Almada, who
expressed such negative opinions about them, was willing to accept the
possibility of the doctors from Goa being hired by the São Tomé City
Council when there were no candidates from Portugal who could fill
the post, although he stressed that the municipalities should always
162 R. JOBBITT
strive to hire those who had attended medical school in Portugal.66 In

another interesting reference, Almada mentioned that the director of the
Hospital of São Tomé had resigned because he wanted to dedicate him-
self to his private medical practice and that the Health Service and the
hospital would be left without a director until one arrived from Portugal.
In this case, Almada disclosed that a Goan doctor, Manuel Rodrigues
Pinto, had replaced the director. The reason for Pinto’s promotion to
the rank of first-class doctor and to the directorship of the hospital was
that there were no doctors with more years of service in the colony who
could fill the vacant position.67 Pinto’s case illustrates how, at times, local
realities trumped regulations and prejudices, which might otherwise have
barred Goan doctors from assuming more senior roles in the colonial
medical service.
If, on the one hand, the lack of medical personnel meant that the
authorities had to make concessions that resulted in the promotion of
doctors from Goa, it is also obvious that the physicians themselves
fought for their professional advancement. In other words, they were not
passive individuals waiting for the Portuguese authorities to grant them
better positions within the medical service. The case of José Dionísio
Carneiro de Sousa e Faro, a Goan doctor, is representative of this. In
1867, Faro petitioned the authorities to grant him the commendation
he felt he was entitled to receive, in recognition for his service to the
colony during the smallpox epidemic of 1864.68 In the document, Faro
pointed out that other doctors who had also served in São Tomé and
Príncipe at the time of the outbreak had received recognition, but that
he had been overlooked. The fact that Faro had been the only doctor
sent to work in the Diogo Nunes lazaret, built to house smallpox patients
during the epidemic, is fairly telling of his lower status within the service.
Further along these lines, the lazaret had been closed when the disease
made an appearance on Príncipe and Faro had been sent there. Clearly,
Goan doctors such as Faro at times received work duties that higher
ranked doctors did not want to perform. However, as was often the case
with the Health Service of São Tomé and Príncipe, Faro’s story had its
own peculiar twists and turns. The director of the service, José Correia
Nunes, in fact endorsed Faro’s request by writing a letter praising the
valuable service that the doctor had provided in the lazaret during the
epidemic.69 Perhaps bolstered by such praise, Faro continued to fight for
a better position in the service. Two years after the 1867 request, the
doctor wrote another one asking for a promotion, arguing that he had
served in Mozambique for almost three years before being sent to São
Tomé and Príncipe, and insisting that those years of service should count
towards his promotion.70
Another Goan physician who succeeded in making a notable career
for himself in São Tomé and Príncipe, both inside and outside the med-
ical service, was Bernardo Francisco Bruto da Costa. Prior to the out-
break of World War I, he played a key role in the mission to eradicate
sleeping sickness on the island of Príncipe. In 1919, Costa became the
director of the Health Service of São Tomé and Príncipe and also headed
the Hospital of São Tomé in 1919, 1921, and once again in 1926. In
that year, the doctor became mayor of the city of São Tomé, although
his crowning achievement was being appointed Interim Governor of São
Tomé and Príncipe in 1919 and in 1922.71 Costa’s professional trajec-
tory suggests that the Goans themselves did not form a homogeneous
group, meaning that those who were trained in Portugal seemed to have
faced fewer obstacles when compared to graduates from the medical
school in Goa.
In all cases though, the above vignettes of physicians from India work-
ing in São Tomé and Príncipe force us to think critically about the role
that they played in the Health Service and in colonial society. Although
they were at times targets of discrimination and criticism, the physicians
from Goa were not marginalised and often succeeded in securing more
senior roles in the service. It is true that they tended to be promoted to
top positions in an “interim” capacity, when the Health Service found
itself in crisis either because one or several of its officials became ill, had
gone on leave, or had left the colony, or when there were epidemic out-
breaks, for example. However, Portuguese medical officials at times sup-
ported the promotion of Goan physicians in the hierarchy of the Health
Service because they recognised their merit. The significance of those
who did manage to rise within the ranks of the medical service was that
they were in a position to make decisions and to exercise power in the
colony. For this reason, colonial medical projects were not, strictly speak-
ing, “Portuguese” projects, but were instead “co-authored” and imple-
mented by the physicians from Goa. Similarly, the fact that the Health
Service recruited non-Europeans means that the dichotomy of the “col-
oniser versus the colonised” does not provide an adequate framework for
an analysis of the service. An alternative model is to see a medical service
that relied heavily on the recruitment of a “colonised” elite, which was
then responsible for implementing its policies.
164 R. JOBBITT
Notwithstanding its reliance on recruitment of personnel from over-

seas, there was an attempt in the late nineteenth century to admit an
African doctor into the Health Service of São Tomé and Príncipe. In
1868, Leonardo “Africano” Ferreira presented a request to become first-
class surgeon in the colony.72 In the request, he mentioned that he had
obtained a medical degree from the Lisbon medical school.73 Beyond
this, Ferreira made sure to emphasise that he had extensive experience
treating the “diseases of West Africa,” which he claimed to have acquired
while serving as surgeon-general of the district of Benguela, in his native
Angola.74
Due to the chronic shortage of doctors in São Tomé and Príncipe,
some individuals backed Ferreira’s appointment, while others, including
Ribeiro, were against his nomination because they argued that he had
not completed his medical degree in Lisbon.75 Interestingly, Ribeiro
did not mention anything about Ferreira’s background, or how he had
come to reside in São Tomé in the first place. After returning to Angola
from Lisbon in 1849, Ferreira had indeed served as surgeon-general in
Benguela. However, at a later date, the authorities in Angola banished
him to São Tomé and Príncipe as an exiled convict to serve out a sen-
tence for a crime or crimes committed there. After being subsequently
pardoned by the authorities, Ferreira chose to remain in São Tomé. One
of the most surprising aspects of Ferreira’s case is that the director of
the Health Service of São Tomé and Príncipe, José Correia Nunes, sup-
ported his candidacy for the position. In a letter written in 1868, Nunes
disclosed that he had in fact approached Ferreira to convince him to
apply for the job.76 Nunes described how Ferreira had initially expressed
little interest, citing ill health. However, the director kept encouraging
him until he finally decided to submit his application.77 In the end, the
authorities in Lisbon refused to consider Ferreira’s application, on the
grounds that he had not included the necessary documentation with his
submission, meaning that he lacked a diploma (although it is possible
that Ferreira’s exile to São Tomé and Príncipe as a convict also played
into the decision to deny him the position).78
Nunes’ support for Ferreira might at first seem surprising, but it could
have been motivated by the doctor’s realisation that Ferreira would be an
asset to the Health Service because he combined some medical training
in Western medicine with practical experience in treating the “diseases
of West Africa.” Nunes probably recognised that this kind of experi-
ence would be useful in a colony like São Tomé and Príncipe, where it
was difficult to recruit and retain medical officials. Unfortunately, there

is little information about Ferreira, including details of a more per-
sonal nature since the sources do not give any indication of whether
or not he was an African man (although the usage of the middle name
of “Africano” suggests that he was), or if he had European as well as
African ancestry.
According to Isabel Fêo Rodrigues, what has been neglected in the
study of colonialism is how the “metaphors and ideologies of empire
were co-authored by colonised populations.”79 In the case of São Tomé
and Príncipe, it seems reasonable to assume that some of the measures
and proposals of the Health Service were “co-authored” by non-Europeans
who formed part of the service. In order to see this, it is necessary to
move beyond a simplistic analysis of the structure of the Health Service,
which was supported by legislation. If one were to take legislation and
regulations at face value, one would conclude that the Portuguese med-
ical officials who occupied the most senior ranks in the colony’s medical
service were always in a position of power and authority. However, the
medical reports attest to the many glaring gaps in the system, including
staff shortages and medical leaves. This meant that non-European medi-
cal officials, even if they were placed in a lower rank within the hierarchy
of the service, were normally left in positions of authority throughout
the colony. As we have also seen, non-Europeans were frequently pro-
moted to positions of leadership in the colonial medical service, even if it
was in contravention of the law.
Also, in order to understand the role that non-Europeans played in
the Santomean medical service, it is useful to employ Cristiana Bastos’
concept of “subalternities.”80 She makes use of this model in her study
of Goan doctors, whom she calls a “subaltern elite.”81 African medical
personnel who worked in São Tomé and Príncipe were also members
of a “subaltern elite.” It is true that this was largely a “silenced” group
of people, since most of the information that the extant sources contain
about them is second-hand. However, their voices do come across in a
few petitions and requests. When seen in conjunction with the source
material that points to the deficiencies of the Health Service, it is evident
that members of this elite were able to exert influence in the service and
in the colony. A careful reading of the colonial medical sources reveals a
reality that was complex and one which forces us to ask questions about
the authorship and implementation of medical projects. Since the Health
Service admitted non-Europeans, they were involved in drafting many of
166 R. JOBBITT
the projects aimed at modernising the practice of medicine in the colony.

The influence of members of this “subaltern elite” also raises moral ques-
tions because they were, after all, recruited and trained to form part of
a medical system that was at times oppressive. This illustrates the way in
which colonial power was deployed and used, and the fact that the “col-
onised” could become agents of their own oppression.
African Medical Practitioners Working Outside the

Health Service of São Tomé and Príncipe
Despite the limitations of the Health Service of São Tomé and Príncipe,
its doctors liked to highlight the differences that existed between
them and all the other medical practitioners in the colony, in particu-
lar the African healers, whom they denigrated. Health officials described
Santomean popular medical practices as “primitive” traditions of
“African medicine,” and liked to contrast them with Western medicine,
depicted as “progressive” and “efficient.” However, much to the doc-
tors’ frustration, extant sources reveal that popular healing in São Tomé
and Príncipe had incorporated many of the treatments associated with
Western medicine. In other words, it was not an expression of “primitive
African medicine.”
The perception that the medicine that was practiced by the healers in
São Tomé and Príncipe was little more than “quackery” and superstition
is conveyed in Almada Negreiros’ late nineteenth-century ethnographic
work about the island of São Tomé. In the work, the author maintained
that sorcery (feitiço) was central to the lives of Santomeans and remarked
that the healers produced “all sorts of infusions concocted by their imag-
ination.”82 However, what is rather curious about Negreiros’ work is
that, by attempting to be somewhat exhaustive in terms of the informa-
tion presented in the book, he effectively described certain indigenous
medical practices that were clearly not just about “sorcery” and “super-
stition.” For example, he wrote that given their “particular aptitude for
imitation,” healers had “acquired their vast medical-surgical knowledge
from European doctors.”83 He saw further signs of this “imitation” in
the healers’ demeanor, including the fact that they dressed in “European
style” and carried around handbooks containing descriptions of their
therapies.84 Negreiros was very critical of the healers who dared to dress
in European clothes, mainly because wearing such clothes did not seem
to fit with his desire to portray them as primitive “quacks,” whose prac-
tices were nothing more than witchcraft.
A similar sense of frustration with the healers’ “mimicry” of European
doctors also comes across in the comments that Ribeiro made in his
1869 medical report, where the doctor expressed anger at those who,
in his opinion, dared to use instruments, techniques, and treatments
that were commonly employed by physicians in the colony. The thrust
of his argument was that, because they lacked training in Western med-
icine, healers were not qualified to use such instruments and methods.
Specifically, he stated that they administered known drugs “excessively”
and that they used medical instruments such as cupping devices in a
“rampant and careless fashion.”85 He also recommended that healers
should be prevented from having access to medications that were rou-
tinely sold in local pharmacies.86 This would prove to be an impossible
task for the authorities because they lacked the means to regulate the
sale of medicinal substances in the many shops that existed throughout
the colony, not to mention the remedies that were available in plantation
pharmacies, which were not subject to any regulatory oversight.
Aside from the term curandeiro (or curandeira if the healer was
a woman87), there were other specific terms used to describe different
medical practitioners in São Tomé and Príncipe including that of stlijón,
herbalists who were experts in preparing and prescribing local herbal
remedies.88 A particular designation that also emerges in the extant doc-
umentation is that of piadó zaua. The piadó specialised in diagnosing
diseases by examining a person’s urine. When someone became ill, wrote
Negreiros, a member or members of that person’s family would take his
or her urine to the piadó’s house and would describe the patient’s symp-
toms to him.89 The piadó would transfer the urine from the container
it was brought into vessels of various shapes and sizes, after which he
would provide an initial diagnosis. An example of a diagnosis could be
that the individual was suffering from a “hot humour,” which might or
might not be attributed to a spell. Negreiros then described the next
step: the piadó would retire to a corner of his dwelling, where he stored
his pharmacopoeia composed of leaves, wood, roots, peels and bot-
tles containing a variety of juices extracted from trees and bushes that
existed in São Tomé and Príncipe. He would use it to make a preparation
that was subsequently handed to the patient’s family member or mem-
bers, along with instructions on how to administer it. If the patient’s
168 R. JOBBITT
condition failed to improve, the family members would often return with
more urine and the course of treatment would be altered.90
According to Negreiros, the plantations had their own healers, known
as quimbandas, who, like the majority of the labourers on the agricul-
tural estates, were originally from Angola. Negreiros saw them as the
equivalent of the Santomean healers, the piadó.91 He described how the
quimbandas used divination rituals in order to uncover the causes of dis-
eases that were mostly attributed to spells called mulogi. Older women in
particular played an important role in providing medical care on planta-
tions, where they prepared remedies called milongos, which were used to
treat and cure all sorts of ailments, and where they also worked as mid-
wives.92 Some of the plant species that were commonly used in medicine
in Angola also existed in São Tomé and Príncipe. As a result, it is likely
that healers on the agricultural estates were able to make use of them. An
example was the use the sap of the canarium edule tree to treat ulcers.
The tree, known as sáfú in São Tomé and Príncipe, was known as n’bafo
or mubafo in Angola.93
In addition to healers and midwives, some plantations had African
medical staff that worked in the hospitals or infirmaries (if these existed).
But, as the extant sources suggest, most of these assistants did not
have any formal training. In fact, the medical authorities went to great
lengths to portray them as incompetent individuals who should either be
formally trained or banned from exercising their duties on the estates.
Ribeiro, for instance, mentioned that most plantations had a pharmacy
and a hospital, but objected to the recruitment of “unskilled nurses”
to work in them.94 Unfortunately, it is difficult to determine if some
of the medical staff was recruited locally or if they too had originated
from Angola. The significance is that, as foreigners, the Angolans would
have brought medical practices that they were familiar with in Angola to
São Tomé and Príncipe. How would these practices have adapted to the
circumstances of life on the plantations in São Tomé and Príncipe? The
fact that many of the medical practitioners were not originally from São
Tomé and Príncipe and found themselves in the multiethnic world of the
agricultural estates adds complexity to the issue of medical pluralism in
the colony.
When looking at information regarding medicine in São Tomé and
Príncipe, particularly the descriptions concerning the practices of the
piadó, it is clear that they incorporated and assimilated knowledge that
derived from Western medicine, particularly humoralism. One of the
most pervasive treatments associated with humoralism was bloodletting,

a procedure employed by both doctors of the Health Service and African
healers in the colony during the late nineteenth century. For instance,
in one of his works, Ribeiro accused the healers of bleeding patients
“too frequently” and “without care,” and yet he himself made use of
bloodletting when treating local diseases, such as typhoid.95 I am not
suggesting that the healers’ understanding of the causes of diseases, as
well as the therapies they used, exactly mirrored those of doctors such
as Ribeiro. However, there are interesting points of contact and com-
monalities including a widespread belief in humoralism, as well as some
overlap in the use of at least some of the medicinal substances. What
else would explain Ribeiro’s attempt to denigrate the healers by claim-
ing that they used known substances in “dangerous” doses, or that they
did not know how to use medical instruments correctly? If the healers’
practices had absolutely nothing in common with Western medicine,
Ribeiro would not have conveyed so much displeasure regarding their
“transgressions” and penchant for “imitation” in his reports and letters.
Therefore, what caused consternation to the doctor was not the fact that
the healers practiced “African medicine” or “quackery,” but rather that
they were capable of incorporating and using knowledge and practices
that were associated with Western medicine in the colony. Based on my
reading of the available sources, it is clear that the healers’ transgressions
of the “prescribed” medical domain were a far riskier proposition for
them as far as the colonial authorities were concerned. Rather than being
able to gain greater credibility through the use of many of the medical
instruments and therapies that other physicians employed, the healers’
appropriation of Western medical knowledge and practices did not shield
them from condemnation and persecution on the part of the colonial
authorities.
What Portuguese commentators such as Ribeiro failed to grasp was
that African medical practitioners in the colony were pragmatic in their
willingness to adopt therapies and knowledge of disease and healing
that complemented their own. Was the healers’ appropriation of aspects
of Western medicine indicative of the development of medical hybrid-
isms in the colony? Hybridity is a key concept in studies that make use
of post-colonial theory. Robert Young maintains that hybridity “involves
processes of interaction that create new social spaces to which new mean-
ings are given,” while enabling “the articulation of experiences of change
in societies splintered by modernity.”96 The question of hybridity appears
170 R. JOBBITT
in studies about medical pluralism, where scholars discuss healing tradi-

tions that reflect the interplay between various medical systems. In the
case of the former Portuguese colonies in Africa and in India, the topic
has informed much of the work of Cristiana Bastos who has examined
the reasons why the Portuguese were willing to assimilate local medical
knowledge in Goa, India, and in the African colonies.97 According to
Bastos, not only were the Portuguese open to incorporating native rem-
edies and therapeutic knowledge in colonial outposts until the late nine-
teenth and early twentieth centuries, but exchanges “between European
and local systems happened both ways, leading to the development of
medical hybridisms.”98 But instead of seeing these sorts of exchanges as
an indication of a tolerant attitude on the part of the Portuguese towards
healers and their practices, Bastos argues that the borrowing for practi-
cal healing purposes that was commonplace in the African colonies until
the 1880s represented a practical, “utilitarian” behaviour that was char-
acteristic of a period when Portuguese colonial medical services on the
continent were practically non-existent. European medical practices and
practitioners were spread too thinly on the ground to have a significant
impact, particularly during the early colonial period.99 The deficiencies of
the medical services in the African colonies lasted well into the twentieth
century, when the Portuguese colonial authorities finally attempted to
“annihilate local traditions regarding health and illness.”100
Some scholars have expressed reservations about the use of the con-
cept of hybridity when analysing medicine in the colonies. For example,
Waltraud Ernst argues that, “hybridity is too static and terminal and does
not do justice to less straightforward processes such as selective incorpo-
ration, cultural translation, subtle reconfigurations of dominant systems,
and indigenous equanimity towards the eagerness (or refusal) to emulate
hegemonic medical systems.”101 In addition, she maintains that analyses
of medical hybridity are still circumscribed by the dichotomies of “indig-
enous vs. colonial medicine,” although she admits that the theory has
the advantage of bringing indigenous peoples and their healing practices
into “the centre of analysis, where previously ‘colonial medicine’ had
basked unchallenged in the limelight of traditional medical histories and
theories of hegemony.”102
My interpretation of the evidence available for São Tomé and Príncipe
is that local healers were engaged in selectively incorporating aspects
of Western medicine that complemented their own and that this was a
process subject to change and develop over time. The sources do not
support the view expressed by Portuguese commentators of the late

nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that healers wanted to imi-
tate European physicians in order to gain a clientele or credibility. On
the contrary, there is evidence pointing to the effectiveness of many of
the remedies and treatments prescribed by healers, who also attracted
European patients. Hybridity and the ambivalence that accompany it
can be used to examine the pluralistic medical world of São Tomé and
Príncipe, where people frequently transgressed the boundaries that sup-
posedly existed between the various forms of medical knowledge and
practice. The practices of healers resulted from these processes of interac-
tion, while also signalling a refusal on their part to be circumscribed to a
particular medical domain.
Conclusion
To conclude, the persistence of medical pluralism in the colony was not
indicative of a benevolent attitude on the part of colonial officials toward
local healing practices. The Health Service’s project of medical moderni-
sation and desire to impose Western medicine as the hegemonic form of
medical knowledge and practice in São Tomé and Príncipe left no place for
the practices of healers in the colony. However, the authorities were not
successful in their attempts to prevent them from pursuing their work, in
part because they lacked the means to do so, but also because the healers
continued to practice medicine, even though they risked punishment and
persecution in doing so. As for the Health Service itself, the recruitment
and promotion of physicians from Goa was not a reflection of the absence
of discriminatory policies that were meant to keep Goans in the lower
ranks of the service. Limited human resources in the Health Service, com-
bined with occasional public health crises in the colony, along with the per-
sonal networks, merit, and perseverance that the Goan doctors possessed,
allowed them to assume more senior roles within the medical service. Also,
although there is evidence that some of these physicians were familiar with
healing practices from India, there is no indication that they made use
of them when practicing medicine in São Tomé and Príncipe. The most
compelling aspect regarding Goan physicians is the initiative that they dis-
played when seeking to further their professional interests in the colony.
The implication is that, if São Tomé and Príncipe was an “imagined” space
to medical officials, the process of imagining a “healthier,” “modern,” or
more “progressive” colony was not an entirely European idea.
172 R. JOBBITT
Notes
1. Manuel Ferreira Ribeiro, Relatório Acerca do Serviço de Saúde Pública da
Província de São Tomé e Príncipe no Anno de 1869 (Lisbon: Imprensa
Nacional, 1871), 118.
2. Ribeiro, Relatório, 183.
3. Gerhard Seibert, ‘São Tomé and Príncipe: The First Plantation Economy
in the Tropics’, in Commercial Agriculture, the Slave Trade & Slavery
in Atlantic Africa, edited by Robin Law, Suzanne Schwarz, and Silke
Strickrodt (Suffolk: James Currey, 2013), 58.
4. Seibert, ‘São Tomé and Príncipe’.
5. The early colonists included several craftsmen, convicts, as well as indi-
viduals from Madeira who had expertise in sugar cultivation. In addi-
tion, the Portuguese also sent a number of children who had been
taken from Jewish families in Portugal. This decision can be understood
as a consequence of the Portuguese crown’s changing attitude toward
the presence of Jews in Portugal. After the expulsion of the Jews from
Castile in March of 1492 (the expulsion applied to those who had
refused to convert to Christianity), approximately 150,000 Jews left the
kingdom. Of those, it is believed that around 90,000 came to Portugal.
The King of Portugal, João II, decreed that the Jews had to pay a tax
of eight cruzados per person within eight months of their arrival in
the country. Those who failed to pay would be arrested. It is believed
that the children who were sent to São Tomé were part of families that
had not paid the tax. In 1793, the King ordered that the children be
taken, baptised, and sent to São Tomé to settle the land and to make
it “Christian”, in Joaquim Veríssimo Serrão, História de Portugal: A
Formação do Estado Moderno (1415–1495), vol. 2, 3rd ed. (Lisbon:
Verbo, 1980), 261–262.
6. Isabel Castro Henriques, ‘Formas de Intervenção e Organização dos
Africanos em S. Tomé nos Séculos XV e XVI’, in Separata, no. 51
(Coimbra: Centro de Estudos de História do Atlântico, 1989), 801.
7. Henriques, ‘Formas de Intervenção’, 812. Studies on the topic of slave
rebellions in São Tomé include Arlindo Manuel Caldeira, ‘Rebelião
e Outras Formas de Resistência à Escravatura na Ilha de São Tomé’,
Revista Internacional de Estudos Africanos 7 (2004): 101–136; Rui
Ramos, ‘Rebelião e Sociedade Colonial: Alvoroços e Levantamentos em
São Tomé (1545–1555)’, Revista Internacional de Estudos Africanos 4
(1986): 17–74; Jan Vansina, ‘Quilombos on São Tomé, or in Search of
Original Sources’, History in Africa 23 (1996): 453–459.
8. According to Malyn Newitt and Tony Hodges, São Tomé and Príncipe:
From Plantation Colony to Microstate (Boulder, CO: Westview Press,
1988), 24, during these two centuries plantation agriculture did indeed
decline, but they argue that, “the natural fertility of the islands allowed
the Creole population to produce a variety of crops without great
labour or high investment.” For example, during the seventeenth cen-
tury, cotton was exported from São Tomé, along with rice. Santomean
soap made from local palm oil was also exported abroad.
9. António Lobo de Almada Negreiros, História Ethnographica da Ilha de
S. Thomé (Lisbon: José Bastos, 1895), 230. According to Negreiros,
some of the plants introduced by the early settlers included the thorn
apple (estramónio), the maidenhead fern (avenca), basil (alfavaca), and
arrowroot (araruta).
10. Luís de Albuquerque, ed., ‘Da Causa Por Que As Estações Nesta Ilha
São Diferentes Das Nossas e de Quais Tempos São Nocivos aos Pretos e
Quais aos Brancos’, in A Ilha de São Tomé nos Séculos XV e XVI (Lisbon:
Publicações Alfa, 1989), 30–31.
11. In one source, the author described how Africans used cupping devices
(referred to as ventosas in the document) and made incisions into the
skin in order to extract blood. See Albuquerque, ‘Em Que Tempo do
Ano os Negros Costumam Adoecer de Febre e do Seu Remédio de
Sangria’, in A Ilha de São Tomé nos Séculos XV e XVI, 32.
12. Timothy D. Walker, ‘The Medicines Trade in the Portuguese Atlantic
World: Acquisition and Dissemination of Healing Knowledge from
Brazil (c. 1580–1800)’, Social History of Medicine 26 (2013): 403–431,
discusses the trade of medicinal plants from Brazil to other parts of the
Portuguese Empire (including São Tomé).
13. Francisco Tenreiro, A Ilha de S. Tomé (Lisbon: Junta de Investigações do
Ultramar, 1961), 146.
14. According to Walker, ‘The Medicines Trade’, 427, the Portuguese
brought coffee, cocoa, and cinchona trees from Brazil to São Tomé.
15. Ernesto J. de C. e Vasconcelos, S. Tomé e Príncipe: Estudo Elementar
de Geografia Física, Económica e Política (Lisbon: Tipografia da
Cooperativa Militar, 1919), 66–67.
16. Vasconcelos, S. Tomé e Príncipe, 67.
17. Seibert, ‘São Tomé and Príncipe’, 76.
18. Carlos Espírito Santo, Contribuição para a História de São Tomé e
Príncipe (Lisbon: Grafitécnica, 1979), 60, maintains that 55,869
Angolan labourers were transported to São Tomé between 1876
and 1900, with an additional 19,388 brought into the colony during
1905–1909.
19. Philip Curtin used this expression to describe the perceptions that
Europeans had of West Africa for much of the nineteenth century. See
his articles: ‘“The White Man’s Grave”: Image and Reality, 1780–1850’,
174 R. JOBBITT
The Journal of British History 1 (1961): 94–110; and ‘The End of the
‘White Man’s Grave’? Nineteenth-Century Mortality in West Africa’,
Journal of Interdisciplinary History 21 (1990): 63–88.
20. Ribeiro, Relatório, 69. In the report, 116, the doctor used the expres-
sion “Madeira of the Tropics” to convey his ideas about the kind of des-
tination that São Tomé and Príncipe could one day become, especially
for Portuguese settlers seeking a better future.
21. Cristiana Bastos, ‘Doctors for the Empire: The Medical School of Goa
and Its Narratives’, Identities 8 (2001): 518.
22. Bastos, ‘Doctors for the Empire’, 519.
23. Bastos, ‘Doctors for the Empire’, 519.
24. Cristiana Bastos, ‘Medical Hybridisms and Social Boundaries: Aspects of
Portuguese Colonialism in Africa and India in the Nineteenth Century’,
Journal of Southern African Studies 33 (2007): 772.
25. Jaime Walter, Um Português Carioca Professor da Primeira Escola
Mêdica de Angola: as Suas Lições de Anatomia, 1791 (Lisbon: Junta de
Investigações do Ultramar, 1970).
26. Marinha Carneiro, ‘Ordenamento Sanitário, Profissões de Saúde e
Cursos de Parteiras no Século XIX’, História 8 (2007): 321–322.
27. Carneiro, ‘Ordenamento Sanitário’, 324. A case in point was Manuel
Ferreira Ribeiro, a graduate of the Porto medical school, who first
arrived in São Tomé and Príncipe in 1867.
28. Carneiro, ‘Ordenamento Sanitário’, 326.
29. Carneiro, ‘Ordenamento Sanitário’, 326.
33. Ribeiro, Relatório, 178. This view was shared by José Joaquim Lopes
de Lima, Ensaios sobre a Estatística das Possessões Portuguezas na África
Occidental e Oriental; na Ásia Occidental; na China, e na Oceania, vol.
2 (Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional, 1844), 87, who wrote that the deficien-
cies of local pharmacies in the colony compelled its residents to make
use of the remedies of the land.
34. Manuel Ferreira Ribeiro, Saneamento da Cidade de S. Thomé (Lisbon:
Typographia de Vicente da Silva & C.ª, 1895), 37.
36. According to Ribeiro, Relatório, 105, 153, the most prevalent diseases
that affected African plantation labourers were rheumatism, syphilis,
dysentery, ulcers, edemas, elephantiasis, sleeping sickness, and respira-
tory illnesses.
37. Alan Bewell, Romanticism and Colonial Disease (Baltimore and London:
The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 6.
38. William Bynum, The History of Medicine: A Very Short Introduction

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 10–11.
39. Bynum, The History of Medicine, 10–11.
40. João Cardoso Júnior, Subsídios para a Matéria Médica e Therapeutica das
Possessões Ultramarinas Portuguezas (Lisbon: Typ. da Academia Real das
Sciencias, 1902), 21.
41. Cardoso Júnior, Subsídios para a Matéria Médica, 21.
42. Isabel Amaral, ‘The Emergence of Tropical Medicine in Portugal: The
School of Tropical Medicine and the Colonial Hospital of Lisbon
(1902–1935)’, Dynamis 28 (2008): 310.
43. Amaral, ‘The Emergence of Tropical Medicine’, 310.
44. Amaral, ‘The Emergence of Tropical Medicine’, 310–311.
45. Bernardo Francisco Bruto da Costa, Vinte e Três Anos ao Serviço do País
no Combate às Doenças em África (Lisbon: Livraria Portugália, 1939), 3.
46. Costa, Vinte e Três Anos, 4. The colonial authorities in São Tomé and
Príncipe were demanding that the best medical graduates from Portugal
be sent to the colony, because of its reputation for being one of the
unhealthiest destinations in the Portuguese empire.
47. Cristiana Bastos, ‘O Ensino da Medicina na Índia Colonial Portuguesa:
Fundação e Primeiras Décadas da Escola Médico-Cirúrgica de Nova
Goa’, História, Ciência, Saúde – Manguinhos 11 (2004): 17.
48. Bastos, ‘O Ensino da Medicina na Índia Colonial Portuguesa’, 18.
50. Cristiana Bastos, ‘Race, Medicine and the Late Portuguese Empire: The
Role of the Goan Colonial Physicians’, Journal of Romance Studies 5
(2005): 26–27.
51. Cristiana Bastos, ‘Medicina, Império e Processos Locais em Goa, Século
XIX’, Análise Social 42 (2007): 112.
52. Bastos, ‘Medical Hybridisms and Social Boundaries’, 771.
55. Bastos, ‘Medical Hybridisms and Social Boundaries’, 776. For an arti-
cle that illustrates the opinions of a Goan physician who worked in
Mozambique during the late nineteenth century regarding heal-
ers in that Portuguese colony, see Cristiana Bastos, ‘O Médico e o
Inhamessoro: o Relatório do Goês Arthur Ignácio da Gama em Sofala,
1879’, in A Persistência da História: Passado e Contemporaneidade em
África, edited by João de Pina Cabral and Clara Carvalho (Lisbon:
Imprensa das Ciências Sociais, 2004), 91–117.
57. The director of the service had the rank of major. The Santomean med-
ical service only became a civilian and not military service in 1919:
176 R. JOBBITT
Vicente Pinheiro Lobo Machado de Melo e Almada, As Ilhas de S.

Thomé e Príncipe: Notas de Uma Administração Colonial (Lisbon: Typ.
da Academia Real das Sciencias, 1884), 514.
58. AHSTP, Arquivo da Secretaria Geral do Governo, Série A (1802–1927),
Núcleo de São Tomé, Cx. 320, “Relatório,” 1903.
59. Ibid.
60. Decreto de 2 de Dezembro de 1869 da Organização do Serviço de Saúde das
Províncias Ultramarinas (Nova Goa: Imprensa Nacional, 1870), 8.
61. Decreto de 2 de Dezembro de 1869, 9.
63. Bastos, ‘Medical Hybridisms and Social Boundaries’, 768. Studies by
Bastos on the subject of Goan doctors and the Goan medical school
include: ‘The Inverted Mirror: Dreams of Imperial Glory and Tales of
Subalternity from the Goan Medical School’, Etnográfica 6 (2002):
59–76; ‘Doctors for the Empire: The Medical School of Goa and Its
Narratives’, Identities 8, no. 4 (2001): 517–548; ‘O Ensino da Medicina
na Índia Colonial Portuguesa’; and ‘Race, Medicine and the Late
Portuguese Empire’.
64. Almada, As Ilhas de S. Thomé e Príncipe, 518–519.
68. AHU, SEMU, DGU, São Tomé and Príncipe, Cx. 19 [no. 501],
Request made by José Dionísio Carneiro de Sousa e Faro, 1867.
69. Ibid.
Request made by José Dionísio Carneiro de Sousa e Faro, 1869.
71. Ibid., 194–195, 196–197.
Request made by Leonardo “Africano” Ferreira, 1868.
73. Ibid. Ferreira concluded medical studies in Lisbon in 1849, at the age of
forty-six.
74. Ibid.
75. Ribeiro, Relatório, 183–184.
76. AHU, SEMU, DGU, São Tomé and Príncipe, Cx. 20 [no. 502], Letter
written by the Director of the Health Service of São Tomé and Príncipe,
José Correia Nunes, 1868. It must be said, however, that Nunes only
supported his nomination in an “interim” capacity.
77. Ibid.
78. Ibid.
79. Isabel P.B. Fêo Rodrigues, ‘Islands of Sexuality: Theories and Histories
of Creolization in Cape Verde’, The International Journal of African
Historical Studies 36 (2003): 83–84.
80. Bastos, ‘O Médico e o Inhamessoro’, 92. Bastos is borrowing this con-

cept from the Subaltern Studies Group, formed by Marxist South Asian
scholars in the 1980s, who wanted to “decolonise” Indian history.
82. Negreiros, Historia Ethnographica, 228.
83. Negreiros, Historia Ethnographica, 220, 223.
84. Negreiros, Historia Ethnographica, 226. These handbooks were known
rather disparagingly as folhinhas de feiticeiros (witchdoctors’ notebooks).
86. Ribeiro, Relatório, 118, 175.
87. In a report written in 1854 by José Correia Nunes, who at the time was
stationed on the island of Príncipe, the doctor noted that there were
many curandeiras on the island. He directed harsh criticisms at the
curandeiras, calling them “miserable impostors,” who merely “pre-
tended to know” about diseases and their cures. In addition, Nunes
maintained that they prescribed mesinhas (folk remedies) made of herbs
and juices obtained from various “unknown plants,” most of which had
no medicinal value whatsoever in his opinion. To add insult to injury, he
claimed that they charged exorbitant prices for their services. Finally, the
doctor remarked that he had treated several patients who, “after having
ingested everything that the curandeiras had given them,” had finally
come to their senses and sought his advice, often in a severely weak-
ened state. AHU, SEMU, DGU, São Tomé and Príncipe, Cx. 80 [no.
587], “Considerações Acerca da Salubridade da Ilha do Príncipe, das
Principais Causas de Suas Doenças e da Sua Mortalidade Feito Pelo Dr.
José Correia Nunes, Cirurgião de 1ª Classe da Província de S. Thomé e
Príncipe,” August 30, 1854.
88. The term is apparently a Santomean adaptation of the Portuguese word
for surgeon (cirurgião).
92. Negreiros, Historia Ethnographica, 273–274.
96. Robert J.C. Young, Post-colonialism: A Very Short Introduction (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 79.
97. Bastos, ‘Medical Hybridisms and Social Boundaries’, 767–782.
178 R. JOBBITT
101. Waltraud Ernst, ‘Beyond East and West: From the History of Colonial
Medicine to a Social History of Medicine(s) in South Asia’, Social
History of Medicine (2007): 513–514.
102. Ernst, ‘Beyond East and West’, 513–514.
CHAPTER 7
Doctors, Healers and Charlatans in Brazil:

A Short History of Ideas, c. 1650–1950
Kalle Kananoja
In his work Caminhos e fronteiras (1956), Brazilian historian Sergio

Buarque de Holanda pondered the medical requisites of Brazil’s colo-
nisation. Focusing especially on the paulistas’ (settlers of São Paulo)
contact with the indigenous peoples of the interior, he wrote that the
Portuguese obtained their first vague notions of an art of healing that
was harmonious with Brazilian nature and the environment from the
Amerindians. They built upon such experiences through continual explo-
ration of the vast territorial space in the interior of the country. Constant
exposure to rare diseases and attacks by dangerous animals, combined
with the absence of physicians and barbers, made the substantial expan-
sion and organisation of this ‘rustic pharmacopeia’ possible. Throughout
all of colonial Brazil, these natural medicines came to be called ‘remédios
de paulistas’. The discovery of new substances was guided by the senses
(smelling, tasting) and by experimenting. New medicines were devel-
oped, for example, by mixing sugarcane brandy with herbs and other
home remedies to augment their curative power. Hybridity became a
K. Kananoja (*)
University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
e-mail: Kalle.Kananoja@helsinki.fi

180 K. KANANOJA
defining feature of colonial medicine. In other words, certain healing

practices were not purely Amerindian or European, but a mixture of
both. And although Buarque de Holanda had less to say about them,
one should also add African healing practices into this mixt.1
Historians of medicine in Brazil acknowledge that the country’s med-
ical culture was marked by social conflicts. A wide array of practitioners,
ranging from family members and community folk-healers to profes-
sional doctors, provided therapeutic services to the steadily growing pop-
ulation. Knowledge, skills and institutions were constantly contested by
the different groups.2 As such, Brazil differed little from other countries
and regions—healing was contested knowledge everywhere. However,
the presence of a strong indigenous healing system, and its coexistence
with European and African medical practices, makes Brazil’s medical cul-
ture different from that of many other countries. This chapter examines
how healing and charlatanism have been defined in Brazilian medical cul-
ture from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. How did the demo-
graphic history of Brazil, with approximately five million African slaves
imported to the country between the sixteenth and mid-nineteenth cen-
turies, affect discussions about healers and charlatans? In other words,
did racial notions play into definitions of unacceptable healing? How
were these discussions affected by the second large migration wave of
Europeans of various nationalities in the nineteenth century? Finally, how
was Amerindian heritage in Brazilian healing viewed at different times?
This is a longue-durée intellectual history of healing in Brazil, but
it is nonetheless impossible to deal comprehensively with all aspects
of healing in such a short chapter. Thus, I highlight especially texts by
physicians, scholars and travellers. It must be acknowledged from the
outset that doctors were definitely biased when they wrote about their
professional competitors in the medical marketplace. These texts, which
span several centuries, point to important changes in Brazilian medi-
cine. Whereas a seventeenth-century physician based his reasoning on
humoral theory, nineteenth-century doctors and twentieth-century intel-
lectuals viewed the activities of healers and charlatans from a hygienic
and public health perspective. I argue that, in the medically plural set-
tings of colonial and imperial Brazil, curandeiros/-as or folk healers were
generally accepted and respected by a large majority of the population,
although they were not always accepted by secular, religious and/or
medical authorities.3 There was a clear difference between the catego-
ries of charlatan and curandeiro, with the latter being more respected
7 DOCTORS, HEALERS AND CHARLATANS IN BRAZIL … 181
and valued than the former. This chapter also demonstrates that the
prestige accorded to healers changed over time. The different waves of
mass migration, forced African migration from the sixteenth to the mid-
nineteenth century and European migration after that, also affected the
meanings of popular healing, while the silent and almost invisible pres-
ence of Indians and their medical knowledge was valued and respected in
different eras, leading right up to such respected twentieth-century his-
torians as Sergio Buarque de Holanda.
Healers and Charlatans in Lusophone Contexts

In a magisterial study of charlatans in early modern Italian medicine,
David Gentilcore has demonstrated that charlatans had a definable
identity, and they constituted a specific trade or occupation. Charlatans
themselves used the label, and it was less a term of abuse and more a
generic, bureaucratic label identifying a category of healer. An extraor-
dinarily wide sector of the population enjoyed the healthcare offered by
charlatans, who were the prototype for itinerant practitioners throughout
Europe. In Italy, where charlatanism constituted a genuine occupation
and where charlatans were licensed, charlatanry was both a constructed
and a real category. Charlatans were not just a bizarre offshoot of main-
stream medicine or merely a projection of the medical elites. Despite
the harsh rhetoric of elite medicine (and later history of medicine), the
licensers did not aim to eliminate charlatans, but rather to keep track of
the phenomenon.4
Although early modern Portuguese-language dictionaries give clear
definitions for the phenomenon of charlatanism, they do not spec-
ify that charlatanism was particularly common in Portugal. According
to Raphael Bluteau’s Vocabulario Portuguez e Latino, charlatans were
people who travelled in various parts of Europe from city to city sell-
ing theriac, unguents and other drugs. They set up their tables in pub-
lic squares, capturing people’s interest with the virtue of their remedies
and persuaded and deceived people with a great deal of pseudo-medical
talk (charlar). Antonio de Moraes Silva’s Diccionario da lingua portu-
gueza (1789) also emphasised the verbal skills of charlatans. They were
orators, imposters who convinced people of the secrets of medicine
and of drugs of great value. Luiz Maria da Silva Pinto’s Diccionario da
Lingua Brasileira (1832) practically repeated Moraes Silva’s defini-
tion word for word. Instead of charlatans, Portugal had an abundance
182 K. KANANOJA
of curandeiros/-as. Whereas the eighteenth-century dictionaries of the

Portuguese language had not included an entry for curandeiro, Silva
Pinto’s nineteenth-century dictionary of Brazilian Portuguese did. It
defined curandeiro/-a as a man or woman who meddled in curing and
applied home remedies (mezinheiro, from mezinha, home remedy).5
It is useful to keep these dictionary entries in mind when delving into
the Brazilian medical writings. There was a clear conceptual difference
between a charlatan and a curandeiro/-a. Whereas the former was under-
stood to be a fraudster and a cheat, these negative connotations were
not primarily attached to the latter. This implies that curandeiros were
by definition more respectable, at least in Brazil, but perhaps not so in
Portugal, where they did not even have their own entry in the dictionary.
They specialised in popular medicine and used home remedies, which
sometimes worked and other times did not. Implicitly, this difference
also meant that charlatans sought customers, whereas patients sought
healers.
A similar licensing of medical practitioners that was common in early
modern Italy has been documented in Portugal and in Brazil. Since
1430, a Royal order in Portugal had demanded that those who prac-
ticed medicine be examined and approved by a Royal physician. In 1521,
duties to regulate the practice of medicine and surgery through licens-
ing, legalisation and the inspection of pharmacies were divided between
the Físico-mor and the Cirugião-mor. In Brazil, the professional organ-
isation and regulation of medical teaching, as activities distinct from
those practiced by barbers and curandeiros, only began in the nineteenth
century. Dom João VI created two courses in surgery and anatomy at
the military hospitals of Salvador and Rio de Janeiro in 1808, thus end-
ing the era of physicians and surgeons educated exclusively in Europe.
In 1832, the two medical-surgical academies were transformed into the
Medical Colleges of Rio de Janeiro and Bahia.6
Popular or folk healing was commonplace in Portuguese peasant soci-
ety throughout the early modern period. While the Inquisition and var-
ious elites sought to repress it, common women and men continued to
seek cures via superstitious means. As Timothy Walker has demonstrated,
curandeiros/-as provided healthcare mostly to rural people of commoner
status. They were purveyors of a body of magical beliefs and practices
accepted by their clients, but not by religious and secular authorities.
However, many folk healers were denounced to the authorities by their
peasant neighbours, who had been, as clients, complicit in magical
practices. The illicit healers, therefore, were stigmatised in the popular

mind. The common peasant who approached a healer for treatment did
so knowing that the Church disapproved of the superstitious arts that
curandeiros/-as employed.7
Healers and Remedies in Colonial Brazil

Colonial Brazil teemed with popular healers. As the Atlantic slave trade
accelerated during the late sixteenth century, early Portuguese and
Spanish healers were soon supplanted by black healers. Popular religion
played an important role in the maintenance of health.8 Prayers and
blessings were perhaps the most popular remedies, which supposedly
healed not only spiritual but also bodily ailments. According to Flavio
Coelho Edler, along the tenuous cultural frontiers therapeutic prac-
tices, blessings, witchcraft, spells and prophecies were grouped in the
same semantic field. Therapeutic cures and neutralising spells aimed at
the restoration of broken harmony, and healers and diviners resolved
a wide range of problems concerning daily tensions and communal
conflicts.9 Rather than spectacular charlatanism, colonial Brazil was
more a scene of everyday healing, much of it taking place in a domestic
setting.
There were few erudite physicians to write about popular ailments
and remedies in colonial Brazil. Simão Pinheiro Morão, born in 1618 in
Covilhã, was one of the first to comment extensively on the proliferation
of popular healing in Brazil. He had studied medicine in Coimbra and
Salamanca between 1635 and 1649, after which he practiced in Covilhã,
Lisbon and the village of Almada. However, he was denounced to the
Inquisition of Lisbon and imprisoned in 1656 for Judaism. After being
released in January 1659, he led a quiet life, but another denunciation
in 1667 resulted in his imprisonment until April 1668. A royal order for-
bade penitent physicians from practicing in continental Portugal, which
led to Morão’s emigration to Brazil. He settled in Recife, Pernambuco,
where he wrote about his experience of treating local diseases. He
composed the manuscript Queixas repetidas em ecos dos arrecifes de
Pernambuco contra os abusos médicos que nas suas capitanias se observam
tanto em dano das vidas de seus habitadores around 1677.10 Like many
other physicians and surgeons practicing in the Portuguese empire,
he was a New Christian.11 Physicians and surgeons did not occupy an
important position in Brazilian society until the middle of the eighteenth
184 K. KANANOJA
century, when their studies at European universities and membership in

literary academies gave them a more privileged status.
The first chapter of the manuscript went on to detail the medical
abuses suffered by the people of Recife. Morão’s first complaint was
based on humoral theory: since the climate of Pernambuco and the
rest of Brazil was hot and humid, blood was the reigning humor. This
simple ‘fact’ was not recognised by the residents and not even by some
surgeons, which led to several erroneous procedures. Second, Morão
claimed that many Recifeans, who knew how to read but not how to
write, wanted to practice medicine; others, who had read a book on
medicine in Portuguese, thought they had enough learning; while still
others, who had learned a few home remedies from their ancestors,
regarded themselves as the most capable at using them. In a word, com-
moners preferred ‘irrational’ and empiric experience over the physicians’
rational and methodical science. Moreover, surgeons with formal train-
ing or only empirical experience regarded themselves to be the most
learned in medicine. They reasoned that because physicians let blood and
gave purgatives to patients, they should do the same. However, Morão
claimed that they did not acknowledge that one should also know some-
thing about diseases and their causes.12
Morão’s third complaint was that the Recifeans turned to the most
experienced empirics rather than to most experienced scientists, not
understanding that the science of medicine consisted of reason and expe-
rience. The people of Recife thought that experience in curing meant
herbal knowledge or prior success in curing illnesses, but, in Morão’s
view, experience without science was erroneous, uncertain and full of
dangers. Fourth, people without university training thought that medi-
cal science advocated only two great remedies, namely bloodletting and
purging, but did not acknowledge that physicians had rules and doc-
trines (indications) for applying them. Therefore, the remedies of blood-
letting and purging came to be abused by the inhabitants and empirics
to the extent that their application became unrestricted and disordered.
Fifth, empirics did not understand that different purgatives were used for
purging different humours. This led to Morão’s sixth complaint, namely
that surgeons in Pernambuco used only one purgative syrup for all dis-
eases, for all humours and for any part of the body.13
In Recife, Morão had heard people whine about the naming of dis-
eases in the science of medicine. Therefore, Morão’s seventh complaint
was about the use of vulgar names for diseases, and the application of
vulgar remedies that followed. Curable diseases were thought incura-

ble, and people died unnecessarily because of the incorrect use of home
remedies. This was made worse by surgeons, who did not believe they
could cure certain diseases and sent their patients to folk healers instead.
Surgeons, therefore, regarded healers as more knowledgeable and expe-
rienced. Morão had seen that even noblemen wrote letters discrediting
physicians and surgeons and praising curandeiras. Eighth, Pernambucan
surgeons only bled their patients’ feet, whereas physicians had clear rules
as to whether to bleed the feet or the arms. These basic rules were clearly
not being observed in Recife.14
Morão’s ninth complaint was connected to women’s diseases.
Although physicians had written numerous treatises on women’s dis-
eases, and particularly those of the womb, folk healers had the audacity
to claim that doctors knew nothing about them. His tenth complaint was
that many commoners wanted to practice pharmacology without real-
ising that it required many years of study and work. Moreover, Morão
claimed that all surgeons practicing in Pernambuco regarded themselves
not only as surgeons, but also as physicians and pharmacists, giving only
the cheapest purgatives to their suffering patients. His eleventh com-
plaint was that refreshments were given to the patients indiscriminately
without observing the universal precepts of Hippocrates and Galen.
Twelfth, certain diseases were not cured properly because surgeons
either did not understand their humoral basis, and therefore refused to
apply bloodletting, or because they claimed that one should use differ-
ent methods than in Europe because of the different climate of Brazil.
Morão, however, argued that the application of bloodletting and purging
was not dependent on the climate; climate only affected the quality of
the purgatives or small home remedies, or the amount of blood to be
let. Finally, because human bodies suffer from many ills, some of which
remained unknown by physicians and empirics of the time, many peo-
ple visited witch doctors or swindlers (feiticeiros ou embusteiros). The sit-
uation was made even worse by priests, who sometimes sent patients to
these charlatans.15
In sum, then, Morão discoursed against the poor medical under-
standing of Recifeans. It is noteworthy that his gaze was directed espe-
cially at surgeons, or those who professed to be surgeons but perhaps
had no or very little formal training. Popular explanations for diseases
clearly overrode academic learning. This is not surprising, as Brazil had
no universities and relied solely on migrant physicians. However, Morão
186 K. KANANOJA
also underlined the fact that the written word and published medical
treatises had an impact on vernacular medical practices. Popular knowl-
edge became increasingly mixed with academic learning already in the
colonial period, but even more intensively in the nineteenth century, as
I will discuss below. Finally, home remedies, passed down in the fam-
ily from generation to generation, were an important means of restoring
health for many. Morão did not write about the adoption of Brazilian
flora by Portuguese settlers, which had already been going on for more
than a century, and hence was already a well-established practice among
the population of Recife. To fight the illnesses that attacked them, whites
resorted indiscriminately to cures brought from Europe or utilised those
of the diverse ethnic groups they came into contact with.
In Portugal, the Inquisition played a significant role in suppress-
ing folk healing and reshaping the country’s medical culture. While
the Inquisition targeted mostly New Christians accused of Judaism,
it also condemned folk healers who used magical cures to earn a liv-
ing. University-trained physicians assisted Inquisitors in hunting down
curandeiros, who were their professional competitors. This was not a
campaign targeted against people suspected of entering into a pact with
the Devil. Physicians were intimately connected with the Inquisition pro-
ceedings either as witnesses or denouncers, and they sought to advance
the cause of rational, scientific medicine.16 In Brazil, there are few indi-
cations that physicians or surgeons were similarly connected to ecclesi-
astical courts. However, an example can be found from the captaincy
of Minas Gerais in the 1740s, when ecclesiastical visitors who traversed
the region targeted in particular popular healers who were using special
words as part of their remedies. Notably, some of the popular healers
were denounced by officially licensed surgeons, who were in effect testi-
fying against their professional competitors.17
The Inquisition proceedings, however, quieted down in the sec-
ond half of the eighteenth century. Rather than being suppressed, pop-
ular healing remedies and knowledge became an object of study in the
Portuguese imperial circuits. In the final decades of the eighteenth cen-
tury, the Overseas Council instructed medical authorities in Brazil and
Goa to write down descriptions of all the medicinal native plants and
roots in their respective areas. Even before that, in 1735, Portuguese-
born surgeon Luís Gomes Ferreira had published a comprehensive
treatise (Erário Mineral) describing Brazilian medical techniques,
which blended European scientific knowledge with popular medicine.
Water-colour botanical illustrations and manuscripts describing the uses

of medicinal plants found throughout Brazil followed in the late eight-
eenth and early nineteenth centuries.18
Given the diverse nature of the medical profession and the healing
arts in Brazil, one should not forget that African healers and calundu
rituals were sometimes an important source of healing knowledge and
another medical option, perhaps even a last resort, for people who had
tried everything else. In 1790, in Mariana, in the captaincy of Minas
Gerais, a young woman named Joaquina Maria da Conceição confessed
how she had used the services of various popular healers. She had at first
sought the assistance of officially licensed surgeons, but their cures had
no effect. Suspecting that her illness was caused by witchcraft, Joaquina
sought out black healers. Using a small pumpkin filled with water into
which he dropped pieces of plants, making the sign of the cross and
speaking words that Joaquina did not understand, the first black healer
divined that her illness was indeed caused by witchcraft. However, he did
not offer her any remedies. Joaquina received a number of roots from
another black healer, who also made the sign of the cross and spoke an
incomprehensible language. His medicines had no effect. Joaquina then
went to a white folk healer named Antonio de Sabina, who recited vari-
ous prayers, ordered her to take an herbal bath and gave her other herbal
remedies. These remedies also failed to work, and Joaquina then went
to still another folk healer, who performed various divination rituals and
blessed Joaquina. Finally, Joaquina confessed that she had twice gone to
‘calundu dances’, where ‘the blacks pretended that they died, and started
to speak in delicate voices, saying that it was the Devil speaking’.19
In sum, doctors, surgeons and trained apothecaries comprised only a
small proportion of the entire therapeutic community in colonial Brazil.
The authority of physicians with diplomas was tenuous: generally, the
patients resorted to home remedies or sought popular healers to cure
serious diseases, or even solve problems of a surgical nature. In a med-
ically plural setting, patients invoked multiple explanations and called
upon healers of all types. The use of Brazilian medicinal herbs had the
greatest popular legitimacy, and their use had mystical connotations. No
group achieved the monopoly of diagnosis or treatment. The physician,
with a dogmatic and doctrinal education, possessed the honours of the
nobility, but he was forced to compete with apothecaries, barbers, mid-
wives, bonesetters and others who officiated over a mechanical and
servile art.20
188 K. KANANOJA
Popular Medicine and Quackery in Imperial Brazil

The urban environments of imperial Brazil were favourable to charlatans,
both Brazilian and foreign born. As Brazil became open to non-Por-
tuguese immigrants from Europe, innumerous adventurers sought an
income through dubious medical practices. Besides charlatans, Brazilian
newspapers abounded with advertisements promising cures, with infalli-
ble remedies, for all illnesses.21 A young German physician, educated at
Breslau, who practiced in the country in the 1850s, resolved to return
home because ‘Brazil was a great field of charlatanism; [because] pre-
tenders and quacks could always succeed better than the regular scientifi-
cally educated’. He cited as an example the case of a military barber from
Schleswig-Holstein, who had emigrated to Paraná and established him-
self as a physician, displaying a decoration allegedly conferred in Europe
for his distinguished surgical services. However, Kidder and Fletcher, in
whose book the young German appeared, claimed that there was hardly
any other country in the Americas ‘where the Government and the med-
ical faculty are stricter than in Brazil’.22
However, it is clear that many Europeans practiced medicine in Brazil
with forged diplomas, taking advantage of the gullible in the back-
lands of the country. George Gardner, MD and superintendent of the
Royal Botanic Gardens of Ceylon, discussed such an impostor in an
account that documented his travels in the interior of Brazil between
1836 and 1841. The case reported by Gardner had taken place in
1836 in Formigas, Minas Gerais, where he encountered Jean Baptiste
Douville, the author of Voyage au Congo et dans l’interieur de l’Afrique
Equinoxiale (1832), which caused a scandal in France at the time of its
publication. Douville had indeed visited Angola in the 1820s, but large
portions of his travel account were fabricated. After the forgery was
proven, Douville withdrew to Brazil and appeared in Formigas, where
the locals suspected him to be an impostor. In Brazil, Douville paraded
his gold medal received from the Geographical Society of Paris and
said that he was sent by the King of France on a mission to investigate
Brazil’s natural products. He also claimed to be a physician and charged
exorbitant sums of money to the patients he attended. After a failed
attempt to cure a man near the Rio de São Francisco, the patient died.
Douville, however, still insisted on receiving his payment. The man’s
relatives paid him but also send someone after him, who killed Douville
while he was asleep in his canoe.23
One of the most prominent physicians to attack popular healing

and charlatanism in imperial Brazil was a French doctor named J.B.A.
Imbert, who became known in the 1830s for authoring a book titled
Manual do Fazendeiro, ou Tratado domestico sobre as enfermidades
dos Negros (Farmer’s manual, or a domestic treatise on the diseases of
blacks). In 1837, Imbert published a short pamphlet titled Uma pala-
vra sobre o charlatanismo e os charlatões (A word about charlatanism and
charlatans). The pamphlet had very little to say about actual charlatans in
Rio de Janeiro, where Imbert resided, or even elsewhere in Brazil. It was
rather a philosophical work that delved into the phenomenon of charla-
tanism and why charlatans had gained such a following among patients.
According to Imbert, this was caused by the immoral state of men, who
lost the full use of their intellect as soon as they were struck by an illness
or an irregularity in their bodily functions. People’s imagination, and
especially their fear of death, made them commit errors. This was the
main reason why even people who could afford a physician resorted to
charlatans. In other words, charlatans took advantage of people’s fear of
death. Imbert cited the historical case of French King Louis XI (1423–
1483), who had relied on his physician, Jacques Goytier, to the extreme.
Although medicine had come a long way since Louis XI’s time, contin-
uous superstition and ignorance left the door open for charlatans, who
were apt to offer different tricks to different social classes. Imbert went
on to criticise practitioners of animal magnetism, which had caused an
uproar in Paris in preceding decades, but the enthusiasm for which had
already waned to mere recreational interest by that point. Imbert also
took note of French folk healers who specialised in treating diseases
thought to be caused by witchcraft, writing that he had not only heard
but also witnessed their practices in nocturnal gatherings.24
Sick people were prone to believe in miracles, and in all countries
there were people who took advantage of this belief. Some charlatans
marketed words and conjurations that were supposed to cure all ills.
Imbert went on to discuss at length the activities of two well-known
folk healers in France, and he concluded that charlatans who distrib-
uted so-called secret remedies made up of active substances were much
more dangerous than those who only cured by words. Finally, Imbert
argued that Rio de Janeiro was not free of this ‘bastard industry’; the city
paid a price for this credulity. Sick people relied on the experience of old
Jesuits rather than physicians, and they had little to show for it. Although
Brazilian criminal law regulated the practice of medicine, such regulation
190 K. KANANOJA
was nominal and often not enforced. This was what Imbert wanted to
change.25
Another French doctor who turned to the topic of charlatanism was
the royal physician José Francisco Xavier Sigaud in his work Du climat
et des maladies du Brésil ou statisque médicale de cet empire, published in
1844. Though essentially a medical geography, the book also contained
a chapter on healers (guérisseurs). It opened with a lengthy exposition
on Amerindian medicine and Brazilian medicinal plants. According to
Sigaud, Amerindian healing practices had, from the time of the Jesuits,
become mixed with formulas copied from European medical books.
This gave rise to extravagant healing practices transmitted among sugar
and cotton growers and herdsmen in the backlands. It had been further
altered by ‘the mysteries’ of African practices. In Sigaud’s view, this mix
of Amerindian, European and African medicine was the exclusive domain
of those who called themselves ‘doctors of the people’ or healers. Healers
abounded in South America as much as scientific charlatans in Europe.
Drawing from a number of travel accounts, Sigaud demonstrated the
prevalence of popular medicine outside of urban centres and in the dis-
tant interior of Goias and Mato Grosso do Sul, which had remained
without physicians until the 1830s.26
Amerindian healers lived mostly in the mountains and the sertão.
Over the centuries, their medicines had become well-known in the cit-
ies, where they also held a dominant position in the medicinal mar-
ket. Sigaud claimed that outsiders, namely Europeans and Africans,
had somewhat degenerated native Brazilian practices by altering them
via ‘bizarre alliances and a grotesque ignorance’. By this, he appar-
ently meant superstition, which had come to prevail over the use of
simple plant therapies. In Brazil, healers had copied certain formulas
from the hospitals, combined them with bizarre compounds, and, by
boasting of their infallibility, ensured their triumph because of gen-
eral credulity. Sigaud named several individual healers from different
times who had enjoyed a great reputation. One of them, Luis da Costa
Mineiro, had become known for many remedies, which were still ven-
erated in many families. Sigaud also mentioned several black healers.
One of them, a woman named Isabelle, was cherished in the memory
of Pernambucans because of the numerous cures she performed dur-
ing an epidemic. However, the commander of the fortress of the Bay
of Boa Viagem, Lieutenant-Colonel Carvalhas, had the most esteemed
reputation of all:
de tous les points de la province de Rio-de-Janeiro on est venu pendant

vingt ans le consulter, et l’on cite des cas heureux. Carvalhas connaissait les
plantes médicinales, il avait acquis par la lecture une certaine connaissance
des symptômes des maladies; ses consultations n’avaient rien que d’ordi-
naire, et ses formules étaient une reproduction mal faite de celles des gens
de l’art.27
The regulations concerning medical and surgical education, enacted

in 1832, demanded the presentation of diplomas by doctors, surgeons
and pharmacists, but this did not hinder exotic healers from exploit-
ing people in the provinces with fake degrees. Intrepid foreign healers
took advantage of the opening of Brazil’s borders. One such healer was
Nayler-Bey, who in 1839 claimed to have been an oculist of Mehemet
Ali. He operated on cataracts with dexterity, but must have also
destroyed the eyesight of many on his way to fame, which was fleeting.
According to Sigaud, ‘his arrival, his residence in Rio de Janeiro and
his sudden departure are all episodes to add to the history of famous
charlatans’.28
Sigaud concluded that if he had to choose between native healers and
exotic healers, the choice would be the former. Science, after all, was
indebted to Amerindian healers for the discovery of several plant med-
icines. In the end, South America was not any different from Europe,
where charlatans daily intruded on the field of medicine, and where inex-
haustible lists of claims about secret remedies were presented to learned
academies. Wanting to heal without possessing sufficient knowledge
and desiring to conscientiously fulfil this duty was the weakness of all
men, the tendency of heads of families and the passion of old women.
Sigaud expected that the progress of science would modify these con-
ditions of the human mind, but he did not believe that it could erase
them completely from habit. Reading Sigaud, it is obvious that native
remedies, in their original, unadulterated form, were valorised to a cer-
tain extent even by the medical elites of Brazil. In contrast, many of the
more recently arrived migrants brought suspicious medical practices to
the country. Their practices could more properly be labelled as charla-
tanry or quackery.
One of the most talked-about cases of healing in mid-nineteenth-
century Rio de Janeiro concerned a black feiticeiro by the name of Juca
Rosa, whose clients came from all social classes. Frequented equally by
black slaves and rich whites, Juca became infamous because of criminal
192 K. KANANOJA
charges brought against him. Although the legal codes did not recognise
curandeirismo as a crime, Juca was accused of and condemned for com-
mitting a fraud. The court case reveals various inconsistencies in Brazil’s
patriarchal slave society. By offering healing and divination services to
white women and powerful men, Juca Rosa won prestige, wealth and
recognition in an environment where the role of blacks was relegated to
an inferior status, with all the violence and humiliation their condition as
slaves presupposed. Juca’s criminal offense took place in 1871, the same
year when Brazil passed the Law of the Free Womb, which guaranteed
freedom to children born to slave mothers. Although the press propa-
gated an image of black healers as hysteric, barbarous, lascivious and
ignorant, intelligent and charismatic healers became famous throughout
the city and even in the more distant provinces of the empire.29
Many terms besides curandeiro/-a were used to indicate individuals
dedicated to practicing medicine without a formal education. Words like
entendido and curioso de medicina referred to individuals who had expe-
rience but not necessarily scientific learning in treating diseases. Many of
them were sugar plantation owners or farmers who treated not only their
family and slaves, but also other people in the community. Professional
curandeiros/-as were of all types and races and of both sexes. They lived
in cities, villages and settlements and on plantations and farms. They
could possess surgical knowledge or be experts in herbal medicine. In
small villages as well as on large plantations, healers were respected mem-
bers of the community and received payment for their services.
Knowledge was passed between healers orally and younger persons
often served an apprenticeship with older healers, familiarising them-
selves with medicinal plants. However, popular medical guides also con-
stituted an important source of medical, surgical and anatomic learning.
This led to hybrid forms of healing, in which European medical science
became intermixed with African and Amerindian medical practices. While
there had been few printed booklets on medicine in colonial Brazil, man-
uals of medicine for popular use proliferated in the nineteenth century.
The first significant medical book to dominate the market in Brazil was
a translation of Buchan’s Domestic Medicine, the most widely read health
guide in the Anglophone world before the twentieth century. It was pri-
marily addressed to a rural, literate elite, who were expected to minister
to the ailments of neighbours and dependents. It also found a readership
among the growing ‘middling orders’. The remedies described in the
text were a hybrid of folk and university practices.30 Buchan’s book was
adapted to Brazilian conditions by its translator, Dr. Manuel Joaquim
Henriques de Paiva. Medicina doméstica appeared in Lisbon in 1788,
and it remained in print until the mid-nineteenth century. In the 1810s,
John Luccock reported seeing Buchan’s book imported to Minas Gerais,
although books were generally regarded as suspicious and even forbid-
den items.31
In 1841, Pedro Luis Napoleão Chernoviz published in Rio de Janeiro
a book titled Formulário ou Guia Médico, followed the next year by
Dicionário de Medicina Popular, which came to be known simply as
the Chernoviz. Both went through numerous editions and had a large
influence on shaping Brazil’s medical culture in the second half of the
nineteenth century. They described medicines, dosages and indications
of diseases and displayed the virtues of Brazilian medicinal plants. The
Chernoviz was a common sight in Brazilian households and became
almost a sacred book. Literate healers taught themselves by reading it
from cover to cover.32
Black Healers in the First Republic:

Charlatans par excellence?
The medical literature and the public discussion concerning hygiene had
a great impact on late-nineteenth-century social reforms.33 Special atten-
tion was drawn to the biological, spiritual and moral character of Afro-
Brazilians, who were quickly labelled as a disgrace to the national image.
Biological and social stereotypes of degenerate Afro-Brazilians were car-
ried over from the time of slavery. These stereotypes depicted blacks as
stupid, rude and morally corrupt. Further, in medical discourse their bod-
ies were viewed as susceptible to diseases. After the abolition of slavery
in 1888, public health became a major concern because Afro-Brazilians
could now enter public space and share it more freely with whites.34
Brazil became a republic in 1889. The first constitution made a clear
distinction between church and state. Following French and North
American models, religion became, in principle, a private matter of the
individual. This, however, did not apply to Afro-Brazilian religions and
healing cults. The Republican elites continued to view blacks as dan-
gerous, foreign and African, despite the fact that a large majority of
the slaves freed in 1888 had been born in Brazil. This led to two kinds
194 K. KANANOJA
of legislative measures. First, legal measures sought to promote only

European immigration to the country. Second, Afro-Brazilian religions
were not regarded as religions, but were brought within the ambit of
public health.35
The legal code of 1890 included three important additions to the reg-
ulation of public health. Article 156 demanded a license from the practi-
tioners of medicine and dentistry. Article 157 prohibited the practice of
Spiritism, magic and sorcery as well as the use of talismans and card read-
ing in healing. Article 158 prohibited the manufacture and sale of natural
medicines, making curandeirismo illegal. This created a fundamental par-
adox in Brazilian society: despite religious freedom, Afro-Brazilian reli-
gions were labelled as dangerous to national development. The law made
it possible to control freed slaves in a new way. The promise of freedom
did not apply to slaves’ healing practices.36
Black healers, therefore, became a major threat to Brazilian public
health. Legislation, however, did not quell or stop Afro-Brazilian healers
from practicing. Raimundo Nina Rodrigues, a medical doctor and psy-
chiatrist, was the first to study Afro-Brazilian religions systematically. He
began his anthropological studies of candomblé in the 1890s, publish-
ing a series of articles in the Revista Brasileira in 1896 and 1897. These
were later published as O animismo fetichista dos negros bahianos (1935).
Like many turn-of-the-century Brazilian intellectuals, Rodrigues saw
blacks as degenerate and regarded the African heritage of Brazil as one
of the reasons for the backwardness of his country. His writings are sig-
nificant from a medical point of view because they portray the encounter
between scientific and religious worldviews in Bahia. In the early twen-
tieth century, illness was still thought to result from feitiços planted by
witches.37 Rodrigues wrote about accusations of charlatanism that were
levelled at candomblé practitioners. He was aware that illegal healing
took place in candomblé terreiros, but Rodrigues also acknowledged that
healers and their patients shared a common worldview and conceptions
of disease. Therefore, he did not regard Afro-Brazilian healing as charla-
tanism or the conscious cheating of suffering patients.38
In the early twentieth century, the public view of Afro-Brazilian heal-
ing was extremely negative. Bahian newspapers condemned all facets of
Afro-Brazilian culture, including song and dance, and not only religious
practices. Afro-Brazilian healing was regarded as a ‘social cancer’ and fol-
lowers of candomblé were deemed ‘deceitful’, ‘slobs’ and carriers of false
belief. Candomblé leaders were accused of causing the family, society and
race to degenerate. Blacks and coloured Brazilians were called barbarians,

who believed in witchcraft and sorcery while participating in orgies. In
numerous newspaper articles, people who sought a better life through
participation in Afro-Brazilian ritual activities were labelled as support-
ers of ancient African healing systems, which represented a certain men-
tal incapacity, the ‘true’ African heritage, according to journalists, whose
ultimate goal was to criminalise candomblé. Between 1914 and 1923, the
newspaper A Ordem directed an intensive campaign against candomblé
terreiros and their leadership. Medical arguments played an important
role in the smear campaign: candomblé leaders were accused of the illegal
practice of medicine. Hygienic arguments were also drawn into the dis-
cussion in the 1920s. Healers and their methods were not viewed favour-
ably in the press, as the Bahian elite sought to destroy candomblé by
emphasising fetishism, religiosity, crime and witchcraft in their rhetoric.39
The turning point in the public’s view of candomblé came in the
1930s as a growing number of Brazilian intellectuals and scholars began
to write about African heritage in modern Brazil from a new point of
view. Whereas Afro-Brazilian religion had earlier been viewed through
the social-Darwinist prism of race, public health and hygiene, African
cultural influence slowly began to be integrated into the national iden-
tity, viewed as something to be proud of. Miscegenation, religious syn-
cretism and cultural pluralism became defining features of the Brazilian
nation. Candomblé began to be publicly accepted, Afro-Brazilian foot-
ball players became stars on and off the pitch, and samba groups were
allowed to conquer the streets of Rio de Janeiro and Salvador during
Carnival. Candomblé, which had been heavily marginalised, stirred schol-
arly interest, not least because of its secret rituals.40
One of the leading intellectuals in elevating the status of Brazilian
blacks was Arthur Ramos, whose work O Negro Brasileiro (1934) was
the first ethnographic study of Afro-Brazilian religions based on sys-
tematic field work.41 The first part of O Negro Brasileiro dealt exten-
sively with Afro-Brazilian religious life, divinities and spirit possession.
Ramos also had much to say about witchcraft, magic and healing in early
twentieth-century Brazil. Ramos differentiated healing (curandeirismo)
from charlatanism. He pointed out that whereas charlatans were aware
of consciously cheating their customers, healers truly believed in the
supernatural power of their healing system. According to Ramos,
curandeirismo could not be rooted out from Brazil through active use
of state authority, but only through a slow process of cultural change.
196 K. KANANOJA
Ramos based this view on his own observations and on newspaper arti-
cles, which gave evidence of the vibrancy of Afro-Brazilian healing in Rio
de Janeiro in the 1930s. According to Ramos, the cosmology underlying
the activities of curandeiros and other practitioners of African magic had
fragmented and lost its original meaning as a result of syncretism and
cultural change, moving it into the realm of folk traditions and folklore.
Because the origin and meaning of African magic and healing had been
lost, they had become part of the collective unconscious by the 1930s.42
The valorisation of Afro-Brazilian religions in the writings of Arthur
Ramos and other scholar intellectuals was reflected in the medical cul-
ture in interesting ways, demonstrated, for example, by Daniel Stone’s
study of the Serviço de Higiene Mental (SHM, Mental Hygienic Service)
in Recife. The institute was established by Ulysses Pernambucano, who
was Gilberto Freyre’s cousin and close confidante. Pernambucano was
responsible for re-organising Recife’s mental hospital and service after
the revolution of 1930. He believed that certain psychiatric illnesses
resulted from participation in spirit possession rituals. In other words,
spirit possession was both a possible sign of mental disorder and the
reason behind it. Although this view was shared among the medical
establishment of Brazil, in Recife it received its own unique interpreta-
tion. According to the doctors affiliated with the SHM, the phenome-
non of spirit possession could be classified and regulated. They studied
Afro-Brazilian religions, called xangô in Recife, in great detail. Although
spirit possession had a central role in xangô rituals, the SHM eventually
did not regard xangô as a cause of mental illness. Instead, xangô tem-
ples were granted licenses to function legally. Instead of xangô, the SHM
came to view Spiritism unfavourably and tried to root out spiritist rituals
in Recife.43
Although Ramos and others studied African and indigenous cul-
tural influences in their nation’s history and made them known globally
in the 1930s, the official state expressed reservations during the Vargas
dictatorship (1930–1945). Especially when Brazil was being advertised
overseas, the state underlined a white and civilised Brazil, leaving Afro-
Brazilian culture out of the picture. Regardless of this fact, artists such as
Cândido Portinari broke the barriers of tradition and made poverty and
black skin a justified subject of modern Brazilian art. Whereas conserva-
tives wanted to export a cultural view of a white and tamed Brazil, artists
and academic scholars began to turn Brazilian culture on its side by shin-
ing a light on the unsolved issues of Brazilian cultural identity.44
The Vargas regime had a mixed relationship with candomblé terreiros,

at times more open and accepting and at other times more intolerant.
In Brazil, candomblé could be harnessed as an ally of nationalist prop-
aganda or else portrayed as its enemy, depending on which view better
served the maintenance of public order. In the 1930s, terreiros were still
treated as a threat to national development, but they were slowly incor-
porated into nationalistic ideology thereafter. In addition to candom-
blé, umbanda was brought into the national discussion as an example of
Brazil’s unique, non-European character. Formally, all terreiros had to
be registered, so that they could be controlled by the authorities. But
legislation passed under Vargas also accepted the existence of traditional
candomblé communities and let them practice religion and healing freely.
In this way, Afro-Brazilian healing was incorporated into the country’s
cultural heritage.45
Conclusion
In the long run, unofficial medicine or popular healing in Brazil under-
went many changes. These changes occurred at the same time as
European medicine developed and gradually stopped relying on ancient
humoral theories. For a seventeenth-century physician, the criticism of
home remedies and popular medicine took place in a humoral context.
Simão Pinheiro Morão had little to say about Amerindians. Instead, his
text dealt with surgeons and pharmacists who claimed to have complete
knowledge of medical theories, but whose actual practice left much to
desire. In Imperial Brazil, the medical establishment was more concerned
about the charlatans migrating from the Old World, whose market-
ing skills were used to trick the credulous. During this period, esteem
was given to Amerindian medical skills and remedies, which twentieth-
century historians of Brazil, such as Sergio Buarque de Holanda, took as
a defining feature of cross-cultural medical interaction in the country.
African healers were regarded with somewhat more suspicion
throughout Brazilian history. Colonial sources reveal their ambiguous
position both as trusted and as suspect practitioners. Although slaves and
slave owners used their services, they were also occasionally denounced
to the Inquisition or secular authorities. The same suspicions and ambi-
guity continued throughout the nineteenth century, but they reached
their apex in the aftermath of the abolition of slavery, as Brazilian intel-
lectual elites struggled with defining the country’s national identity and
198 K. KANANOJA
the role of Afro-Brazilians in it. One can observe how the issue of Afro-
Brazilian religious healing practices divided intellectuals, with some pre-
senting the hygienic argument that blacks had a deleterious influence on
public health. However, others rose to defend Afro-Brazilian rights and
sought to demonstrate the central place of African heritage in Brazilian
culture. In contemporary Brazil, these struggles are still relevant and the
place of Afro-Brazilian healing practices remains contested.
Notes
1. Sergio Buarque de Holanda, Caminhos e fronteiras, 4th ed. (São Paulo:
Companhia das Letras, 2017; originally published 1956), 93–96. Here,
one can observe Holanda drawing extensively on nineteenth-century
travel accounts, such as those of John Bapt. von Spix and C.F. Phil. von
Martius, Travels in Brazil, in the Years 1817–1820, 2 vols. (London:
Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1824).
2. Flavio Coelho Edler, ‘Medical Knowledge and Professional Power: From
the Luso-Brazilian Context to Imperial Brazil’, in Biomedicine as a
Contested Site: Some Revelations in Imperial Contexts, edited by Poonam
Bala (Plymouth: Lexington Books, 2009), 45–65.
3. Brazilian historiography abounds with studies of individual healers, espe-
cially Africans and Afro-Brazilians. See, e.g. Luiz Mott, ‘O calundu-
angola de Luzia Pinta: Sabará, 1739’, Revista do Instituto de Arte e cul-
tura, Ouro Preto 1 (1994): 73–82; Ramon Fernandes Grossi, ‘O caso
de Ignácio Mina: tensões sociais e práticas “mágicas” nas minas’, Varia
Historia 20 (1999): 118–131; Alexandre Almeida Marcussi, ‘Estratégias
de mediação simbólica em um calundu colonial’, Revista de História 155
(2006): 97–124; André Nogueira, ‘Relações sociais e práticas mágicas
na capitania do ouro: o caso do negro angola Pai Caetano (Vila Rica—
1791)’, Estudos Afro-Asiáticos 27 (2005): 181–203; João José Reis,
Domingos Sodré, um sacerdote africano: Escravidão, liberdade e candom-
blé na Bahia do século XIX (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2008);
James H. Sweet, Domingos Álvares, African Healing, and the Intellectual
History of the Atlantic World (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 2011); Kalle Kananoja, ‘Pai Caetano Angola, Afro-Brazilian
Magico-Religious Practices, and Cultural Resistance in Minas Gerais in
the Late Eighteenth Century’, Journal of African Diaspora Archaeology
and Heritage 2 (2013): 19–39.
4. David Gentilcore, Medical Charlatanism in Early Modern Italy (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2006), 2–3.
5. Raphael Bluteau, Vocabulario portuguez & latino: aulico, anatomico,

architectonico, vol. 2 (Coimbra: Collegio das Artes da Companhia de
Jesu, 1712–1728), 277; Antonio de Moraes Silva, Diccionario da lin-
gua portugueza - recompilado dos vocabularios impressos ate agora, vol. 1
(Lisboa: Typographia Lacerdina, 1789), 384; Luiz Maria da Silva Pinto,
Diccionario da Lingua Brasileira por Luiz Maria da Silva Pinto, natural
da Provincia de Goyaz (Typographia de Silva, 1832).
6. Edler, ‘Medical Knowledge and Professional Power’, 46, 50.
7. Timothy D. Walker, Doctors, Folk Medicine and the Inquisition: The
Repression of Magical Healing in Portugal During the Enlightenment
(Leiden: Brill, 2005), 38–42.
8. On popular religion in colonial Brazil, see Laura de Mello e Souza, The
Devil and the Land of the Holy Cross: Witchcraft, Slavery, and Popular
Religion in Colonial Brazil, translated by Diane Grosklaus Whitty
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003).
9. Edler, ‘Medical Knowledge and Professional Power’, 48.
10. Simão Pinheiro Morão, Queixas repetidas em ecos dos arrecifes de
Pernambuco contra os abusos médicos que nas suas capitanias se obser-
vam tanto em dano das vidas de seus habitadores, edited by Jaime Walter
(Lisboa: Junta de Investigações do Ultramar, 1965).
11. Bella Herson, Cristãos-novos e seus descendentes na medicina brasileira,
1500–1850 (São Paulo: Edusp, 1996). On surgeons, see Jean Luiz Neves
Abreu, Nos Domínios do Corpo: O Saber Médico Luso-Brasileiro no Século
XVIII (Rio de Janeiro: Editora Fiocruz, 2011), 29–31.
12. Morão, Queixas repetidas, 5–7.
16. Walker, Doctors, Folk Medicine.
17. Kalle Kananoja, ‘Infected by the Devil, Cured by Calundu: African
Healers in Eighteenth-Century Minas Gerais, Brazil’, Social History of
Medicine 29 (2016): 503.
18. Timothy D. Walker, ‘Medical Inquiry in the Enlightenment-Era
Portuguese Imperial World: Azeredo’s Scientific Publications in Context’,
in Essays on Some Maladies of Angola, edited by Timothy D. Walker
(Dartmouth, MA: Tagus Press, 2016), 1–20.
19. Arquivo Nacional de Torre do Tombo, Tribunal de Santo Ofício,
Inquisição de Lisboa, Processo 6680, ff. 5r–5v.
20. Edler, ‘Medical Knowledge and Professional Power’, 54.
21. For examples, see Lycurgo Santos Filho, História da Medicina no Brasil
(Do século XVI ao século XIX) (São Paulo: Editora Brasiliense, 1945), 1:
151–152.
200 K. KANANOJA
22. D.P. Kidder and J.C. Fletcher, Brazil and the Brazilians Portrayed in
Historical and Descriptive Sketches (Philadelphia: Childs & Peterson,
1857), 342.
23. George Gardner, Travels in the Interior of Brazil, Principally Through
the Northern Provinces, and the Gold and Diamond Districts, During the
Years 1836–1841, 2nd ed. (London: Reeve, Benham, and Reeve, 1849),
328–329.
24. J.B.A. Imbert, Uma palavra sobre o charlatanismo e os charlatões (Rio de
Janeiro: J.S. Saint-Amant e L. A. Burgain, 1837), 1–15.
25. Imbert, Uma palavra, 15–24.
26. J.-F.-X. Sigaud, Du climat et des maladies du Brésil ou statisque médicale de
cet empire (Paris: Chez Fortin, Masson et c, libraires, 1844), 144–146.
27. Sigaud, Du climat, 153.
28. Sigaud, Du climat, 155. On popular healers in the first half of the nine-
teenth century, see also Tânia Salgado Pimenta, ‘Terapeutas populares
e instituições médicas na primeira metade do século XIX’, in Artes e
Ofícios de Curar no Brasil, edited by Sidney Chalhoub, Vera Regina
Beltrão Marques, Gabriela dos Reis Sampaio, and Carlos Roberto Galvão
Sobrinho (Campinas: Editora Unicamp, 2003), 307–330.
29. Gabriela dos Reis Sampaio, Juca Rosa: um pai-de-santo no Rio de Janeiro
imperial (Rio de Janeiro: Arquivo Nacional, 2009).
30. Charles E. Rosenberg, ‘Medical Text and Social Context: Explaining
William Buchan’s Domestic Medicine’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine
57 (1983): 22–42.
31. John Luccock, Notes on Rio de Janeiro, and the Southern Parts of Brazil;
Taken During a Residence of Ten Years in That Country, from 1808 to
1818 (London: Samuel Leigh, 1820), 479.
32. Santos Filho, História da Medicina, 157–160, which also documents
more than twenty books in popular medicine published in Brazil in
the nineteenth century, with most appearing in the second half of the
century.
33. Gilberto Hochman, The Sanitation of Brazil: Nation, State, and Public
Health, 1889–1930, translated by Diane Grosklaus Whitty (Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 2016).
34. Jurandir Freire Costa, Ordem médica e norma familiar (Rio de Janeiro:
Graal, 1989).
35. Paul Christopher Johnson, Secrets, Gossip, and Gods: The Transformation of
Brazilian Candomblé (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 81–82.
36. Yvonne Maggie, Medo do feitiço: Relações entre magia e poder no Brasil
(Rio de Janeiro: Arquivo Nacional, 1992), 42–43.
37. Nina Rodrigues, O Animismo Fetichista dos Negros Bahianos (Rio de
Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 1935), 93–97.
38. Nina Rodrigues, Os Africanos no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: Centro Edelstein

de Pesquisas Sociais, 2010; originally published in 1933), 277. On Nina
Rodrigues’ research and its heritage in Brazilian anthropology, see Mariza
Corrêa, As ilusões da Liberdade: A Escola Nina Rodrigues e a antropologia
no Brasil (Bragança Paulista: Edusf, 1998).
39. Edmar Ferreira Santos, O Poder dos Candomblés: Perseguição e Resistência
no Recôncavo da Bahia (Salvador: Edufba, 2009), 30–32.
40. Johnson, Secrets, Gossip, and Gods, 91–92.
41. On Afro-Brazilian identity and intellectuals in the early twentieth cen-
tury, see Cheryl Sterling, African Roots, Brazilian Rites: Cultural and
National Identity in Brazil (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012),
36–41. The first black historian of Brazil, Manoel Querino, can be
regarded as a pioneer who turned many stereotypes regarding Afro-
Brazilians on their head. Querino’s books, such as A raça africana e os
seus costumes na Bahia (1916) and O colono preto como factor da civi-
lização brasileira (1918), demonstrated that blacks had played an influ-
ential instead of a marginal role in the sociocultural development of
the country. His works were collected and published posthumously
in Manoel Querino, Costumes Africanos no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro:
Civilização Brasileira, 1938). The book’s preface was written by Arthur
Ramos.
42. Arthur Ramos, O Negro Brasileiro (Rio de Janeiro: Graphia, 2001; origi-
nally published in 1934), 173–179.
43. Daniel Stone, ‘Charlatans and Sorcerers: The Mental Hygiene Service
in 1930s Recife, Brazil’, in Sorcery in the Black Atlantic, edited by Luis
Nicolau Parés and Roger Sansi (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2011), 95–120.
44. Daryle Williams, Culture Wars in Brazil: The First Vargas Regime, 1930–
1945 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), 214–217.
45. Johnson, Secrets, Gossip, and Gods, 94–95.
CHAPTER 8
Risking Obeah: A Spiritual Infrastructure

in the Danish West Indies, c. 1800–1848
Gunvor Simonsen
In February 1831, Michael and Nicholas on Jerusalem estate in the

district of Queens Quarter on St. Croix (part of what was then
the Danish West Indies and which is today the US Virgin Islands in the
Lesser Antilles) were engulfed in a fierce conflict. According to witnesses,
both men had used obeah to gain the upper hand in their dispute. To
get access to obeah, both Michael and Nicholas had had to navigate the
spiritual infrastructure developed by Africans and African Caribbeans on
St. Croix during the early nineteenth century. The men found the help
they needed close by, but—notably—not on Jerusalem estate where they
worked and lived. Michael approached one George on Peter’s Rest, also
in Queens Quarter, and requested “some obeah” from him. To reach
George, Michael could have walked the South Side Road, running a lit-
tle north of Jerusalem, and after approximately 1.5 kilometres, he would
merely have had to turn left to arrive at his destination. Nicholas also
went beyond estate boundaries to obtain spiritual assistance. He was in
contact with an obeah man on Cane Garden. To reach Cane Garden,
G. Simonsen (*)
University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
e-mail: gunvorsim@hum.ku.dk

204 G. SIMONSEN
Nicholas may also have walked along the South Side Road. After 1.5
kilometres, he would have followed a road to the south to arrive at his
destination after yet a couple of kilometers. He may also have chosen to
get to Cane Garden by hiking along St. Croix’ southern beach. Either
way, Nicholas and Michael walked to other estates to consult the experts
whom they believed could help them in their predicament.1
Michael and Nicholas may simply have looked outside their estate
because no obeah people lived on Jerusalem; but their search for spiritual
assistance outside of their immediate community may also—as I will
argue—be part of the infrastructure that Africans and African Caribbeans
made on St. Croix to cater to their spiritual needs in a high-risk envi-
ronment.2 Had there been obeah people on Jerusalem—that was equal
in size to Peter’s Rest (where the obeah man George lived) and to Cane
Garden (where another obeah man lived, pinpointed by Nicholas in
1831 and possibly also by one Laban in 1835)—they would probably
have avoided meddling in the conflict.3
Obeah people faced many risks in the Danish West Indies. To stave
them off, I argue, experts engaged in socio-spatial practices that made
distance and the bridging of distance—geographical and relational—a
risk-minimising measure. The result was a particular infrastructure, that
is, a number of consistent and relational patterns that coopted space,
social and natural, in order to facilitate the spiritual work of Africans and
African Caribbeans.4 This infrastructure can be traced in the way obeah
experts used cash and kind to secure relationships with their clients,
in their widespread use of middlemen, and in the common practice of
spatial dissociation which ensured that experts and clients seldom came
from the same estates. Distance ensured that obeah men (and women)
were not as readily enmeshed in the tensions and conflicts that at times
resulted from the contentious forces they navigated; distance kept dis-
gruntled clients away; and it defused talk and rumours that could attract
the dangerous attention of the Danish West Indian colonial state. At
times, it allowed obeah practitioners to remain anonymous, as the obeah
man practicing on Cane Garden in the 1830s. Viewed as an example
of a cross-cultural encounter, the story of obeah in nineteenth-century
St. Croix highlights that contestation and at times outright suppres-
sion was a key element of obeah practice. As such, this is a story that
emphasises that cultural changes—or if we want hybridisation—was not
a straight process of two cultures meeting in fruitful interaction. Secrecy,
evasions and the making of distance were, at least in part, reactions to
8 RISKING OBEAH: A SPIRITUAL INFRASTRUCTURE … 205
a hostile environment. Hybridity was not the mixing of cultures per se,
but rather the contingent result of a complex set of social processes and
political pressures against and with which obeah experts and their clients
operated.
The spiritual work referred to as obeah by members of all groups
in the Danish West Indies in the nineteenth century, may, as Vincent
Brown has noted, best be understood as a “complex of shamanis-
tic practices,” entailing a power that lies beyond narrow ideas of good
or bad spiritual forces.5 Obeah emerged as a concept in the British
Caribbean, gaining currency after the involvement of obeah practition-
ers in Tacky’s Rebellion on Jamaica in 1760, and spreading to the wider
Caribbean world during the nineteenth century.6 Scholars have shown
that obeah undergirded practices of resistance, conflict escalation and
resolution among enslaved,7 while also emerging in a complex interplay
with legal developments, processes of medicalisation, and other state pol-
icies.8 Nevertheless, establishing, in more detail, the meanings attached
to these practices—in the Danish West Indies and in the wider Caribbean
spiritual sphere of which the islands were a part—has been difficult.9
Stephan Palmié has recently argued that a long history of violent dom-
ination has left us with “a record of negativity” and “a hopelessly con-
taminated vocabulary,” making it difficult, if not impossible to pin down
obeah’s meanings in the Caribbean world of slavery and post-slavery.10
In the face of such interpretative difficulties, Lara Putnam, Diana Paton,
Randy Browne and others have argued that a constructive approach to
the study of African Caribbean religions is to view beliefs and practices as
shaped by interactive processes involving Euro-Caribbean elites and the
African Caribbeans they colonised.11
To add to this wide-ranging historiography of obeah, I focus on the
practical challenges involved in being an obeah expert in nineteenth-
century St. Croix. Questions about obeah’s meaning have engaged
scholars in debates about the African or Creole nature of obeah and its
more or less positive nature. Some have also asked about the analytical
value of these lines of enquiry.12 Here, I attempt to sidestep the question
of obeah’s meanings. I ask who African Caribbean spiritual experts were,
how they organised their work, and how their work was shaped by, and
indeed in interaction with, the risks they faced in the period from the
early nineteenth century until rebellion and emancipation in 1848 in the
Danish West Indies. As such, this is an attempt to harvest the interpre-
tative gains of looking at obeah experts as a group. Put crudely, it is an
206 G. SIMONSEN
effort to approach obeah as an object of social history more than of cul-

tural history. Though I also write about obeah’s multiple meanings, my
main concern is to search out, collect, and compare those traces of obeah
practices and those characteristics of obeah experts that slipped into local
official reporting without being much noticed by white authorities who
craved for motives, intentions and at times also for meaning.
This reading practice can be illustrated by the police court trial involv-
ing Michael and Nicholas. The trial began because another man, George
had fallen into a well and drowned. During the trial, Chief of Police
Johannes Hoffman asked many questions about the possible hampering
with the well cover and tried to pin down a motive by mapping Nicholas’
and Michael’s relationship to the enslaved woman Antoinette, over
whom they quarreled. However, Hoffman did not attribute any signifi-
cance to the fact that both men went beyond estate borders to enroll the
assistance of obeah men. In the trial record, this spatial practice emerges
as a meaningless fact because it does not become part of the signifying
efforts of Chief of Police Hoffmann. In line with this example, I look
for common, yet little noticed elements of obeah work instead of dig-
ging into the complexity of particular obeah episodes. Such an analytical
strategy does not, and should not, dissolve the critical questions about
obeah’s meaning and representation in various locations and by various
groups in the Danish West Indies and beyond. Yet viewing obeah as an
expertise in need of a particular infrastructure because of the many risks
it engendered may enable us to ground our understanding of African
Caribbean spiritual experts more firmly in the volatile social and political
context of their practice. It will help us see how the perils of the super-
natural shaped the quotidian spiritual doings of African Caribbeans in the
Danish West Indies.
Spiritual Prosopography
Not all African Caribbeans were equally well positioned to confront and
navigate the perils associated with the manipulations of otherworldly
powers.13 This much is clear when we zoom in on 35 individuals who
were described with varying degrees of details as engaged in spiritual
work during the period from 1758 to 1847 on St. Croix. These 35 peo-
ple constitute what can be thought of as a prosopography, albeit frag-
mentary. Looking at this group as a prosopography enables us to see
common characteristics associated with spiritual experts on St. Croix and
begin to connect these to the high-risk environment in which they prac-

ticed. I have identified these individuals by a wide reading in the West
Indian archives of the Danish colonial state. They are mentioned in legal
cases, police reports, gubernatorial decisions, emerging in particular, but
not exclusively, from the jurisdiction of Christiansted. Twenty-eight of
the 35 spiritual experts entered the records of the Danish colonial state
in the nineteenth century, and in this period, they were mostly described
as obeah men (i.e., obeah mænd) who did obeah arts (i.e., obeah kunster),
whereas earlier experts were often referenced with terms such as witch
master (i.e., heksemester) and described as engaging in sorcery or witch-
craft (i.e., trolddom or hekseri). Altogether these 35 experts catered to
the needs of at least 70 clients (see the list below).14
Some reservations are obviously due in relation to this collection of
spiritual experts. First, it is clear that the list is incomplete. It is safe to
assume that there were more spiritual practitioners than those caught up
in the representational processes of the Danish colonial state. It is also
safe to assume that they offered their services to more than the 70 indi-
viduals listed here. Some of those included in this list provided extended
accounts of their involvement in the spiritual episodes under scrutiny
by the colonial administration, others emerge for a fleeting moment
in the colonial archive, often in a short subordinate clause, in a dis-
course about another issue; they offer us glimpses rather than complete
pictures.
Secondly, we cannot be sure that the spiritual experts identified in
trials and police investigations were in fact engaged in healing, divina-
tion, soothsaying, ablution, potion-making, charm-fabrication, and like
practices. Enslaved people appropriated and used for their own purposes
the colonial state’s preoccupation with African Caribbean spiritual power.
The strategic use of obeah allegations is for example suggested by the
eagerness with which Johnno [sic] and St. Croix [sic] accused their
driver Stephan of poisoning a rum still with obeah in 1781. At his trial,
Stephan vehemently argued “that it was merely evil people among his
master’s negroes, who have sought to persuade [i.e., indstille] his mas-
ter of what he is accused of.” The witness evidence was provided by
Johnno and St. Croix, who provided detailed descriptions of Stephan’s
meetings with Melander, an “obeah man or negro doctor,” and the
objects involved in their encounter: a “bat in a brown tea pot, a bottle
of rum, a chicken egg, and a candle,” and a “little white obeah bottle.”15
Though it is impossible to establish St. Croix’ and Johnno’s motives with
208 G. SIMONSEN
certainty, it is likely that they were the “evil people,” whom Stephan
claimed had set him up.
Finally, the deeply racialised presentation of obeah that circulated
among white elites in the Caribbean and beyond, was also present in the
Danish West Indies. This discourse may have blurred distinctions made
among Africans and African Caribbeans, for instance, between people
with a rudimentary knowledge of herbal cures and those who mastered
the spirit world.16 Perhaps, however, distortion went even further. The
representational practices of the Danish colonial state required subjects
to be and seldom presented more fluid processes of becoming and unbe-
coming. This form of stable being is also mediated in the list below. But
being a spiritual expert on St. Croix was perhaps not a position to have,
but rather a disposition, a performance that certain people undertook at
particular conjunctures because they could and because others expected
them to. This was not, however, how spiritual experts emerged in the
records of the Danish colonial state. Thus, the idea of the obeah prac-
titioner as a stable persona may in part have been the result of the way
colonial scribes imagined spiritual expertise to emerge among enslaved
Africans and their descendants. Nonetheless, as the trial against Stephan
highlights, trial records, police reports, and similar administrative docu-
ments also had a complex subaltern authorship and therefore they may
give us glimpses of whom enslaved on St. Croix imagined obeah experts
to be as well as providing at times evidence of who they actually were.17
These reservations aside, the collection of 35 people suggests that St.
Croix was relatively well endowed with spiritual experts in the first half of
the nineteenth century. Estimates of the number of obeah practitioners
in various Caribbean colonies, particularly before emancipation, are dif-
ficult to come at. Rare numbers, however, are provided by Diana Paton
for the 50-year period 1890–1939 for Jamaica and Trinidad. In Jamaica,
obeah and obeah-related prosecutions amounted to one prosecution per
app. 1.023 inhabitants. In Trinidad, the figure was one prosecution per
app. 2.575 inhabitants. These estimates clearly speak to the way colo-
nial authorities criminalised the spiritual world of African Caribbeans.18
They also, however, provide a hazy, minimal impression of how availa-
ble obeah men and women were to people seeking their help. Used as
such Paton’s findings suggest that St. Croix was quite similar to other
Caribbean colonies, and perhaps closer to the Jamaican pattern than the
Trinidadian. In the first half of the nineteenth century, and based on
material mostly from Christiansted jurisdiction, 28 obeah practitioners
catered to a population of around 28.650; resulting in a rate of one

obeah practitioner for every 1.023 inhabitants on St. Croix.19
Viewed as a prosopography, the collection also underscores that being
an obeah expert was not entirely a question of inclination and talent.
Certain conditions—sex, occupation, age, and origin—enabled people to
pursue their spiritual ambitions, while making it more difficult for oth-
ers. Some of these conditions can be tied to the question of risk man-
agement and the importance obeah practitioners and clients appear to
have attributed to keeping each other at a distance. Others indicate that
spiritual authority involved claims about African knowledge. Scribes did
not always record the birth place of the spiritual experts whom they
encountered, yet of the 14 experts whose birth place was recorded,
12 were born in Africa and 2 on Tortola. A number of these spiritual
experts invested the spatial metaphors Africa and Guinea with particu-
lar value; turning their origins into claims about distant spiritual herit-
age. In 1774, Sam explained that his was an “art” he had learned from
“his father in Guinea.”20 In 1804, Plato related that a protective amu-
let he had prepared was inspired by martial practices from his African
“native country [i.e., fødeland].” Likewise, in 1835, Simon explained
that it was “his father on the coast,” who had taught him the rules of a
(board) game played with pebbles and seemingly used for divination.21
In 1836, Suckey explained that she “had learned [her cures] from her
deceased husband who like her was born on the coast of Africa.” She fur-
ther underlined that she only met with her “countrymen and acquaint-
ances.” Presumably they were also her clients.22 As late as 1840, Bourke
explained that “when he cured people it is happening with herbs, which
he knows from his father country [i.e., fædreland].”23
Looking at spiritual experts as a group, however, also shows that
they shared a number of characteristics related to the social order estab-
lished by sugar agriculture on St. Croix. It is notable that the majority
of people characterised with terms referencing their ability to manipulate
otherworldly powers were enslaved men and most, who had their age
recorded, were between 50 and 60 years old. This group profile, though
based on a small number of individuals, underlines that spiritual author-
ity was unevenly distributed on St. Croix. Only seven per cent of the
male plantation slaves on St. Croix were between 50 and 60 years of age
in 1804. Thus, it was from a small group that most obeah men emerged.
The female equivalent was eight per cent, yet merely three women have
been identified (no. 11, 28, and 35 on the list below).24 Of these, only
210 G. SIMONSEN
Suckey’s healing talents were characterised as obeah. She was also the
only woman who testified that she mastered healing powers. In her court
testimony, Suckey described that she served Sambo Francis by preparing
“him something with which he should bathe his head and the places on
his body that hurt him when he worked.” This “something” would have
the “effect” that he would be able to work and be liked by the manager
again.25 In contrast to Suckey’s description of her access to powers that
had “effect,” the other two women were named by fellow slaves.26
It would be hasty to tie the gendering of African Caribbean spiritual
practices, suggested by the many men in this small prosopography, too
closely to the homeland traditions of Africans on St. Croix. Africans
arrived to the Danish West Indies from societies all along the West
African coast, from Senegambia in the north to Angola in the south.
While the spread of Islam in the Senegambia region may have under-
mined women’s positions in religious life, women in many West and
West-Central African societies found recognition as priestesses and in a
cosmology containing paired female and male deities.27 It is likely there-
fore that the male dominance of the spiritual field on St. Croix high-
lights how the patriarchal order of Caribbean plantation slavery afforded
opportunity and made it easier for men to travel beyond estate bound-
aries. Among the obeah men listed there were: 2 slave hunters; 2 driv-
ers; 1 slave hunter and carpenter; 1 mason; 1 cook; and 1 gardener and
vegetable huckster. Those whose profession was not noted by colonial
scribes may very well have been fieldworkers, yet it is still noticeable that
hunters (crossing estates boundaries in their search for runaways), guards
(on their own during nighttime and properly able to move more freely
than many field hands), craftsmen (who were rented or lent out to other
estates) and drivers (whose authority probably gave them some leeway
to move around) were prominent professions among the obeah men.
Thus, the gendered hierarchy marking estate production underpinned
the spiritual ambitions of men, more than of women.
State Interventions
The dangers faced by the group of obeah experts, mainly older African
men, grew during the nineteenth century. For most of the eighteenth
century, Danish colonial authorities had not been overly concerned
with the spiritual customs and beliefs of the enslaved in the Danish West
Indies.28 The Danish colonial state’s lenient attitude towards African
Caribbean religious beliefs was to change, however. Parallel to the spread

of obeah as a shared concept, used by enslaved and free alike, Danish
West Indian officers began to worry—like their colleagues in the sur-
rounding Caribbean—that obeah might be a nuisance to and perhaps
destructive of the calm social order they hoped to achieve. In 1825,
Governor General Peter von Scholten instructed planters to keep an eye
out for “malevolent subjects” and to inform authorities if they practiced
obeah. The order was issued at the request of Chief of Police Andreas J.
Andreson of Frederiksted jurisdiction after a particular long-winded trial
against the two alleged obeah men, June and Bacchus. Both men were
subsequently punished with 150 lashes at the square Fisketorvet in the
town of Frederiksted and had to work “in iron” (i.e., carrying a chain
either around leg or neck) for one year.29
The new attitude towards obeah, reflected in Governor General von
Scholten’s 1825 instructions, was not isolated to the administrative cir-
cles of the Danish West Indian state. It can also be traced to island news-
papers. Though never a popular topic, obeah went from being a piece of
entertainment in the eighteenth century to being a crime in island news-
papers in the nineteenth century. In 1773, readers of the Royal Danish
American Gazette could amuse themselves with an anecdotal piece about
the use of obeah during a boat race in Christiansted harbour. The race
stood between one “Free Mulatto, officiating as Sacristan to the Roman
Chapel” and “CESAR — a free Negro.” During the competition, the
piece stated, Cesar used “powerful charms of Obia,” while the “Free
Mulatto […] sprinkled his boat [with holy water], and triumphed.” Cesar
lost and “he d—d the holy water, accounting it unlawful armour and worse
than Obia.”30 The piece ridiculed its subjects and their belief in every-
day miracles, but it contained little indication that obeah was an issue
that should seriously concern Christiansted’s inhabitants and colonial
authorities.
In contrast, Sanct Thomas Tidende [i.e., St. Thomas Tidings] pro-
vided verbatim extracts of An Act for the Better Prevention of the Practice
of Obeah received from Bridgetown, Barbados in 1818. Moreover, in
1843 Dansk Vestindisk Regerings Avis [i.e., The Danish West Indian
Government Newspaper] printed an extract from the Berbice Gazette
describing a gruesome murder case in which the alleged culprits suppos-
edly were motivated by obeah beliefs.31 In nineteenth-century St. Croix,
magistrates, police officers, planters, overseers, newspaper writers, and
medical men, it appears, partook in a Caribbean wide discourse about
212 G. SIMONSEN
obeah as a fraudulent superstition with potential lethal consequences for

the enslaved.
The gravity with which Danish colonial officers approached obeah is
illuminated by the legislative framework they established to prosecute
it. In 1844, the alleged obeah man Nelson of the estate Two Brothers
were accused of doing “obeah work” (i.e., obia værk) on one Johan
from Smithfield plantation and on Maria Louisa, a free woman of col-
our from Frederiksted town. Nelson’s supposed crimes turned Chief of
Police Andreson toward the Danish Law of 1683 (i.e., Danske Lov). This
was a comprehensive law compilation that provided the basis of Danish
criminal prosecution up until 1866. At mid-century, it was increasingly
recognised as antiquated by contemporary jurists and supplemented with
royal decrees and ordinances (and with parliamentary laws following the
introduction of representative government in metropolitan Denmark
in 1849).32 However, concerns about the possible limitations of the
Danish Law did not trouble Andreson. By analogy of article 6-1-10 of
the Danish Law—stipulating life work sentences for practicing “errone-
ous make-believe arts” for malicious purposes—he recommended that
Nelson should either be sentenced to work for life or banished from the
islands.33 Governor General von Scholten was not entirely convinced, it
appears. The first time von Scholten reviewed Nelson’s case, he ignored
it; the second time he left it pending. Finally, he agreed to the request
of Thomas Griffith, owner of Two Brothers, the estate to which Nelson
belonged, that Nelson be released and suggested that he be removed
from his position as watchman.34 At that point Nelson had been arrested
in Fort Frederik in Frederiksted for one and a half year.35
The old articles of the Danish Law also appealed to Chief of Police
Frederiksen who presided in St. Croix’ other jurisdiction, that of
Christiansted. Like his colleague, Frederiksen argued that article 6-1-10
of the Danish Law was appropriate for the obeah trials over which he
presided.36 Yet both these chief police officers had available two statutory
ordinances, which would have resulted in time limited sentences, had
they been mobilised. First, they could have relied on the slave regulations
issued on September 5, 1733 by Governor Philip Gardelin. These regu-
lations sanctioned malevolent magic with a flogging, and constituted the
legal framework used in the verdict against Lively who received 75 lashes
at the public whipping post for the crime of “obeah” in 1788.37 Second,
the officers could also have turned towards the metropolitan ordinance
on quackery issued in 1794. This ordinance sanctioned quacks who
exposed people to “danger” with a fine or alternately with eight days

in prison on their first offence. Second-time offenders were imprisoned
for six months in Copenhagen Correction House or a provincial equiv-
alent. Repeat offenders would see their imprisonment doubled on each
offence.38 Appropriation of metropolitan legislation was not altogether
unknown in the Danish West Indies and was for instance used in verdicts
concerned with slave theft.39 It appears, however, that Andreson and
Frederiksen wanted sentences that would last for life and found backing
for these in the antiquated pages of the Danish Law.
The idea, however, of meting out life sentences to obeah practitioners
did not gain wide currency; perhaps as in the case of Nelson, because
slave owners, who faced labour shortage were not supportive. Instead,
colonial officers designed a sentence that reflected their particular under-
standing of obeah. This sentence combined corporal pain with ridi-
cule and ensured that slave owners could still use convicts’ labour. The
earliest evidence of this particular punitive design emerges in relation
to the obeah man George with whom we began. During the investi-
gation against Michael and Nicholas for having “participated in obeah
arts [i.e., kunster]” in 1831, George denied supplying “obeah,” and he
appears to have escaped punishment. One year later, however, he was
again suspected of having “dealt with witchcraft,” and after two months
as convict labourer, he received 50 lashes at the public whipping post
in Christiansted.40 Again in 1834, George—perhaps for the last time—
suffered punishment for his divination and healing work. He had appar-
ently obliged to assist one Hendricks at Southgate Farm in detecting
a thief and he had cured the driver at Glynn estate, one Ringwell, by
rubbing his body with leaves of the cotton tree and by removing a
tooth from his side or abdomen by the laying of hands.41 At this third
offence, Christiansted acting Chief of Police Hoffman, in conjunction
with Governor General von Scholten, designed a punishment that would
cause George pain and presumably humiliate him among fellow slaves.
George were to receive 100 lashes with tamarind rods on Peter’s Rest in
the presence of those he had attempted to “cure.” Following this severe
flogging, George was to wear an iron collar around his neck to which
was attached a wire that ran from his neck in curve up above his head
and ended in a “little bell.” On his back, he had to carry a board with
the imprint “obeah.”42
This elaborate spectacle, combining sound, vision and bodily pain pre-
sumably sought to demolish the authority that colonial officers believed
214 G. SIMONSEN
spiritual experts possessed. As a spectacle, the punishment of George

was far more elaborate than the punishment of the alleged obeah man
Melander, who was sentenced to 150 lashes at the public whipping post
in 1781.43 George’s particular punishment reflected the appropriation of
obeah performed by Danish colonial officers in the nineteenth century.
Central to obeah practices was the principle that worldly events and for-
tunes emerged in interaction with otherworldly powers. This also meant
that minds and bodies were not rigidly separated. Illness and health
could be the outcome of spiritual intervention. In the hands of colonial
officers, however, this cosmological principle was turned into the claim
that enslaved people had very fragile minds. What happened there, in
these minds, could easily shape and potentially destroy their bodies. With
this being the case, the punishment of George can be understood as an
attempt to establish a kind of counter-spirituality in which the embar-
rassment and shame, generated by ridicule, humiliation and pain, would
work on the permeable minds of enslaved people and save their bodies.44
It was also the supposedly porous lines between the mind and body
of enslaved Africans that structured the written complaint of A. Creagh,
owner of the enslaved mason John in 1847. Creagh explained that
John’s “mind” had begun “to sink to such a degree” that he had been
convinced to see an obeah man. Indeed, John was hit badly by obeah.
In his letter to the chief of police in Christiansted, Creagh explained that
he thought “it a pitty [sic] to see so fine a workman and valuable servant
decline so rapidly,” and therefore he “took him yesterday to Doctor Ruan,”
who told Creagh “that it was no joke, as his [i.e., John’s] health was really
suffering from the mind.”45 The powerful impact of so-called superstition
was also recognised by acting Chief of Police C.L. Øgaard in 1831, who
argued that it was “always dangerous to strengthen the superstition of
the weak and ignorant class of negro slaves.”46
Dangerous Rumours
The attention paid by the Danish West Indian colonial state to obe-
ah’s supposedly harmful effects added a new element of danger to the
work of African Caribbean spiritual experts. It is illustrative of the lack-
ing official concern with so-called magic in the eighteenth century, that
the enslaved man Sam described his spiritual work in detail during a
trial about arson in 1774 without being prosecuted. Sam listed the sev-
eral herbal cures he prescribed. Moreover, he stated that he carried “a
piece of a wild cat’s rump” that had the “force that if some maron negro
carries it in his pocket to his master, then the master shall not have the
power to hit him.” Later in the trial, Sam related that he had helped one
Cudjoe obtain luck in games by having him “wash his hands in some
leaves that look like ginger leaves.”47 Despite his fine descriptions of his
herbal and his spiritual practices, Sam was not charged by the colonial
judiciary.
In the nineteenth century, such loose obeah talk had become risky, if
not dangerous. African spiritual experts were, as the editors of this vol-
ume put it, “drawn into open conflict” with colonial authorities and this
conflict came to shape their practice. Now African Caribbean spiritual
experts needed to contain and control who knew what about their work.
In 1836, Suckey, who cured Sambo Francis, explained that she did not
receive visits “during the evening or by night as people would [then] say
that she did more than what was for everyone to know.” Indeed, Suckey
appears to have pursued a strategy of transparency. This was noted by
Chief of Police Frederiksen who believed that Suckey “particularly”
appeared to “rest her innocence” on a repeated claim about not seeing
anybody at night. Suckey’s client, Sambo Francis, likewise explained
that he had “certainly not sought to hide or pretend something else”
than what had happened, namely that he had received a healing cure
from Suckey. Despite such efforts, the manager of Castle Bourke, John
Snelton noted that other estate slaves talked about Suckey’s “obeah arts”
and that “many, both plantation negroes and coloured people often”
came to her.48
The risk posed by the circulation of obeah knowledge was also rec-
ognised by Johannes, belonging to one A. Tower in 1846. Johannes
was punished for soothsaying in 1844 and in 1846. In both cases, he
had offered to identify thieves by “reading in cards /: cut cards :/.”49
In 1846, however, when approached by people from Mount Pleasant
who asked him to use his skills to identify who had stolen a saddle,
Johannes—according to his own testimony—explained that “he was
afraid of doing it as he had been punished for it once.” It was only after
the clients from Mount Pleasant had “promised him not to talk of it,”
that he took a “deck of cards, and, as he says, by examining it found
out that it was a man of Yellow Complextion [sic] who had stolen the
saddle.”50 Johannes’ precautions did not help him. He was sentenced to
receive two times 27 “cat[-o-nine-tails] lashes,” followed by 4 months
labour in St. Croix’ house of arrest.51
216 G. SIMONSEN
Colonial authorities paid close attention to the obeah stories pass-

ing between enslaved people on St. Croix. In Qvamina’s trial in 1825
most witnesses testified that their knowledge of Qvamina’s spiritual
expertise was based, at least initially, on rumour. It was rumour that led
the free woman of colour Eva Williams to suspect Qvamina of being a
“so-called obeah man;” rumours allowed the free woman of colour
Catharina James to relay that also white people used Qvamina’s services;
and when goods were stolen from his town shop, rumours convinced
Rasmus Møller (a name indicating Danish or Norwegian origins) to seek
out Qvamina.52 Indeed, uncontrolled circulation of obeah knowledge
was dangerous. In his briefing to Governor General Peter von Scholten,
Frederiksted Chief of Police Andreson explained that “for some time the
police” had “suspected […] Nelson of obeah work [i.e., obia værk],” and
they had finally “succeeded in examining him about 2 of such cases.”53
Andreson’s phrasing suggests that hearsay and rumours were important
to the capture of Nelson and that the Danish West Indian police force
was watching out for potential obeah men; ready to crack down when it
had the chance.54
Talkative Middlemen
Rumours could hit obeah practitioners hard, but so could talkative
collaborators. The numerous meetings between Simon (alias Bristol
alias Brister) and the Danish colonial state that took place in 1835,
1843 and 1847 highlight the risks faced by obeah men (and women)
when middlemen, connecting experts and clients, misused their knowl-
edge. In 1835, when Simon, belonging to Windsor estate but jobbing
on Mount Pleasant, appeared in Christiansted Police Court charged
with obeah (a crime for which he was punished with 40 lashes at the
public whipping post and put to work with an iron collar, including
a bell, “until further notice”) he had gotten involved in an intense
conflict between enslaved men on the estate of Diamond & Ruby.
Simon’s alleged client the estate driver Jim may have wanted Simon’s
services because of his quarrel with one Henry, whom he had locked
up on New Year’s. Indeed, it was Henry who organised the capture
of Simon. Hiding in the branches of a tamarind tree, Henry and two
other men from Diamond & Ruby watched out for Simon and upon
his arrival at Jim’s house, they fetched the estate manager and secured
his arrest.55
Simon’s capture and subsequent legal troubles were related to the

actions of Edward who put Simon in touch with Jim and who may have
been Simon’s middleman or agent. Edward emerges in the trial transcript
as rather indiscrete; too eager in his search for possible clients. Henry
(who arranged Simon’s capture) testified that he had met Edward on the
road between the estates of Barren Spot and Diamond & Ruby. Striking
up a conversation, Edward told Henry that “he had in commission […]
to get an obeah man that could arrange that he, the driver [i.e., Jim]
could not be made responsible, neither by the manager nor by anybody
else, if he […] had mistreated any of the negroes of the estate with whip
lashes and suchlike.” Hence Edward provided Henry, who was already at
odds with Jim, with information that he could use to discredit Jim.56
It is not entirely clear, why Edward had taken upon himself to con-
nect possible clients to Simon, yet the trial transcript highlights that
he advertised Simon’s expertise widely. During the investigation, both
Henry (Jim’s opponent) and Francky (Jim’s wife) related that Edward
had offered them Simon’s services. According to Henry, Edward offered
that Simon could arrange for Henry to be apprenticed as a craftsman, if
he was so inclined. Also, Edward offered Simon’s expertise to Franky.
She explained that Edward, “after having said that she looked sickly,
asked if she did not want something done for her, in which case he could
bring a man who could do this.” According to Franky, she declined the
offer, and trying to get rid of Edward, she handed him 10 stivers, a rusk,
and some potatoes.57 Edward, it appears, spoke without much restraint
about Simon’s spiritual abilities. Such indiscretion was dangerous. As
Simon’s subsequent punishment evidence, talkative middlemen risked
turning the attention and the punitive force of the Danish colonial state
against obeah experts.
Dissatisfied Clients
In addition to state intervention, at times instigated by verbose middle-
men and by nebulous rumours, the hazards faced by obeah experts were
also related to the very nature of their craft. Theirs was a risky business
in a society where life itself was precarious. Many circumstances had to
come together for obeah to work.58 With their healing practices, they
promised healthy futures for their clients and with soothsaying, divina-
tions and ordeals they claimed to foresee what was to come and to dis-
close past events. Yet African Caribbean spiritual experts could not count
218 G. SIMONSEN
on the support of powerful institutions—as could for instance island

clergy and estate doctors—when they walked the tightropes linking spir-
its to bodies and minds and to pasts, presents, and futures.
The unpredictable quality of the spirit world appears to have made
claims to expertise subject to scrutiny among clients. It also resulted in
accusations about malpractice. Hence it was most probably the com-
plaints from a dissatisfied client that brought Simon (alias Bristol
alias Brister) to Christiansted Police Court for the third time in 1847.
Judging from the trial record, John had been a loyal client of Simon’s
for some time. When Simon’s healing rituals proved ineffective, however,
John complained to his owner, A. Creagh, who in turn asked the police
to intervene. John related that he began to suffer from stomach ache
while working on Mon Bijou plantation. First, he had received “medi-
cine” from the manager. Then he had taken the advice of his relative, the
cooper Jim and drunk the “Bitters” he offered. This only made John feel
“worse.” Finally, Jim recommended that John “got somebody to look
at him,” and had taken John to an “old man whom Jim said would cure
him.”59
During the examination, John described how Simon “blew on his
stomach where after he showed some [pieces of] coal and nails, which
he said had been extracted.” This healing performance was repeated on
three occasions and in addition Simon told John that “some things were
buried outside the door of Jim’s house.” These objects “harmed” John
“each time he passed over” them. Subsequently, Simon orchestrated the
unearthing of a “small key or something that was wrapped up in a good
deal of string.” Simon provided John with a protective amulet and told
him that Jim had attempted to harm him because of his good standing
with the manager. John and Simon concurred. This was the way things
had happened. The only difference between their respective versions
was that Simon—perhaps as a defense strategy—declared that he did not
believe in his own healing rituals, yet he saw “nothing wrong in receiv-
ing” money from people who were “fools enough [i.e., narre nok]” to
pay for such tricks.60
John’s reasons for turning against Simon after having relied on his
services were not further explored during the trial. Another obeah inves-
tigation, however, lends force to the suggestion that John’s continued
ill health provides a possible answer. In 1831, Martin was examined by
acting Chief of Police in Frederiksted C.L. Øgaard. Øgaard believed that
Martin could reasonably be suspected of “dealing in obeah arts.” During
the investigation, Martin’s client Henry explained that he had “been at

the negro Martin’s from the plantation Prosperity for 8 days in order,
as promised by him, to be cured from pains in all his limbs. Martin had
done some arts with the deponent [i.e., Henry], extracted some nails,
stones etc. from the knees and the chest, but instead of this making him
better, it had made him worse.” Henry’s long stay at Martin’s place indi-
cates that he appreciated obeah’s healing potential. Indeed, Henry’s
complaint had to do with the “contrary effect” of his treatment; it was
an accusation of malpractice.61 Returning to John: he had visited Simon
on three occasions, but continued to suffer from ill health. He may, like
Martin, have been motivated by a concern with malpractice when he
finally spoke against Simon.
Bonds of Money
There is little doubt that obeah practitioners and their clients faced many
perils as they engaged the spirits. It is also not surprising that it is possi-
ble to pinpoint some of the measures through which they attempted to
secure themselves from the hazards of their profession. One such secu-
rity measure consisted in obtaining signs of their clients’ commitment. In
return for spiritual services clients paid in kind or cash, both during the
eighteenth and the nineteenth century. In 1758, the enslaved man Catta
testified that another slave “Juba had said to him and the other negroes,
that they had to give him money with which he would buy something
[from the “witch master” Gomma] to get the overseer off the planta-
tion,” and in 1832, John Cuvelje, also enslaved, explained that all slaves
on Golden Grove “gave Abraham money with which to pay [the obeah
man] Jerry, some gave 5, others 10 stivers at a time.” In 1832, the pur-
pose was also to get rid of an overseer.62
In these capital exchanges, money-as-income and money-as-spiritual-
agent meshed into each other. Money’s many functions stand out in the
testimony of John, enslaved carpenter on Rattan in 1844. A copper had
been stolen at Rattan, and John approached the obeah man Johannes
of Strawberrry Hill to enlist his skills in discovering the culprits. John
related that he had come to know of Johannes through one Emanuel
who had told him that if he had “½ $ with him, Johannes would
promptly tell the truth” about the theft. According to John, Johannes
had asked him for money while laying up the cards for divination. Upon
a negative reply, Johannes declined performing the ritual. Johannes, John
220 G. SIMONSEN
related in court, had told him to put his money on the cards, saying:
“You must cross the Card with your Money.” The meaning of this sentence
is far from transparent, yet it appears that money was both to be paid to
Johannes and to be directed towards the cards, which presumably con-
tained or facilitated access to the world of the spirits.63
In nearly all trials and investigations concerned with African
Caribbean spiritual power, experts and witnesses testified that money had
been exchanged. Maarit Forde, focusing on twentieth-century Trinidad
and Tobago, has suggested that such monetary exchanges should be
understood as following the “logic of the gift rather than the com-
modity” and that they were oriented “toward the transcendent rather
than the transient.”64 It is less clear that such a distinction can be made
between the many forms of exchange that involved experts, clients, and
spirits on St. Croix. Though money and cards could be crossed, possi-
bly enabling spiritual communication, evidence also indicates that African
Caribbean spiritual practitioners sold their expertise in order to get
access to marketable commodities. Most enslaved people on St. Croix
were struggling with scarcity. Neither their own produce nor import
from North American markets or Copenhagen could provide the food-
stuff they needed to fight undernourishment and high mortality.65 Even
small income-generating activities were important. Indeed, a couple of
stivers could mean a great deal: a dram of rum, a piece of soap, some
pork meat, bread or flour for the children.66 Sam for example explained
that he used his “art to earn money among the negroes” in 1774.67
Commodification of spiritual products also stands out in the phras-
ing, attributed to one David, who explained that the obeah man June
charged 10 stivers per bottle of palliative dogwood water. In David’s
statement, price reflected the fixed value of a marketable commodity,
rather than the nature of the relationship between David and June or the
state of David’s financial means.68 Most payments were small, but occa-
sionally larger amounts were also exchanged. In 1804, Plato explained
that his client “had paid him 4 reales and also a coat and a pair of trou-
sers,” while Simon acknowledged that he was to receive “1 hog, 12 yards
of bamboe [possibly a type of cloth] and 6 bits” for his services in 1835.69
Though amounts were usually small, small coins were not availa-
ble to all, and paying up demonstrated to experts that potential clients
were willing to invest in the relationship. John of Rattan had to borrow
money to pay for soothsaying in 1844, and in the mid-eighteenth cen-
tury, Betty explained that she had “no money” and could not contribute
to the collection for the “witch master” Gomma.70 Many clients testi-
fied that they had paid between 5 and 10 stivers, if not more, for obeah
services. This amount was also mentioned by Qvamina in 1825. He
explained that he only charged his clients “on a small scale and [he]
took no higher than 10 stivers of anybody.”71 Though Qvamina may
have considered this to be a small amount of money, it is likely that most
enslaved people saw things differently. Following emancipation in 1848,
planter H.C. Knudsen, for instance, decided to pay those he considered
first-class workers five stivers a day; an amount that doubled with the
introduction of labour regulations in 1853.72 These post-emancipation
salaries indicate that a down payment of 5–10 stivers for an obeah session
during slavery was a significant outlay for many clients.
Money exchange catered to both spiritual and material needs of cli-
ents and experts. In addition, however, the transfer of money, I suggest,
worked to enhance the security of obeah experts. As money changed
hands, coins became tangible signs of the commitment and loyalty
of potential clients. This was important because obeah men exposed
themselves to danger through their clients who—as the legal archive
documents—at times turned against them and provided incriminating
testimony. So, Gomma demanded food and money in 1758, Melander
demanded rom, eggs, and candles amongst others in 1781, Lively
got food in 1788, and Johannes Otto received 8 reales and additional
drinks [i.e., skænk] in 1815.73 Among the few exceptions to this regular
exchange of money and goods, was the case of Rachel. She was accused
of poisoning one John Ferril, possibly an estate overseer, as well as a
group of slaves in 1783. Denying charges of poisoning, Rachel confessed
that “she had had a root that her brother had given her […] [and the]
root should have the effect that Mr. Ferril could no longer be angry with
her.”74 In 1824, June (himself an obeah practitioner) explained that he
had “gotten” a small bag with obeah items from an “acquaintance.”75
In these two cases, kinship ties and friendly connections may have made
payment unnecessary.
The fact that money exchange served to enhance the security of
spiritual experts also stands out from the chronology of the transfer. At
times obeah men made clear that payment had to fall before services
were rendered—as Johannes made clear to John in 1844. This also
appears to have been Simon’s procedure in 1847. In court, he explained
that “one night” he was approached by “Jim of Mon Bijou plantation
together with another negro” and “as Jim said that the man he had
222 G. SIMONSEN
brought with him was ill and wished for the dept. [i.e., Simon] to exam-
ine him, and as this man […] said he would pay the dept. for this and
gave him 1$, [then] the dept. [i.e., Simon] asked what he wanted [i.e.,
hvad han fattedes] and what he complained about.”76 Treatment came
after money had been paid. More indirect signs of this procedure emerge
from those cases where estate slaves decided to approach spiritual experts
as a group. Martin, of La Grand Princess, apparently took for granted
that he had to show up with cash when he “collected money in order to
[be able to] seek information by some soothsayer” regarding theft on
the estate in 1844.77 Though not present in all descriptions of obeah
practices, this order of things is suggestive of how exchange of resources
tested the commitment of possible clients who would have to forego
other vital necessities when they made a down payment for obeah.
Securing Information
Another important measure by which spiritual experts attempted to
organise their practice was the use of intermediaries. Such figures were
part of the spiritual infrastructure on St. Croix, presumably because
obeah practitioners needed to keep clients at a distance, and clients like-
wise may have preferred their spiritual helpers at arm’s length. These
intermediaries—and they were mostly men—allowed both experts and
clients to sound each other out before proceeding with various healing
rituals. Through the middlemen, obeah experts could make sure that
potential clients followed their instructions regarding the ritual articles
they needed to bring for sessions and the price they had to pay. It was
the middleman Edward who settled the details of the payment, Simon
was to receive from his client in 1835.78 Twelve years later in 1847,
Simon also connected to a client, John, through a middleman, Jim. John
testified that “following Jim’s demand,” he had bought salt, black and
white string, and a bottle of rom. He then brought these items to Simon
who proceeded with a healing ritual.79
Middlemen forwarded recommendations to clients and proba-
bly they also made sure that clients were trustworthy. In 1804, Jimmy
explained that the obeah man Plato had been recommended to him by
one Polidor who also helped him locate Plato.80 Jacob alias Bosen had
been “requested” by one Pero and only then proceeded to heal Nancy
Pers, enslaved on Jealousy estate in 1831.81 In 1844, August “admitted
to have brought a message from Augustus on Morningstar to Joseph,”
obeah man on Slob estate, that he should come to Morning Star. Later
in the same trial, Joseph explained that one Cornelius had come to him
“with the request to do or perform some arts” for one Peter “in order
for him to feel better on the estate.” Faced with Peter’s denial in the
police court, Joseph noted that “he could not believe that Cornelius
would have come to the deponent [i.e., Joseph] if he was not sent by
Peter,” and further explained that he had known Cornelius “for several
years.” Or, in other words, Joseph trusted Cornelius because of their
long acquaintance.82
Middlemen enabled experts and clients to shield each other from
the hazards involved in dealing with the spirits, yet the middlemen also
made up a particularly weak link in the chains that tied experts and cli-
ents together. If they misused the trust invested in them—or faced
intimidations that made silence an impossible choice—such intermediar-
ies could prove extremely dangerous. As we have seen, Edward’s loose
tongue brought Simon (alias Brister alias Bristol) into court in 1835. In
1779, and judging from the records generated by the trial against the
estate cook Lembrecht, it was the former driver Paris who introduced
Lembrecht to the “negro-doctor” Jesper. When, however, a white alleg-
edly poisonous substance was found in a meal Lembrecth had cooked,
Paris ventured one of the strongest testimonies against him.83 Likewise
in 1781, when Stephan was accused of poisoning a still with obeah, one
of the most vocal witnesses, Johnno, seems to have acted as intermediary.
He testified that he had connected Stephan to Melander and had accom-
panied him to Melander’s place on several occasions.84
Keeping Distance
The prevalence of these middlemen, who at times put both experts and
clients at risk by sharing their knowledge with masters, overseers, and
the colonial judiciary, points to another element of the spiritual infra-
structure on St. Croix that was probably also connected to risk manage-
ment. Spiritual experts seldom practiced in their immediate community,
on their estate, or in their town neighbourhood. The case of George on
Peter’s Rest and the anonymous obeah practitioner on Cane Garden
was the norm in this respect. As illustrated on the map below, show-
ing the spatial distribution of spiritual experts and clients, experts most
often provided services to people from other estates. At times enslaved
were willing to move quite far from their estate to obtain such services.
224 G. SIMONSEN
In 1835, for instance, Jeremiah and Wilhelm, belonging to La Grange

in the Westend Quarter, just north of Frederiksted town, visited
Wellington on Slob estate in Kings Quarter at the center of the island.
If they walked south through Frederiksted town and followed Kings
Road to the east, this would be a journey of at least 14 kilometres and
several hours. Though Wilhelm’s and Jeremiah’s journey was somewhat
longer than most, many experts and clients walked—as can be seen on
the map—considerable distances to meet up. The map also suggests that
such walks were not closely related to the availability of spiritual ser-
vices. While Jeremiah and Wilhelm walked from La Grange to Slob in
1835, other obeah men may have been close by.85 In 1831, one alleged
obeah man practiced on Prosperity, just north of La Grange, and in
1844, another was apparently living on Two Brothers, just south of La
Grange.86 Travelling along country roads, walking on the narrower paths
between estates, crossing difficult stretches of hilly bush and salty man-
grove, obeah practitioners and their clients, turned distance into more
than merely a question of the availability of African Caribbean spiritual
expertise. Natural distance afforded a social infrastructure that served to
protect those who practiced obeah (Fig. 8.1).
Geographical distance undergirded the authority obeah men needed
to carry out their profession. If obeah operated as enigmatic other-
worldly forces that were difficult to access and manipulate, then the
distance between experts and clients may have served to enhance these
mysterious qualities.87 Distance allowed experts to dissociate themselves
from the politics and triviality of estate life, presenting themselves first
and foremost as spiritual personae. This was important because obeah
was literally an embodied knowledge. There was no obeah, without
obeah practitioners. No bottles, potions, mixtures, amulets, sticks, ablu-
tions, divinations, legal ordeals, and healing rituals without the experts
who mediated with an aloof, yet accessible spirit world. This absent-
present quality of the spirit world may very well have been mirrored in
the geographical distance between those who could access the spirits and
those who needed their help.
Distance also, however, served a more mundane purpose. Important
among the risks that obeah men faced was that of failure; and the pos-
sible complaints and rumours such failure occasioned from dissatis-
fied clients. Successful obeah depended on a combination of factors.
Knowledge of the curative qualities of island flora, such as the sedative
qualities of dogwood, obviously helped obeah practitioners provide
8
Fig. 8.1 Spiritual experts and their clients. Charte over den Danske Øe St. Croix i America, by P.L. Oxholm, 1794
(Courtesy of the Royal Danish Library)
RISKING OBEAH: A SPIRITUAL INFRASTRUCTURE …
225
226 G. SIMONSEN
effective care. Soothsaying and the identification of thieves demanded

access to shared communal knowledge, since experts needed to have a
sense of what had happened in the past and what would happen in the
future for these rituals to work. Likewise, persuasion may have been an
important element when experts cured clients by the laying of hands
and the removal of small objects—nails, coal, teeth—from their bod-
ies. Indeed, experts’ ability to accommodate the psychological needs of
their clients (for instance a driver afraid of losing his position) as well
as the social dynamics of a group in trouble (for instance estate slaves
confronting accusations of theft) was vital. Yet treatments could easily
prove ineffective.88 Drivers were removed from their posts; partners left
their ex-spouses devastated despite forceful amulets and love potions;
thefts were still ongoing despite divination and soothsaying; pain and
illness continued notwithstanding herbal baths, potions, and massages.
With this being the case, it was perhaps not a mere coincidence that
many obeah men combined their expertise with estate occupations that
allowed them to move more freely than other enslaved on St. Croix.
In addition, distance may also have reduced the risk of getting
involved in estate bounded quarrels as the one between Nicholas and
Michael on Jerusalem about their relationship to Antoinette in 1831.
Obeah was not a power with essential Manichean attributes; it was nei-
ther benevolent nor malevolent. It’s articulation in the mundane world
depended on the moral habitus of those who mastered it and their clients.
This plasticity is suggested by the way fellow estate slaves reacted to the
alleged obeah man Martin. When the investigation against Martin began
in 1831, John McEvoy, manager of Prosperity, took along with him “4
of the Principal Negroes belonging to this Estate to overhaul this man’s
House, and they all appeared to be afraid to have any thing [sic] to do with
him as he might do them some bad, — so that under these Circumstances
it appears that he has been looked too [sic] by the Negroes that he could do
good or bad.”89 Entrenched in the everyday politics of the estates, where
they lived, it may have been wise for obeah men to avoid taking sides and
to perform their craft for people from other estates. Likewise, cautious
clients may have found it sensible to keep obeah’s ambiguity and (un-)
reliability at a distance. McEvoy concluded his remarks by noting that he
had learned that “there has been from different Estates a great Number of
Negroes with him [i.e., Martin] on Sundays;” it appears that people from
other estates were not afraid of Martin’s ability to do “good or bad.”90
An Infrastructure Against Risks

In the previous pages, I have argued that obeah as a practical endeavour
was shaped by the multifarious risks faced by spiritual experts on St. Croix
in the first half of nineteenth century. Some of these risks were externally
produced and hence speaks to the processes of contestation through
which healing encounters often unfold. The Danish colonial state had
mostly ignored African Caribbean religious practices during the eight-
eenth century. In the nineteenth century, state officers and an English-
speaking white society, tightly connected to the Anglophone Caribbean,
began to partake in the Caribbean wide circulation of stories about
obeah as harmful and dangerous. Obeah practitioners in the Danish West
Indies were not sanctioned with the same ferocity as their counterparts
in the British Caribbean, but they faced a state that increasingly invested
resources in their prosecution and heavy punishment. Other risks were
generated by certain endemic qualities of obeah. Obeah sessions were
evaluated, at least in part, by their actual effects. Clients hoped that obeah
forces could reduce or remove the losses, injuries, and ill health that they
suffered. In the early modern world, many things could go wrong, but
futures were particularly unpredictable in the Caribbean slave societies.
Dependent as they were on continuous signs of their powers, the height-
ened social insecurity marking Caribbean slave societies may have seeped
into the practice of obeah experts. High mortality, falling sugar prices,
soil exhaustion, hard labour demands, a vibrant domestic slave market,
and continued brutal punishments from owners and state undermined
health, threatened job security, and destabilised intimate relationships
and friendships. Treatments could go wrong, clients could feel unsatis-
fied, and conflicting parties could attempt to use obeah powers against
each other. Facing these many risks, with little institutional support, it is
no wonder that Cruzan obeah people sought to operate with and in an
infrastructure—of money exchange, middlemen and spatial dissociation—
that allowed them to minimise the adverse results of a craft with genera-
tive effects that they could not always control.
Spiritual Experts, Their Estate

and/or Owner, and Their Clients91
1. Witch master, Gomma, belong. Nicolai Dubavin, 1758

a. Diana, Parry, Juba, Quashy, Sally, St. John (belong. Heyliger
estate)
228 G. SIMONSEN
2. Sorcerer, Rolph, possibly St. John, 1765

a. Diana and Lucrecia, possible St. John
3. Doctor, Sam, belong. Cornelius Peter Loe, 1774
a. Maria, belong. Kipnasse’s estate, North-side
b. Cudjoe (Cutio), belong. Kipnasse’s estate, North-side
4. Doctor, Jesper, 1779
a. Lembrecth, Windsor
b. Possibly Paris, Windsor
5. Obeah man, Melander, estate of Beverhoudt, 1781
a. Possibly Stephan, Peter Nugent’s estate
6. Possibly Townends, belong. David Beckman, 1783
a. Possibly Rachel, belong. David Beckman
7. Lively, belong. pub-owner Gates, 1788
a. Sholamith and Susanna, John Renger’s estate
8. Obeah man, Plato, Sight, 1804
a. Jimmy, Shoys
9. Possible obeah man, London, Morning Star, 1805
a. Himself
10. Obeah man, Samuel, belong. A Carty, possibly Christiansted, 1806
a. Aletta, belong. Judge Mouritzen
11. Witchcraft, Hanna Helena Renadus, free black woman, possibly
Christiansted, 1810
a. Rose, belong. free woman of color, Christiansted
12. Johannes Otto, ‘free negro’, possibly Christiansted, 1815
a. Jenny Almeyda, free woman of color, Christiansted
13. Obeah man, June, Betsy’s Jewel, 1824
a. 8 enslaved, Little Princess
b. Clients, Golden Rock
14. Possible obeah man, Walberggard, c. 1824
a. June, Betsy’s Jewel (also obeah man)
15. Obeah man Bacchus, Strawberry Hill, 1824
a. Clients, Little Princess
b. Clients, Golden Rock
16. Possible obeah man Castillo, Barrenspot, c. 1824
a. Bacchus, Strawberry Hill (also obeah man)
17. Obeah man, Qvamina, Richmond, 1825
a. John Castillo, free man of color, possibly Christiansted
b. Laurentia, belong. Frederik Cornelius, free man of color, pos-
sibly Christiansted
c. Rasmus Møller, possibly Christiansted
d. Charlie, man of color, St. John

18. Obeah man, George, Peter’s Rest 1831, 1832, 1834
a. Michael, Jerusalem 1831
b. Hendrick, Southgate Farm 1834
c. Unnamed driver, The Glynn c. 1834
19. Unnamed obeah man, Cane Garden 1831
a. Nicholas, Jerusalem 1831
20. Obeah man, Jacob alias Bosen, Fountain, 1831
a. Nancy, Jealousy, 1831
b. Unnamed woman, River, u.d.
c. Unnamed woman, Montpellier/Daly Hill, u.d.
21. Obeah man Martin, Prosperity, Westend, 1831
a. Henry, Orange Grove
b. Large number of slaves from different estates
22. Obeah man Jerry (Jeremiah), Orange Grove, 1832
a. Simon, John Cooper and others, Golden Grove
23. Obeah man Marcus, Sion Farm, app. 1829, 1834
a. Mathias, La Grand Prinsesse (in June 1834)
b. Unnamed slave, Humbug (in February 1834)
c. Unnamed slave, girl, Sion Farm (app. 1829)
24. Obeah man Simon alias Bristol alias Brister, Mount Pleasant/
Windsor, 1835, 1843, 1847
a. Jim, Diamond & Ruby, 1835
b. Unnamed, 1843
c. John, belong. A. Creagh, Mon Bijou, 1847
25. Unnamed obeah man, Cane Garden, 1835
a. Possibly Laban, Fredensborg
26. Unnamed obeah man, Barren Spot, 1835
a. Possibly Laban Fredensborg
27. Obeah man Wellington, Slob, 1835
a. Jeremiah and Wilhelm, La Grange
28. Obeah woman, Suckey, Castle Bourke, 1836
a. Sambo Francis, Sion Farm
29. Obeah man, Bourke, Orange Grove, 1840
a. Polidore, Beck’s Grove
30. Obeah man, Joseph, Slob, 1844
a. Susanna, Morning Star
b. Peter, Morning Star
c. Possibly clients, La Reine
d. Possibly clients, Windsor
230 G. SIMONSEN
31. Obeah man Nelson, Two Brothers, 1844

a. Johan, Smithfield
b. Maria Louise, Frederiksted
32. Soothsayer, Isaac, Wheel of Fortune, 1844
a. Martin, Acquilla, Frederich Reument and Samuel, La Grand
Princess
33. Soothsayer, Johannes, belong. A. Towers, Strawberry Hill, 1844,
1846
a. John, Rattan, 1844
b. Unnamed, Mount Pleasant, 1846
34. Obeah man, Turner, Clifton Hill, 1846
a. Mathias, Castle Coakley
35. Soothsayer, Susanna, free woman of color, Christiansted, 1847
a. John, belong. A. Creagh, Mon Bijou.
Notes
1. 38.9.21. CB, PRP, case 1831-02-21; 38.31.9, CB, PJ, entry 1831-02-21
and 1831-03-18. Translations from Danish are mine, if not otherwise
noted. Untranslated historical texts and words—in English or Danish—
are rendered in italics. Neville Hall suggested that obeah was being
pushed aside by the spread of Christianity in the Danish West Indies in
the nineteenth century, yet this interpretation does not correspond to the
emergence of obeah cases and obeah references in the Danish colonial
archive after 1800, see Gunvor Simonsen, ‘Magic, Obeah and Law in
the Danish West Indies, 1750s–1840s’, in Ports of Globalisation, Places of
Creolisation: Nordic Possessions in the Atlantic World During the Era of the
Slave Trade, edited by Holger Weiss (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 245–279. See
also Neville A.T. Hall, Slave Society in the Danish West Indies: St. Thomas,
St. John and St. Croix (Mona, Jamaica: The University of the West Indies
Press, 1992), 113; Arnold R. Highfield, ‘Patterns of Accommodation and
Resistance: The Moravian Witness to Slavery in the Danish West Indies’,
The Journal of Caribbean History 28 (1994): 155. The approximate
distances are based on the map of St. Croix drawn by Peter Lotharius
Oxholm in 1794 and published in 1799, http://www.kb.dk/maps/
kortsa/2012/jul/kortatlas/object65449/da/. Accessed 17 October
2017. One Danish foot equals 0.3138535 meter.
2. This environment is presented in Gunvor Simonsen and Poul Erik Olsen,
‘Slavesamfundet konsolideres, 1740–1802’, in Vestindien: St. Croix, St.
Thomas og St. Jan, edited by Poul Erik Olsen, Danmark og kolonierne
(København: Gad, 2017), 132–209; Gunvor Simonsen, Niklas T. Jensen,
and Poul Erik Olsen, ‘Reform Eller Revolution, 1803–48’, in Vestindien:

St. Croix, St. Thomas og St. Jan, edited by Poul Erik Olsen, Danmark og
kolonierne (København: Gad, 2017), 212–281.
3. 38.9.22. CB, PRP, case 1835-07-16; 571. Reviderede Regnskaber.
86.58–59. Vestindiske Regnskaber, Matrikel for St. Croix, 1831–1832,
76–78.
4. This description of infrastructure is inspired by the seminal exposition
of space, as natural, mental, social, and produced, provided by Henri
Lefebvre, The Production of Space, translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), in particular 73, 68–168. For the configura-
tion of space in the Caribbean see Ernesto Bassi, An Aquerous Territory:
Sailor Geographies and New Granada’s Transimperial Greater (Durham
and London: Duke University Press, 2016), 1–19; Pablo F. Gómez,
‘Incommensurable Epistemologies? The Atlantic Geography of Healing
in the Early Modern Caribbean’, Small Axe 18 (2014): 95–107.
5. This description of obeah draws on the work of Bilby and Handler who
have argued that obeah should mostly be understood as a positive force
in the lives of Africans and their descendants in the British Caribbean.
However, it also extends their conceptualization of obeah by maintaining
that it referenced forces that were neither bad nor good, but gained their
meaning through their multiple uses; see Vincent Brown, The Reaper’s
Garden: Death and Power in the World of Atlantic Slavery (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 145; Kenneth M. Bilby and
Jerome S. Handler, ‘Obeah: Healing and Protection in West Indian Slave
Life’, The Journal of Caribbean History 38 (2004): 153–183; Jerome S.
Handler and Kenneth M. Bilby, ‘On the Early Use and Origin of the
Term “Obeah” in Barbados and the Anglophone Caribbean’, Slavery and
Abolition 22 (2001): 87–100. A little noted, but comprehensive analysis
of obeah in the British Caribbean is provided by Nicola H. Götz, Obeah
- Hexerei in der Karibik - zwischen Mackt und Ohnmacht (Frankfurt am
Main: Peter Lang, 1995).
6. Diana Paton, ‘Witchcraft, Poison, Law, and Atlantic Slavery’, The William
and Mary Quarterly 69 (2012): 235–264; John Savage, ‘Slave Poison/
Slave Medicine: The Persistence of Obeah in Early Nineteenth-Century
Martinique’, in Obeah and Other Powers: The Politics of Caribbean
Religion and Healing, edited by Diana Paton and Maarit Forde
(Durham: Duke University Press, 2012), 149–171; John Savage, ‘“Black
Magic” and White Terror: Slave Poisoning and Colonial Society in Early
19th Century Martinique’, Journal of Social History 40 (2007): 635–662.
7. Juanita De Barros, ‘“Setting Things Right”: Medicine and Magic in
British Guiana, 1803–1838’, Slavery and Abolition 25 (2004): 243–261;
Randy M. Browne, ‘The “Bad Business” of Obeah: Power, Authority,
and the Politics of Slave Culture in the British Caribbean’, The William
232 G. SIMONSEN
and Mary Quarterly 68 (2011): 451–480; David Barry Gaspar, Bondmen

and Rebels: A Study of Master-Slave Relations in Antigua (Durham: Duke
University Press, 1985); Michael Craton, Testing the Chains: Resistance to
Slavery in the British West Indies (Ithaca and London: Cornell University
Press, 1982), 125–139.
8. Jerome S. Handler and Kenneth M. Bilby, Enacting Power: The
Criminalization of Obeah in the Anglophone Caribbean 1760–2011
(Kingston: University of the West Indies Press, 2012); Diana Paton,
‘Obeah Acts: Producing and Policing the Boundaries of Religion in the
Caribbean’, Small Axe 28 (2009): 1–18; Paton, ‘Witchcraft’. On obeah
as medicine see Juanita De Barros, ‘Dispensers, Obeah and Quackery:
Medical Rivalries in Post-Slavery British Guiana’, Social History of
Medicine 20 (2007): 243–261; Barros, ‘Setting Things Right’; Niklas T.
Jensen, For the Health of the Enslaved: Slaves, Medicine and Power in
the Danish West Indies, 1803–1848 (København: Museum Tusculanum
Press, 2012), 70–75. On obeah as law see Natalie Zemon Davis, ‘Judges,
Masters, Diviners: Slaves’ Experience of Criminal Justice in Colonial
Suriname’, Law and History Review 29 (2011): 925–984; Mindie
Lazarus-Black, Legitimate Acts and Illegal Encounters: Law and Society in
Antigua and Barbuda (Washington: Smithsonian Institute Press, 1994);
Diana Paton, No Bond but the Law: Punishment, Race, and Gender in
Jamaican State Formation, 1780–1870 (Durham: Duke University Press,
2004), 182–188.
9. For one such attempt see Simonsen, ‘Magic, Obeah and Law in the
Danish West Indies’; see also Diana Paton, The Cultural Politics of
Obeah: Religion, Colonialism and Modernity in the Caribbean World
10. Stephan Palmié, ‘Afterword. Other Powers: Tylor’s Principle, Father
William’s Temptations, and the Power of Banality’, in Obeah and Other
Powers: The Politics of Caribbean Religion and Healing, edited by Diana
Paton and Maarit Forde (Durham: Duke University Press, 2012), 317.
For different takes on the question of obeah’s representation see Kelly
Wisecup, ‘Knowing Obeah’, Atlantic Studies 10 (2013); Toni Wall
Jaudon, ‘Obeah’s Sensations: Rethinking Religion at the Transnational
Turn’, American Literature 84 (2012), who argue that obeah occass-
sioned representational difficulties for western observers because they
were forced to give up neat divisions between mind and body, subject
and object, amongst others.
11. Lara Putnam, ‘Rites of Power and Rumors of Race: The Circulation of
Supernatural Knowledge in the Greater Caribbean, 1890–1940’, in
Obeah and Other Powers: The Politics of Caribbean Religion and Healing,
edited by Diana Paton and Maarit Forde (Durham: Duke University
Press, 2012), 244–246; Lara Putnam, Radical Moves: Caribbean

Migrants and the Politics of Race in the Jazz Age (Chapel Hill: University
of North Carolina Press, 2013), 49–81; Paton, The Cultural Politics of
Obeah, 2–3; Browne, ‘The “Bad Business”’, 473; Randy M. Browne,
Surviving Slavery in the British Caribbean (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 2017), 148.
12. Pablo F. Gómez, The Experiential Caribbean: Creating Knowledge and
Healing in the Early Modern Atlantic (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 2017), 11.
13. A similar observation is made by de Barros who argues that healers con-
stituted a “minority elite” in nineteenth-century Berbice. Here I further
explore this line of thinking by highlighting the socio-economic charac-
teristics of the group; see Barros, ‘“Setting Things Right”’, 33.
14. This conceptual shift is traced in Simonsen, ‘Magic’.
15. 38.5.19, CB, GRP, case 1781-03-08.
16. Jensen suggests that such a distinction existed. It is unclear, however, if
Africans and African Caribbeans were also making it, see Jensen, For the
Health, 68–72, 247–248.
17. In his reading of the trial record following the alleged slave conspiracy
in Charleston in 1822, Michael P. Johnson suggests that such records
should be read primarily as a evidence of enslaved peoples’ imaginative
horizons; here I suggest that such horizons included everyday expecta-
tions and ideas about the ordinary versus the special and the exceptional;
see Michael P. Johnson, ‘Denmark Vesey and His Co-conspirators’,
William and Mary Quarterly 58 (2001): 915–976.
18. Paton, The Cultural Politics of Obeah, 163–165. The estimates are calcu-
lated on the basis of table 5.1, 163, and n. 9, 164 with population data
from year 1911.
19. Population data for year 1815, table 1.1 in Hall, Slave Society, 5.
20. 38.9.02, CB, PRP, case 1774-07-02.
21. 38.9.22. CB, PRP, case 1835-02-17.
22. 38.9.22. CB, PRP, case 1836-11-09.
23. 2.28.81. GG, SRPB, no. 1840-188.
24. Hans Christian Johansen, ‘The Reality Behind the Demographic
Argument to Abolish the Danish Slave Trade’, in The Abolition of
the Atlantic Slave Trade: Origins and Effects in Europe, Africa and
the Americas, edited by David Eltis and James Walvin (Madison: The
University of Wisconsin Press, 1981), table 12.12, 226–227.
25. 38.9.22. CB, PRP, case 1836-11-09.
26. 38.9.15. CB, PRP, case 1810-12-10 and 2.28.112. GG, SRPB, no.
1847-282.
234 G. SIMONSEN
27. James H. Sweet, Domingos Álvares, African Healing, and the Intellectual

History of the Atlantic World (Chapel Hill: The University of North
Carolina Press, 2011), 139–145; Jennifer L. Morgan, Laboring Women:
Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery (Philadelphia: University
of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 64–65; Onaiwu W. Ogbomo, ‘Women,
Power and Society in Pre-colonial Africa’, Lagos Historical Review 5
(2005): 49–74; Lisa Earl Castillo and Luis Nicolau Páres, ‘Marcelina da
Silva: A Nineteenth-Century Candomble Priestess in Bahia’, Slavery &
Abolition 31 (2010): 1–27. The presence of female ritual specialists in
the seventeenth-century Spanish Caribbean is documented by Gómez.
That is, in a period where plantation agriculture did not yet dominate
Caribbean societies, see Gómez, The Experiential Caribbean: Creating
Knowledge and Healing in the Early Modern Atlantic, 59–64.
28. Simonsen, ‘Magic’.
29. 2.27.2. GG, RPB, no. 1825-22. I would like to thank Poul Erik Olsen,
the Danish National Archives, for sharing this reference with me.
30. The Royal Danish American Gazette, 1773-07-10, 2, http://www2.
statsbiblioteket.dk/mediestream/avis/record/doms_aviser_page%3A-
uuid%3Ad7c9f750-7ba5-4112-bc44-e7ffea66c14a/query/obia. Accessed
10 June 2017.
31. Sanct Thomas Tidende, 1818-09-08, http://www2.statsbiblioteket.dk/
mediestream/avis/record/doms_aviser_page%3Auuid%3A0c87f182-80
d0-46eb-ac20-d7dbfcb11fbc/query/obeah. Accessed 7 October 2017;
Dansk Vestindisk Regerings Avis, 1843-02-27, http://www2.statsbib-
lioteket.dk/mediestream/avis/record/doms_aviser_page%3Auuid%3
A0c87f182-80d0-46eb-ac20-d7dbfcb11fbc/query/obeah. Accessed 7
October 2017.
32. Poul Erik Olsen, ‘Danske Lov på de vestindiske øer’, in Danske og
Norske Lov i 300 år, edited by Ditlev Tamm (København: Jurist- og
Økonomforbundets Forlag, 1983), 316–319; Ditlev Tamm, Retshistorie
- Danmark - Europa - globale perspektiver (København: Jurist- og
Økonomforbundets Forlag, 2005).
33. Kong Christian den Femtis Danske Lov, edited by V.A. Secher
(København: Schultz, 1891), 6-1-10.
34. 2.27.18. GG, RPB, no. 1844-315.
35. 2.27.18. GG, RPB, no. 1844-315.
36. 2.28.101. GG, SRPB, no. 1844-236.
37. 390. Generaltoldkammeret, Vestindiske og guineiske sager, Visdomsbog,
1733-1783, 359-363 and 38.9.08. CB, PRP, case 1788-05-02.
38. J.H. Schou and J.L.A. Kolderup-Rosenvinge, eds., Chronologisk Register
over de Kongelige Forordninger og Aabne Breve, som fra Aar 1670 af
ere udkomne (København, 1777–1850), Forordning om kvaksalvere,
1794-1709-1705.
39. Gunvor Simonsen, Slave Stories: Law, Representation, and Gender in the

Danish West Indies (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2017), 137–169.
40. 38.31.9, CB, PJ, entry 13-01-1832 and 24-03-1831.
41. 38.31.11. CB, PJ, entry 1834-02-25.
42. 38.9.21. CB, PRP, case 1831-02-21; 38.31.9, CB, PJ, entry 1831-02-21,
1831-03-18, 1832-01-13, 1832-03-24; 38.31.11. CB, PJ, entry 1835-02-
25 and 1835-02-26; 2.27.10. GG, RPB, no. 1834-245. A similar punish-
ment was used against Simon in 1847, see 2.27.19. GG, RPB, no. 1847-282.
43. 38.6.15. CB, DP, 1781-04-18.
44. The argument that the punishment of enslaved people was aimed at
destroying their bodies as well as their belief systems have also been made
by Vincent Brown, ‘Spiritual Terror and Sacred Authority in Jamaican
Slave Society’, Slavery and Abolition 24 (2003): 24–53; Diana Paton,
‘Punishment, Crime, and the Bodies of Slaves in Eighteenth-Century
Jamaica’, Journal of Social History 34 (2001): 923–954.
45. 2.28.112. GG, SRPB, no. 1847-282.
46. 2.28.36. GG, SRPB, no. 1831-231.
47. 38.9.3. CB, PRP, case 1774-07-05.
48. 38.9.22. CB, PRP, case 1836-11-09.
49. 2.28.108. GG, SRPB, no. 1846-61.
50. 2.28.108. GG, SRPB, no. 1846-61.
51. 2.27.18. GG, RPB, no. 1846–62.
52. 38.9.20. CB, PRP, case 1825-04-07.
53. 2.27.18. GG, RPB, no. 1844-315.
54. 2.27.18. GG, RPB, no. 1844-315.
55. 2.28.112. GG, SRPB, no. 1847-282.
56. 38.9.22. CB, PRP, case 1835-02-17.
57. 38.9.22. CB, PRP, case 1835-02-17. Many currencies were used in the
Danish West Indies. Among the more common were pieces of eight. One
piece of eight consisted of eight reales, each of which again consisted of 6
stivers.
58. For the precarious nature of African Caribbean spiritual expertise see also
Browne, Surviving Slavery, 149–156. The precarious position of African
Caribbean spiritual experts are echoed in the fragility of priesthood in
the relatively un-stratified African societies from which most Africans
arrived to the Caribbean, see John K. Thornton, A Cultural History of
the Atlantic World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 399.
59. 2.28.112. GG, SRPB, no. 1847-282.
60. 2.28.112. GG, SRPB, no. 1847-282.
61. 2.28.36. GG, SRPB, no. 1831-232.
62. 38.9.01. CB, PRP, case 1758-11-05 and 3.81.219. Den vestindiske
regering, Gruppeordnede sager: Retsvæsen. Mord på plantageforvalter P.
Machin, 1832.
236 G. SIMONSEN
63. 2.28.100, GG, SRPB, no. 1844-100.

64. Maarit Forde, ‘The Moral Economy of Spiritual Work: Money and
Rituals in Trinidad and Tobago’, in Obeah and Other Powers: The Politics
of Caribbean Religion and Healing, edited by Diana Paton and Maarit
Forde (Durham: Duke University Press, 2012), 211.
65. Jensen, For the Health; Johansen, ‘The Reality’.
66. These examples are gathered from 38.6.08-09. CB, DP, verdict 1768-
12-07; 38.9.03. CB, PRP, case 1774-09-10; 38.9.08. CB, PRP, case
1788-11-26.
67. 38.9.02. CB, PRP, case 1774-07-02.
68. 38.9.20, CB, PRP, case 1824-09-24.
69. 38.5.28. CB, GRP, case 1804-07-27 and 38.9.22. CB, PRP, case
1835-02-17.
70. 2.28.100. GG, SRPB, 1844, no. 1-230 and no. 1844-100; 38.9.01. CB,
PRP, case 1758-11-05.
71. 38.9.20. CB, PRP, 1825-04-07.
72. Niklas T. Jensen and Poul Erik Olsen, ‘Frihed under tvang og nedgang,
1848–78’, in Vestindien: St. Croix, St. Thomas og St. Jan, edited by Poul
Erik Olsen, Danmark og kolonierne (København: Gad, 2017), 297–298.
73. 38.9.01. CB, PRP, case 1758-11-05; 38.9.08. CB, PRP, case 1788-05-
02; 38.5.19, CB, GRP, case 1781-03-08; and 38.9.17. CB, PRP, case
1815-05-17.
74. 38.9.05. CB, PRP, case 1783-04-03, my italics.
75. 38.9.20. CB, PRP, case 1824-09-24, my italics.
76. 2.28.112. GG, SRPB, no. 1847-282.
77. 2.27.18. GG, RPB, no. 1844-91.
78. 38.9.22. CB, PRP, case 1835-02-17.
79. 2.28.112. GG, SRPB, no. 1847-282.
80. 38.5.28. CB, GRP, case 1804-07-27.
81. 2.28.36. GG, SRPB, no. 1831-231.
82. 2.28.101. GG, SRPB, no. 1844-236.
83. 38.9.04. CB, PRP, case 1779-09-22.
84. 38.5.19, CB, GRP, case 1781-03-08.
85. 2.27.11. GG, RPB, no. 1835-280 and no. 1835-371.
86. 2.28.36. GG, SRPB, no. 1831-232; 2.27.18. GG, RPB, 1844–1846, no.
1844-315.
87. Lara Putnam notes that in the twentieth century, obeah worked by being
“neither fully knowable, nor probably speakable,” see Putnam, ‘Obeah
and Other Powers’, 244.
88. The communal elements of African Caribbean spiritual practices are also
explored in Davis, ‘Judges, Masters, Diviners’.
89. 2.28.36. GG, SRPB, no. 1831-232, my roman.
90. 2.28.36. GG, SRPB, no. 1831-232.

91. List compiled by Gunvor Simonsen.
Manuscript Sources
Rigsarkivet (The National Archives), Denmark
De vestindiske lokalarkvier (The Danish West Indian Local Archives)
Christiansted byfoged (CB)
38.5.19, & 28, Gæsteretsprotokoller (GRP)
38.6.08-09 & 15, Domprotokoller (DP)
38.9.1-5, 8, 15, 17 & 20-2, Politiretsprotokoller (PRP)
38.31.9 & 11, Politijournaler (PJ)
Den vestindiske regering (VR)
3.81.219, Gruppeordnede sager: Retsvæsen. Mord på plantageforvalter
P. Machin, 1832
Generalguvernementet (GG)
2.27.2, 10, 11, 18 & 19, Referatprotokol B (RPB)
2.28.36, 81,100-1, 108, & 112, Sager til referatprotokol B (SRPB)
Centraladministrationen (Central administration)
Reviderede regnskaber, 571
86.58-59, Vestindiske regnskaber, Matrikel for St. Croix
Generaltoldkammeret
390, Vestindiske og guineiske sager, Visdomsbog
CHAPTER 9
Toward a Typology of Nineteenth-Century

Lakota Magico-Medico-Ritual Specialists
David C. Posthumus
This chapter explores the relations between medical and religious systems
in nineteenth-century Lakota (Western [Teton] Sioux) culture, demon-
strating the inherent plurality and fluidity of traditional Lakota healing
practice. Lakota magico-medico-ritual culture was and is idiosyncratic
and anti-dogmatic, often based on visions and revelatory experiences,
and hence open to innovation and practical adaptation. That said, there
were and continue to be specific types of practitioners who used specific
medicines and techniques, conducted specific ceremonies, and/or were
affiliated with specific illnesses and spirit persons, illustrating structure
within an otherwise varied, personalistic magico-medico-religious sys-
tem. From the perspective of missionaries, Indian agents, and other (set-
tler-)colonial operatives, traditional Lakota healers were often seen as
hindrances to assimilation and “civilisation,” as resisting (settler-)colonial
authority and domination, and as such their practices could be under-
stood as what we might today refer to as decolonising strategies. Lastly,
D. C. Posthumus (*)
University of South Dakota, Vermillion, SD, USA
e-mail: david.posthumus@usd.edu

240 D. C. POSTHUMUS
this chapter hopes to contribute to the recognition of the importance of

indigenous perspectives on histories of medicine and healing.
Traditional nineteenth-century Lakota magico-medico-religious
belief and ritual were extensively recorded. The earliest accounts vary
from sympathetic to hostile. These primary sources were written by
Euro-American outsiders, such as fur traders, explorers, military person-
nel, Indian agents and other government functionaries, and missionaries
and describe the Sioux before they gradually subdivided into the three
geographically distinct groups we know today, the Dakotas or Eastern
(Santee) Sioux, the Yanktons and Yanktonais or Middle Sioux, and the
Lakotas or Western (Teton) Sioux. Among the most important of these
early sources on Sioux religion are the writings of Jean-Baptiste Truteau,
Pierre-Antoine Tabeau, Lewis and Clark, Edwin T. Denig, Joseph N.
Nicollet, Seth and Mary Eastman, Rufus B. Sage, and Francis Parkman,
just to name a few.1 The most important early missionary sources are the
writings of Stephen R. Riggs, Gideon Pond, and Samuel Pond, among
others, and describe the Eastern Sioux.2 Particularly missionaries and
Indian agents, who had clear religious and political conflicts of interest,
often cared little to understand these traditions on their own terms, opt-
ing instead to label them as primitive superstition, charlatanism, pagan
devil worship, or some combination thereof.
In often bungling nineteenth-century accounts early missionar-
ies and others described the spirits peopling the Dakota or Eastern
Sioux cosmos in Western, Judeo-Christian moralistic terms. Stephen
R. Riggs was a Presbyterian missionary to the Dakotas at Lac Qui
Parle, Minnesota Territory throughout the mid-nineteenth century. In
1869, Riggs explains, “the sum and substance … [of Dakota religion]
is demon-worship. The gods they worship are destitute of all the attrib-
utes of the true God. Even the best of them, or the Great Spirit, has
but a negative character.”3 Gideon Pond was a Presbyterian mission-
ary to the Dakotas in Minnesota Territory in the mid-1800s. Speaking
of Dakota “superstitions” in a letter dated December 14, 1866, Pond
writes that these beliefs may seem “too absurd to be religion of men,
however degraded, but they have been obtained from the Indians
themselves, and I have never discovered that they had anything better,
but have discovered much that is worse.”4 Referring to Dakota reli-
gious practitioners and healers as “pretenders,” Pond, who helped to
introduce the concepts of the devil, hell, and original sin among the
Sioux, writes:
9 TOWARD A TYPOLOGY OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY … 241
Thus, by imposing on an ignorant, savage people, “gods many,” gods of

life and gods of death, gods of hate and revenge and lust, gods of cold
and of heat, gods of all the various passions, gods of lying, deceit and
wrong, gods of gluttony and drunkenness, gods of lasciviousness and
impurity, gods of conception and abortion, gods innumerable—hideous
and horrid monsters, which are the creation of the inflamed and bedev-
iled imaginations of these Thugs—these wakan [‘sacred, mysterious, holy’]
men—they exert an influence over them, in the various official capacities
which they assume, which is absolute and which pervades Dakota soci-
ety—an influence which bears with all its force on each individual of their
victims, which tends to crush him down still deeper, if indeed there are
depths below them, in ignorance, superstition, degradation, and misery of
soul and body, and force them into an unreserved surrender to their own
whims and caprices.5
Despite this lack of sympathy and understanding these primary sources

are incredibly important and constitute the basic framework for an eth-
nohistorical understanding of nineteenth-century Sioux medicine, belief,
ritual, and ceremonial life.
Fortunately, we also have a corpus of material focusing on Lakota reli-
gion written by Lakota people themselves, often in their native language.
As Raymond DeMallie explains, “The writings of George Bushotter
(1887–1888), George Sword (ca. 1909), Thomas Tyon (ca. 1911), and
Ivan Stars (ca. 1915–1920)—to name only the most prolific—form a
native corpus for understanding traditional culture that is unparalleled
for any other Plains tribe.”6 In addition to these invaluable sources we
also have a substantial body of data dictated by Lakotas and recorded
by nonnatives.7 Along with the materials dictated by Nicholas Black Elk8
and not to mention the substantial body of data since written by anthro-
pologists and historians, we have an extensive foundation with which to
explore traditional nineteenth-century Lakota healing, religious belief,
ritual, and practitioners. In the following chapter, I will synthesise the
various sources on Lakota healing practices in an attempt to reach a com-
prehensive typology of nineteenth-century Lakota magico-medico-ritual
specialists that reflects Lakota cultural perspectives and understandings.
Many have oversimplified the classification of nineteenth-century
Lakota magico-medico-ritual specialists, while others attempt to impose
implausible, definite distinctions among practitioner types, forcing a
rigid structure on the data that does not reflect indigenous perspectives.9
Two significant and intersecting levels of practitioner classification are
242 D. C. POSTHUMUS
classification via spirit guardian or nonhuman power source and classi-

fication based on ability, method, practice, and technique. These cate-
gories are cumulative, permeable, often overlapping, and not mutually
exclusive. The classification of nineteenth-century Lakota healers involves
a vast array of determinants and is extremely complex, defying simplis-
tic and neat categorisation. Although the urge to categorise practitioners
may appear to be a futile Western impulse, we must remember that clas-
sification is one of the prime and fundamental concerns of anthropology,
culture, and humanity.10
Building largely on the work of Benedict, DeMallie, Densmore,
Fugle, Walker and Wissler,11 and guided by numerous interviews and
conversations with contemporary Lakota practitioners from Pine Ridge
Reservation, this chapter is an attempt to rearticulate the organisation
and classification of nineteenth-century Lakota religious and magi-
co-medico-ritual specialists. It must be understood that within each of
the three major categories explored herein there is great variation, inno-
vation, and numerous subcategories. Additionally, as per the dreamer
and method categories, the types posited and explored below are cumu-
lative, the boundaries between them being indistinct, permeable, and
not mutually exclusive. Finally, the human proclivity for good or evil and
the dreamer (iháŋbla) classification crosscut all other categories based on
ability, method, practice, technique, or type.
As a point of departure I provide the following quote from the
journal of the French scientist Joseph N. Nicollet, who travelled and
lived among the Sioux inhabiting the land between the Missouri and
Mississippi Rivers in 1838–1839. This very early account of the religious
organisation of the Sioux people distinguishes between three major prac-
titioner types—which we will subsequently analyse and develop below—
and provides a baseline for this chapter. Nicollet lists the following
practitioner types in his journal:
Wichashta wakan [Wičháša wakȟáŋ] — man of the medicine society,12 not

a doctor but a diviner, a juggler [or conjuror].
Wichashta waka[n] wapiya [Wičháša wakȟáŋ waphíya] — the medicine
man who is a doctor, practicing medicine in his nation. Wapiya [Waphíya]
— name of a doctor who treats a sick person, who does ceremonies for
him, the word means he mends, he restores, he treats.
Pejuta witchashta [Pȟežúta wičháša] — man of roots, he is of the medi-
cine, doctor, surgeon (of the whites).13
As we shall see Nicollet’s classification is astute both in terms of practi-

tioner type and function. Based on Nicollet’s observations and the fol-
lowing categorisation of nineteenth-century Lakota practitioners it will
become increasingly clear that Western Sioux religious organisation evi-
dences great continuity with past traditions. The first distinction that
must be made is between wičháša wakȟáŋ (shaman; literally, ‘holy man’)
and pȟežúta wičháša (herbalist; literally, ‘medicine man’).
Wičháša WakȞáŋ (Holy Man, Shaman)

Frances Densmore conducted extensive ethnographic fieldwork with
Sioux people from Standing Rock Reservation in 1912–1913. She lists
three methods of treating the sick among the Lakotas: (1) by means of
the sacred stones (tȟuŋkáŋ, yuwípi wašíčuŋ); (2) conjuring; and (3) the
giving of herbs. Treatment through use of the sacred stones, Densmore
explains, might be administered by a wakȟáŋȟ’aŋ,14 which she describes
as a term “applied to the highest type of medicine-men—those qual-
ified to command the sacred stones, to bring fair weather, or to fill
such important ceremonial positions as that of Intercessor in the Sun
dance.”15 Densmore is clearly referring to a wičháša wakȟáŋ (holy man),
those who pioneering ethnologist Alice Fletcher refers to as “priest” or
“priest of the higher class,”16 and James R. Walker refers to generally
as “shaman” or “holy man.”17 The gifted Sioux ethnographer and lin-
guist Ella Deloria labels the ritual leader of a given ceremony as “high
priest.”18 As Walker explains, “A wicasa wakan (wakan man, shaman) is
so called because he has marvelous power and wisdom so that he can
speak and do as the Wakan do.”19 Even in English we see distinctions
among the various categories or types of practitioners.
Densmore’s wakȟáŋȟ’aŋ is who the Oglala Lakota holy man George
Sword generally calls “holy man,” “priest,” or “priest of the old reli-
gion.”20 Wičháša wakȟáŋpi (holy men) were those old, wise men who
accumulated many spirit guardians, abilities, powers, and methods
throughout their lives. They obtained or attained visions of the most
powerful nonhuman persons, usually the celestial or sky deities, such
as the Sun, Wind, and the Moving Deity (Škáŋ). Being a holy man or
shaman came with great responsibility to one’s people. The great distin-
guishing characteristic of a shaman was wisdom.21
The rigorous training of holy men distinguished them from other
practitioner categories. One did not usually become a shaman overnight.
Through the master-apprentice model it took years to learn the ways of
244 D. C. POSTHUMUS
the shamans and how to perform the rituals of the Lakotas. The train-
ing of a holy man involved a series of initiation rites, such as the wačhípi
wakȟáŋ (mystery dance) and the wiwáŋyaŋg wačhípi (sun dance), as
well as the mastering of Lakota social customs, philosophy, myth, ritual,
songs, techniques, and the esoteric languages of the spirits and holy men.
Only shamans could train and produce new shamans. As Walker explains,
“The practices of a Shaman must be learned by association with other
Shamans.”22
Becoming a holy man often required more than just one successful
haŋbléčheyapi (vision fast, vision quest). Most neophytes were required
to dance a particularly trying form of the sun dance as a prerequisite to
becoming a holy man.23 As the Oglalas Little Wound, American Horse,
and Lone Star explained to Walker in 1896, “If one wishes to become a
shaman of the highest order, he should dance the Sun Dance suspended
from the pole so that his feet will not touch the ground.”24 Those who
danced the sun dance to become holy men usually led the other dancers
as well. Before the ritual began a wise holy man harangued his appren-
tice and candidate for holy man status, instilling in him the worldview,
normative values, expectations and responsibilities of a Lakota shaman.
Walker reports that the candidate “should be informed that as a Shaman
the people will consider that he is endowed with a knowledge of the laws
and customs of the Lakota and supernatural wisdom; that he can com-
municate with supernatural beings and interpret Their wills; that he will
have supervisory authority over all ceremonies; and that if he knows the
will of a supernatural being to be that any law, customs, or ceremony be
altered or prohibited, he should act according to such will.”25 Although
it was not absolutely necessary to dance the sun dance to become a sha-
man, those who did dance the fourth and most trying grade, suspended
from the čhaŋwákȟaŋ (sacred tree), were held in higher public esteem
and hence acquired more prestige than those who did not. Only shamans
could mentor someone who wished to dance the sun dance to become
a shaman, another example of the master-apprentice model. Clearly,
holy men or shamans were the masters in the master-apprentice model:
they were frequently the leaders of the dream societies atop the religious
hierarchy, having few people above them dictating what they should or
should not do.26 As Royal Hassrick explains, “Shamans formed a kind
of priesthood and were granted almost theocratic authority in periods of
religious observance and during times of national crisis.”27
Becoming a holy man required years of experience, observation,

participation, and training with an older, wiser, more experienced and
established holy man. I have labelled this method the master-apprentice
model for transmitting sacred, religious, and ritual knowledge from one
individual to another and from one generation to the next. As Sword
explains:
Wicasa wakan (holy man, or shaman) is made by other shamans by cer-

emony and teaching that which a shaman should know. He is made holy
by the ceremony so that he can communicate with Wakan Tanka, and the
ceremony also prepares his outfit and gives to it supernatural powers.… A
shaman governs all the ceremonies of the Lakota, so he must know them.
He must know iye wakan (holy language, or the language of the shamans),
and hanbloglaka (spirit language). He must know all the laws and customs
of the Lakotas, for he may prohibit or change any of them. But if he does
this it must be because it is the will of Wakan Tanka.… The oldest or wis-
est shamans are the most respected. A shaman should conduct the larger
ceremonies, but anyone may perform the smaller.… There are many dis-
eases that only a shaman can cure. He does this with his wasicun and not
with medicines.28
Wičháša wakȟáŋpi were inaugurated not only through dancing the

fourth sun dance grade, but also through another terminal rite of pas-
sage, the wačhípi wakȟáŋ (mystery dance), more common among the
Eastern Sioux. Membership in this selective society was strictly limited:
only the most successful, prestigious, proven, and powerful practitioners
were invited to participate in the mystery dance. Starr Frazier, a Santee
consultant of Ella Deloria’s, asserts that “all members of Wakʿą́-wacʿipi
were dreamers; but not all dreamers were members of Wakʿą́-wacʿipi:”29
… it was very difficult to become a member of Wakʿą́-wacʿipi. One had to

be picked and chosen because of a good character and report; one could
not will to belong; but could only be chosen. The members did the choos-
ing, and only when a member died, so that a new one was necessary to
make up the number. The membership was large, but it was very selective
for all that.
All members of Wakʿą́-wacʿipi were Dreamers or Wakʿą́-men or women.
That means that through dreams or some other means of communication,
the individuals had gained power from the supernatural and were in har-
monious relation with it.30
246 D. C. POSTHUMUS
The mystery dance was the mechanism through which practitioners

received their ceremonial bundles (wašíčuŋpi or wóphiyepi) and other
accoutrements, knowledge, and powers distinctive of the holy man posi-
tion or social status. Through participation in this rite individuals were
taught the sacred lore, mythology, social customs, and history of the
people; how to perform and conduct the greater and lesser Lakota cere-
monies; and the sacred, esoteric languages of the shamans (wakȟáŋ iyá)
and the spirits (haŋblóglaka).31 In other words, the mystery dance was
the mechanism by which practitioners ascended the ladder of Lakota
religious hierarchy or structure. Therefore, participation in the medicine
dance was a crucial distinguishing factor between holy men and other
practitioner types.32 Only after this arduous period of apprenticeship,
instruction, observation, participation, and sacrifice did a practitioner
become a master of ceremonies, prognosticator, prescriber, proscriber,
and a religious and magico-medico-ritual originator.
Holy men were the repositories of sacred knowledge. They were often
the tribal historians, storytellers of traditional narratives and myths, and
pipe and bundle keepers.33 As Walker explains, “the shamans were the
proper persons to explain difficult and obscure matters in the mythology
or ceremonial of the Lakotas.”34 In general, shamans taught the peo-
ple how to be sacred and how to be Lakota. They shaped the ethos and
worldview of their followers, instilling in them the lore, normative val-
ues, and virtues of the Lakotas. They were wise and trusted councillors
who gave advice on all religious matters, they trained other practitioners,
and they were the religious authorities, originators, and gatekeepers of
the tribe.35 Holy men often assigned tutelary or totemic spirit guardi-
ans to their followers.36 In many cases the doctrines that only the sha-
mans knew, the ceremonies, and the esoteric languages comprised the
restricted knowledge that only holy men had access to.37
Shamans had many varied abilities that other practitioner categories
did not necessarily possess. Wičháša wakȟáŋpi communicated with, inter-
preted, and spoke for the wakȟáŋ beings in the universe. They inter-
preted all sacred communications, their will was regarded as the will of
the spirits, and their word was authoritative. They were viewed as the
earthly manifestations and representatives of the spirits. For instance,
James Lynd describes how among the Dakotas a young man first purified
himself before approaching a holy man with a filled pipe and tears in his
eyes, ritually wailing, crying to or for, and quite literally praying to the
practitioner from Sioux perspectives.38 This is exactly how an individual
would properly approach a spirit. According to Gideon Pond, among

the Eastern Sioux of Minnesota practitioners “are the representatives of
the gods on earth to men. They are the gods in human form, though in
diminished proportions. They are essentially different from other men—
wakan.”39 Later, he writes, “They are feared, if possible, more than the
gods themselves, for they are present in the camp and in the lodge.”40
Through divinatory practice holy men were the great prognostica-
tors of the Lakota people. They diagnosed sickness to discern its cause,
nature, who was most qualified to cure it, and prescribed and proscribed
courses of treatment and physical and psychological therapy.41 Some
shamans had the ability to divine the future, locate lost objects, control
and manipulate the weather, and call animals closer to camp in times
of famine and scarcity. Some holy men were capable of transmogrifica-
tion, possessing the power of invisibility, while others could ward off evil
influences, provide magical protection, heal through the invocation and
aid of good spirits, and drive away evil spirits through the use of their
ceremonial bundles. Holy men could detect acts of sorcery/witchcraft
and identify which spirits were responsible for various illnesses. In this
way they were able to locate the cause or source and character of sick-
ness (often conceptualised as a physical object and manifested as pain),
an important prerequisite to the treatment process. Holy men also pro-
duced and consecrated charms, potions, and talismans for their cus-
tomers, patients, and families, providing the necessary songs and ritual
formulae required to activate their potencies. It is unlikely that a single
holy man could have obtained, acquired, or mastered all the abilities and
techniques described above, but certainly some exceptional individuals
mastered and practiced many of them.42
Each shaman had his own ceremonial bundle or implement (wóphiye,
wašíčuŋ) containing the šičúŋ (spiritual essence, potency) or tȟúŋ of his
spirit guardian.43 Because only holy men conducted the ceremonies per-
taining to the most powerful spirits, usually the celestial deities, only
holy men could possess ceremonial bundles imbued with the essences
of the more potent manifestations of Wakȟáŋ Tȟáŋka (Great Mystery),
the totality of all wakȟáŋ energy and power in the universe. The cere-
monial bundle was prayed over, invoked, and utilised in the holy man’s
wakȟáŋ doings; in treating and curing the sick and wounded, in expel-
ling evil influences and restoring patients back to health, in evoking44
occult power into various objects, and in other magico-medico-ritual
undertakings. According to Sword, “When the holy man treats the sick,
248 D. C. POSTHUMUS
he performs a ceremony and invokes his ceremonial bag and the familiar
(sicun) in it does what he asks it to do.”45 The wašíčuŋ, potency of a
wakȟáŋ, and ritual regalia and paraphernalia were the šičúŋpi of the sha-
man. A holy man’s ceremonial bundle was supremely powerful, wrapped
up in the identity of its owner, and reverenced as the being whose
potency it contained.46
A holy man’s ceremonial bundle could exorcise or control malevolent
spirits, such as Iktómi (Trickster), Wazíya (Wizard), Wakáŋka (Witch),
and Anúŋg Ité (Double Woman). Through their ceremonial bundles
shamans could evoke occult or parapsychological power into exter-
nal objects, imbuing them with potency. Or, alternately, they could use
their wašíčuŋpi to annul the potency of an object through the proper
prescribed ritual. Wakȟáŋ Tȟáŋka gave a wičháša wakȟáŋ the power that
rendered him wakȟáŋ and the ability to impart tȟúŋ (spiritual essence of
a wakȟáŋ being) into anything.47 This ability to impart or evoke tȟúŋ
into external objects and people was a significant factor distinguishing
holy men from other practitioner types.
The wašíčuŋ (ceremonial bundle) was central to a holy man’s prac-
tice. They invoked, utilised, and evoked their ceremonial bundles and
the familiar spirit guardian (šičúŋ) encased therein in their ritual practice.
They knew distinct songs and incantations, prayers, or ritual formulae
for each nonhuman person they invoked. Each practitioner could have
different songs for each spirit being, all of which were in the esoteric,
symbolic language of the holy men.48 According to Sword, “This is …
the speech that only the shamans know. The shamans speak this speech
in all their ceremonies and songs so that the people may not learn those
things that only the shamans should know.”49 Curtis corroborates the
words of Walker’s interlocutors. Through the vision quest, he explains, a
spirit being taught—and hence gave—a practitioner “certain prayers and
songs, which will always remain the same in different ceremonies. The
songs and prayers of two medicine-men taught by the same animal vary
somewhat, though all bear resemblance to one another.”50
Holy men alone could produce and consecrate sacred bundles for
members of their families and followings, also providing the ceremonial
songs and ritual formulae required to activate their potencies. Anyone
who wished to conduct a ceremony or become a shaman had to first
select a holy man to prepare a ceremonial bundle for him.51
Holy men also painted, and hence consecrated, people. Individuals
who were to become akíčhita (camp police), huŋká (honored, beloved
members of the tribe), or other formal social statuses were first

instructed and counseled and then painted and consecrated by shamans
in ritual settings, again highlighting the normative aspect of ritual. The
symbolic designs painted first by shamans became insignia to the recip-
ient, indicative of an office or status. These markings were first painted
by a holy man in ceremony, as in the marking of akíčhita and huŋká can-
didates. Thereafter, the individual gained the right to renew the paint
at any time. Red paint, in particular, symbolised the sacred powers of
the holy men.52 Additionally, shamans painted the hands of sun danc-
ers so they could handle ritual objects and sanctified their regalia and
implements through smudging or incensing (wazílya), another form of
consecration.53
In other words, holy men produced wakȟáŋ transformations that
could not be explained in empirical terms. As Sword explains, “When
a priest uses any object in performing a ceremony that object becomes
endowed with a spirit, not exactly a spirit, but something like one,
the priests call it tonwan or ton. Now anything that thus acquires ton
is wakan, because it is the power of the spirit or quality that has been
put into it. A wicasa wakan has the power of the wakan beings.”54 The
ability to cause transformations and impart magical potency (tȟúŋ or
tuŋwáŋ) into people and objects distinguished holy men from medi-
cine men or herbalists. As Feather on Head explains, “I can give magic
power to things. I can make the mysterious things. I have power over the
Indians to do mysterious things to them. I can cure the sick and I can
make the well sick. If they come to me and listen to me, I can do myste-
rious things for them.”55
Holy men directed the ceremonies. They were the masters of cere-
mony in all major rituals, such as the sweat lodge, vision quest, huŋká,
buffalo sing, and minor ceremonies, such as the piercing of the ears
and naming of young children.56 According to Walker’s interlocutors,
the sun dance “must be conducted by a shaman who knows all the cus-
toms of the people.… He must know all the secret things of the sha-
mans.”57 Shamans were the leaders and establishers of all ceremonial
camps, could interfere with social customs, and they alone could alter
ceremonies, acting as the religious and ritual innovators or bricoleur of
the Lakotas, fashioning novel constructions of reality with the elements
at hand. Holy men could promulgate new ceremonies and determine
the form and flow of ritual. In other words, shamans decided what was
correct, proper, and traditional in the religious and magico-medico-ritual
250 D. C. POSTHUMUS
domains.58 Further, holy men could impose, dictate, implement, and lift
sanctions on others, even chiefs. In this way holy men were also influen-
tial civil and political leaders. Knowing and conducting all the ceremo-
nies was truly the distinguishing characteristic of a holy man.59
Malevolent or antisocial holy men could hinder or terminate life
movement, causing or inflicting misfortune, sickness, and death through
their songs, incantations, and ceremonies. Illnesses inflicted by holy men
were considered “different” (tȟókeča) from ordinary physical ailments
and often could only be treated or cured by another, more potent holy
man with the aid of his wašíčuŋ.60 For instance, if the akíčhita (camp
police) wrongfully blamed or punished a holy man for some indiscretion
or deception he could curse them.61
Alternately, benevolent holy men could sustain and perpetuate life
movement, treating and curing sickness through the ritual invocation of
their ceremonial bundles, song, and prayer. In general, holy men special-
ised in the treatment of spiritual, paranormal, psychological, psychoso-
matic, and symbolic illnesses, such as various types of soul loss (renewing
and revitalising an afflicted niyá or retrieving and reincorporating an
errant naǧí) and disease-object intrusion (whether it be a foreign object
or projectile shot and implanted through sorcery/witchcraft or a case
of malevolent spirit possession). Normatively, shamans treated the psy-
chological, psychosomatic, or symbolic ailments of their people using
mystico-spiritual or magico-ritual methods and techniques. They were
oftentimes more concerned with collective undertakings and maintaining
social solidarity, rather than individual issues. They prepared very myste-
rious medicines that were consecrated62 and imbued with power through
their incantations (phikhíyapi) and ritual formulae. If a malevolent spirit
or influence (tuŋwáŋ) was the cause of a sickness, it was best treated and
cured by a holy man, not a medicine man or herbalist.
According to Sword:
The holy man is the most potent in treating the sick. He can speak with
the Great Mystery and they will help him. He does not treat the sick with
medicines. He has a ceremonial bag. It is called wopiye in Lakota. This
does not have medicines in it. It has a mystery [wakȟáŋ] in it and this
mystery makes the bag very potent. It has all the potency of the mystery.
The holy man invokes his ceremonial bundle or bag. It may be like a bag
or it may be like a bundle. Or it may be anything that is revealed to him
in a vision. This bag is prepared with much ceremony by other holy men
and the thing in it is made holy by ceremony.… Then it is like a part of
himself.63… The holy man prays to his ceremonial bag. He must know the
song that belongs to it and the right words to say in praying to it. Then
when he sings this song and says these words, the bag will do as he bids.
It is not the bag which does this but that which is in the bag. This is called
sicun in Lakota. The bag is called wasicun. A holy man does not give med-
icine to the sick unless he is a medicine man also. If he is a medicine man,
he may give medicines and invoke his ceremonial bag also, and the bag will
compel the medicine to do as he wishes it.64
Holy men were the highest-ranking and most potent and powerful ritual
practitioners among the Lakotas. Through years of experience, observa-
tion, participation, and sacrifice they accumulated numerous nonhuman
spirit guardians, powers, and abilities and mastered a variety of ritual
curing techniques. They doctored and healed mainly through the use
of their ceremonial bundles, not necessarily with medicines (pȟežúta),
although many undoubtedly also functioned as herbalists. As Walker’s
interlocutors explain, “A shaman is a wise man who has intercourse with
the spirits. He is generally a medicine man. He knows about the medi-
cines and what sickness they are good for.”65 Holy men were wise mas-
ters of ceremony, leading and directing the great religious rituals, and
intermediaries or intercessors, mediating between the common people
and the spirits.66 The spirits made their wishes known largely in two
ways: through direct communication in the vision quest or through holy
men. Shamans were considered wakȟáŋ by the common people in rela-
tion to humankind in their role as intermediaries. Holy men were the
earthly manifestations and representatives of the spirits, and giving to the
shamans was the equivalent of sacrificing to the spirits.67
The holy men represented Wakȟáŋ Tȟáŋka, communicating with and
speaking for the spirits.68 They had access to restricted esoteric knowl-
edge that only the most powerful practitioners knew and understood,
such as mythology, religious symbolism, philosophy, and ideology; the
order of operations of ritual; and the holy languages of the shamans and
spirits. Holy men were the gatekeepers, and they guarded their religious
and magico-medico-ritual knowledge, limiting access to it.69 As Sword
explains, “the secret things of the shamans … should be told only to one
who is to become a shaman.”70 Lesser practitioners—usually younger
individuals with less accumulated spirit helpers, knowledge, power,
mastered methods and techniques, prestige, followings, and wealth—
had to work their way up through the ranks, similar in some regards to
the age-grade societies of other Northern Plains tribes, diachronically,
252 D. C. POSTHUMUS
processually, and cumulatively gaining access, knowledge, experience,

and power throughout life. Proof of ritual efficacy came only with expe-
rience and public display. Prestige, reputation, social standing, and the
attainment of a following were functions of proof of ritual efficacy, while
wealth was a function of prestige and social standing.
Next we will examine the counterpart to the holy man, the pȟežúta
wičháša (medicine man) or herbalist. As opposed to holy men, we will
see that typically medicine men: (1) did not utilise ceremonial bundles
in their practice; (2) did not possess bundles with the most potent spirit
essences; (3) did not prepare sacred bundles for others; (4) did not con-
secrate and paint people in ritual settings; (5) did not act as interme-
diaries between human and nonhuman persons; (6) did not direct the
major ceremonies of the Lakotas; (7) were not the leaders of dream soci-
eties; and (8) were not at the top of the religious structure or the mas-
ters in the master-apprentice model of training and transmitting sacred
knowledge.
PȞežúta Wičháša (Medicine Man, Herbalist)

Densmore’s final method for treating the sick is the giving of herbs.
Practicing this method were those individuals who had knowledge of
plants and herbs and their medicinal use and value. This knowledge
could be bestowed by a spirit in a vision, but could also be learned,
inherited, or purchased from other practitioners. As No Flesh explains,
normatively “The medicine men learn their medicines from the spirits
in a vision. The spirits tell them what to use and how to use it. Their
medicines are nearly always herbs (wato) or roots (hutkan). Therefore, all
their medicines are called grass roots (pezuta).”71
In Lakota, this practitioner category is called pȟežúta wičháša/wíŋyaŋ
(medicine man/woman), from pȟežúta (grass roots, herbs).72 One of the
major definitional problems we have faced is that frequently all Lakota
practitioners are conventionally glossed as medicine men, an invasive
misnomer. We may refer to pȟežúta wičháša/wíŋyaŋ as medicine men/
women only if we understand and define these terms carefully and pre-
cisely, as we must with all the magico-medico-ritual terms discussed
herein.
This type of practitioner was the herbalist or giver of herbal med-
icines and remedies. They were the pharmacists and ethnobotanists
of the tribe, having obtained or attained extensive knowledge of the
environment, flora, and fauna, including herbs, plants, animals, dis-

ease/illness, physiology, and some psychology. Medicine men treated
and cured the sick but did not generally instruct other practitioners in
the master-apprentice model, prepare and consecrate sacred bundles, or
direct ceremonies, aside from their own idiosyncratic doctoring rites.
The šičúŋpi (familiars; spirit guardians; potencies of wakȟáŋ beings
imparted to inanimate substance) of medicine men were the medicines,
herbs, and pharmacopeia they used in their practice, the medicine bags
or bundles in which those medicines were stored, and their doctoring
implements. We must highlight and make note of this important distin-
guishing factor between holy men and medicine men: a holy man treated
the sick and performed his wakȟáŋ wičhóȟ’aŋ (ceremonies) using his
wašíčuŋ (ceremonial bundle), which was the šičúŋ of a holy man or sha-
man (wičháša wakȟáŋ); a medicine man, on the other hand, treated the
sick and performed his doctoring rites using his ožúha pȟežúta (medicine
bag), which, along with the medicines and medical implements and par-
aphernalia contained therein, was the šičúŋ of a medicine man or herbal-
ist (pȟežúta wičháša). Sword, among others, firmly distinguishes between
these two practitioner types, their ritual implements, and methods:
The common people of the Lakotas call that which is the wrapping of a
wasicun, wopiye. Most of the interpreters interpret this wopiye as medicine
bag. That is wrong, for the word neither means a bag nor medicine. It
means a thing to do good with. A good interpretation would be that it is
the thing of power.
Ozuha pejuta is a medicine bag. Ozuha means a bag, and pejuta means
a medicine. Ozuha pejuta means simply a bag to keep medicines in. It is
the same as any other bag, and it has no more power than a bag to keep
corn in.73
Medicine men may best be conceived of as the medical doctors, physi-

cians, or pharmacists of nineteenth-century Lakota society, treating and
healing the physical, corporeal body as opposed to the spiritual, non-
corporeal aspects of human beings, physiologically manipulating certain
organs and body parts. Although there was a distinct spiritual element
to their practice—in that illness and medicine were mysterious (wakȟáŋ)
by nature74 and all practitioners invoked the aid of the spirits as a prelim-
inary rite—medicine men were not considered the great, wise spiritual
leaders of the Lakotas.75 That role was filled by the wičháša wakȟáŋpi
254 D. C. POSTHUMUS
(holy men, shamans), although, as with all the categories outlined

herein, a single individual may practice one or all of these methods and
be considered one or all of these types. In other words, these categories
are cumulative, permeable, and not mutually exclusive.
As the Oglala author Luther Standing Bear recalls:
A medicine-man was simply a healer – curing, or trying to cure, such few

diseases and ailments as beset his people in the body, having nothing to do
with their spiritual suffering. A medicine-man was no holier than other
men, no closer to Wakan Tanka and no more honored than a brave or a
scout. He lived the same life in the band that other men did, wore the
same kind of clothes, ate the same variety of food, lived in the same sort of
tipi, and took care of his wife and family, becoming a fair hunter and some-
times a very good one. More often he was an excellent scout, but seldom
a great warrior. But as a member of his band he occupied no superior posi-
tion, and simply filled his calling with as much skill as he could command,
just as any physician, lawyer, or baker does today.
The medicine-man was a true benefactor of his people in that his work
was founded upon and promoted the Indian ideal of brotherhood [i.e.,
kinship], and all service rendered to fellow beings was for the good of the
tribe. Such wisdom and ‘magic power’ as he had achieved must be shared,
as were food and clothing, with his fellow man. He made no charge for his
helpfulness in ministering to the sick, for the comforting songs he sang,
nor the strength he gave them; and when a medicine-man was called, he
never was known to refuse the summons.76
Medicine men normatively treated the common (ikčéka) physical ail-

ments, injuries, and wounds of the people, not soul-loss, disease-object
intrusion, or malevolent spirit or influence (tuŋwáŋ) possession, which
were the mysterious (wakȟáŋ), psychological, psychosomatic, or spiritual
ailments of the people, treated by holy men.77 Consequently, the treat-
ment methods of medicine men were physiological, more empirical or
practical, and akin to standard medical treatment, as opposed to the
mystico-spiritual or magico-ritual methods and practice of holy men. As
Sword explains, “When the medicine man treats the sick, his medicines
must be swallowed or smoked or steamed.”78 Although the medicines
they used were often revealed in a divine manner or trance state the med-
icine man’s practice was based largely on accumulated, acute, and sys-
tematic knowledge of nature (botany, flora, fauna, etc.), physiology, and
trial and error akin to contemporary Western conceptions of medicine
and science. But, again, this does not detract from the spiritual element
inherent in a medicine man’s methods: each medicine was associated
with and required a distinct song and ritual formula to activate its power,
without which the medicine and treatment would be ineffective. “When
one has a medicine,” Sword explains, “he must have a song for it and he
must know something to say every time he uses it. If the wrong song or
invocation is used, the medicine will do no good. Then another medi-
cine man should try his medicines.”79 Recall that frequently holy men
prepared and consecrated medicine bundles for young medicine men
and provided the songs and ritual formulae required to activate their
potencies.
Some herbalists had and utilised only one medicine, while others had
and utilised many. According to One Star, “A medicine man knows the
songs of his medicines and they are his Sicun.”80 The practitioner may
discover these medicines or they may be revealed in a vision or dream,
although typically a learned holy man counseled and interpreted the
vision of a novice, instructing and directing him on a subsequent plan
of action. As there were many types of medicines, so there were many
types or subcategories of medicine men, each associated with the specific
sicknesses they treated and specialised in and the medicines they used.
However, medicine men did not have the ability to cause sickness or
inflict it on others, as did holy men and conjurors.
Apparently some medicine men historically belonged to dream soci-
eties while others did not.81 As Walker’s interlocutors explain, “If one
wants to become a medicine man he seeks a vision,82 and if he sees the
right thing it will instruct him what he must do. It will also instruct him
what medicine he must use. Then when he has related his vision to the
wise men [i.e. holy men], they will tell him what he must do. When
they have instructed him, he will belong to a cult in medicine [dream
society].”83
Thunder Bear elaborates on the limited determinative role of the
visionary experiences of prospective medicine men. If the knowledge
obtained or attained in the vision quest, “pertains to the sick or to any-
thing that may be used as a medicine, this knowledge constitutes him
a medicine man so far as that particular medicine is concerned. But it
gives him no other knowledge or power. If the vision pertains to a par-
ticular kind or class of medicine, as, for instance, Bear medicine, he
must become the pupil of some Bear medicine man and learn what the
256 D. C. POSTHUMUS
medicines are, how to prepare them, how to administer them, and the
songs and ceremonies that pertain to them.”84
Normatively, a successful vision quest was a preliminary rite of passage
beginning one’s journey toward becoming a medicine man. After the ini-
tial vision encounter and establishment of a kinship relationship with a
nonhuman person the master-apprentice model for transmitting sacred
religious and magico-medico-ritual knowledge went into effect. The
master-apprentice model built a philosophical foundation and honed the
skills of the neophyte practitioner. Recall that holy men were the mas-
ters and medicine men the apprentices in the hierarchical, seniority based
master-apprentice model.
But the training process of a would-be medicine man was much less
rigorous than that of a neophyte holy man, distinguishing the two types
of practitioners. Ideally, a medicine man successfully sought a vision,
received some brief instruction, and performed a trial run or two. He
may even purchase his medicines, and the assistance of an established
holy man was essential throughout this process. A holy man, on the
other hand, required a vision or multiple visions and spent years appren-
ticing with an established holy man, learning the social customs, history,
mythology, philosophy, doctrine, and ceremonies of the Lakotas in great
detail. Much of this was accomplished through experience and participa-
tion, listening, observing, and doing, rather than speaking, all of which
were and are cornerstones of the master-apprentice model. Finally, most
prestigious holy men danced the fourth grade of the sun dance, being
completely suspended from the sacred tree, which functioned as a final
rite of passage in a long series of initiation rites.85 The completion of the
sun dance represented the conclusion of the liminal period in one’s train-
ing, marking the reintegration of a practitioner into society, and recog-
nising him as a qualified and properly trained holy man ready to direct
his own ceremonies and begin his own practice.
The differences between holy men and medicine men should now be
apparent. Many nineteenth-century and contemporary Lakotas clearly
differentiate between these two categories or types, which we have estab-
lished as binary opposites.86 Holy men treated psychological, psycho-
somatic, or symbolic sickness using mystico-spiritual or magico-ritual
techniques. They were generally considered more potent in terms of effi-
cacy, power, and healing abilities than their counterparts, the medicine
men or herbalists, who treated physical or physiological sickness using
techno-scientific techniques (see Fig. 9.1). Our final category mediates
Fig. 9.1 Holy men and medicine men
or hinges between these two extremes, combining elements of both

practitioner types. While holy men were the spiritual and cultural leaders
of the Lakotas and medicine men the herbalists, medical practitioners,
and physicians, waphíya wičháša (conjurors, ceremonial magicians) rep-
resented an intermediate category of doctor-shamans who utilised both
techno-scientific/empirical and mystico-spiritual/non-empirical methods
in their practice. These practitioners used common and mysterious tech-
niques to treat both physical or physiological ailments, as well as psycho-
logical, psychosomatic, or spiritual sickness.
Waphíya Wičháša (Conjuror, Magician, Extractor or

Introducer of Illness)
Densmore’s second method for the treatment of the sick, “conjur-
ing,” provides the intermediate pivot in our analysis between holy men
and medicine men. Nineteenth-century conjurers or ceremonial magi-
cians, waphíya wičháša in Lakota, generally used methods characteris-
tic of both practitioner types and had the ability to treat and cure both
physical, corporeal (ikčéka [common]) sickness, as well as spiritual, non-
corporeal (wakȟáŋ [mysterious] or tókeča [different]) sickness. Their
258 D. C. POSTHUMUS
techniques ran the gamut from medico-techno-scientific/empirical to

mystico-spiritual/magico-ritual/non-empirical. They are referred to in
the literature conventionally as doctors, healers, conjurors, and magicians.
As we have seen the general terms medicine man and holy man are also
sometimes applied to conjurors or magicians, indicative of their interme-
diate position in the classification of nineteenth-century Lakota magico-
medico-ritual practitioners, but complicating our task here.
Conjurors were known for treating and doctoring the sick and for
producing powerful charms and potions—at a price—for various peo-
ple and purposes. Similar to holy men and medicine men many varie-
ties or subcategories of conjurors existed in nineteenth-century Lakota
society, both in terms of method or technique and nonhuman power
source. Toad, Bear, Bird, Fish, Heyókȟa (Contrary), and Double Woman
dreamers were particularly associated with the conjuror category, as well
as the mysterious and menacing Bone Keepers discussed by the Oglala
Thomas Tyon.87 Apparently, dreaming of certain things, mainly terres-
trial creatures or animals that roamed the earth, compelled an individ-
ual to become a conjuror.88 As Tyon explains, “Those men who become
doctors, Indian doctors, do not do it intentionally. The dreams they have
of animals are what cause them to believe they are doctors … those men
who are doctors dream of animals. That is why they are doctors. The
people believe in them.”89 In all cases, the power of belief and sugges-
tion is significant.
The training of a waphíya wičháša was more rigorous than that of a
medicine man, but less extreme than that of a holy man. Most conju-
rors mastered various herbalist techniques and went on to accumulate
multiple abilities, methods, powers, and spirit guardians through addi-
tional vision quests and apprenticeship with other reputable conjurors
or holy men. However, the average conjuror had not danced the fourth
and most extreme form of the sun dance or participated in the mystery
dance, differentiating him from established holy men. Hence, most con-
jurors had not received ceremonial bundles (wašíčuŋpi or wóphiyepi) and
therefore did not treat the sick with them (although they may have pos-
sessed medicine bundles [ožúha pȟežúta]). Further, the average conju-
ror had not been trained extensively in the mythology, philosophy, social
customs, and sacred lore of the Lakotas, having only a fragmentary
knowledge of such things, as opposed to the systematic knowledge of
the holy man. Finally, conjurors did not have extensive or comprehen-
sive ritual knowledge, were not trained to direct the major ceremonies of
the Lakotas, and did not speak and understand the esoteric languages of
the shamans or spirits. In nearly every respect the conjuror occupied an
intermediate space between the medicine man and the holy man.
While the spiritual or magico-ritual element of a medicine man’s
practice and repertoire was minimal and limited, the conjuror incorpo-
rated more mystical elements into his method. However, knowledge of
conjuror practice is severely limited because they tended to treat their
patients and manufacture their charms and potions in darkness and
secrecy so no one knew precisely what they did.90 A major distinction
between the conjuror and the holy man is that the holy man, unless he
was also an herbalist, utilised exclusively mystico-spiritual or magico-
ritual techniques to treat psychological, psychosomatic, or symbolic sick-
ness, invoking his wašíčuŋ to aid him in his mysterious undertakings.
The conjuror, being between the two extremes, likely did not solely use
magico-ritual methods but incorporated techniques characteristic of both
herbalists and holy men. The conjuror combined the techniques of the
medicine man and holy man, practicing both psychological or symbolic
and physical or physiological manipulations of various organs and body
parts, including the mind. The conjuror, like the holy man, incorporated
aspects of what we refer to today as psychoanalysis and psychotherapy
into his treatment repertoire.91
The fact that herbal medicines were rarely given to a conjuror’s
patient or victim as part of the treatment process distinguishes him from
an herbalist. Treatment methods, in particular, are clues to differentiat-
ing Lakota practitioner types: holy men treat with their ceremonial bun-
dles, medicine men treat with herbal medicines, and conjurors usually
treat using some form of the yaǧópa/yapȟá technique, extracting sick-
ness by either blowing or sucking it out using the mouth, a bone tube,
or some other hollow object.92 This method was generally used to treat
cases of disease-object intrusion and involved the preliminal locating of
the sickness, often through divinatory means; the liminal blowing or
sucking out of the illness using the mouth or a long hollow object, such
as an eagle-wing bone or a pipe stem; and finally the postliminal spit-
ting out and public display of the sickness—often in the form of a worm,
bug, feather, fingernail, toenail, phlegm, or blood—to the patient and all
onlookers present. Certain types of dreamers (iháŋblapi) tended to be
associated with this method, such as Toad and Bird dreamers93 and Bone
Keepers.94
260 D. C. POSTHUMUS
Conjurors treated the sick generally in darkness, at night (haŋhépi),

and secretly so that no one knew exactly what they did and how they
did it. Sword refers to a magician who heals and makes others well—one
who sustains and perpetuates life movement—as a waphíya wičháša, from
waphíya (to cure or treat people, to conjure the sick). Sword refers to
a magician who causes sickness—one who actively and purposefully dis-
rupts life movement—as a wakȟáŋ škáŋ wičháša.95 This term is a bit of
a mystery. It may refer to one whose spirit guardian is Táku Škaŋškáŋ,
the patron deity of moving things represented by the sky, or it may refer
to one who causes things to move in a mysterious manner. It may also
simply refer to an individual who “plays” with the sacred or wakȟáŋ, and
hence desecrates it, a most dangerous practice to engage in.
Conjurors primarily treated victims of sorcery/witchcraft.96 In this
way conjurors or benevolent magicians used magic that proceeded by
extracting and curing sickness (usually by sucking or blowing), while sor-
cerers or malevolent magicians used magic that proceeded by introduc-
ing and causing sickness (usually through shooting, blowing, or other
processes of malevolent magical attack). However, the human proclivity
for good or evil crosscuts all other categories, and hence both benev-
olent and malevolent magicians were capable of using magic for good
or for evil. Perspective, context, and group expectations and sentiment
cannot be underestimated, serving as the great variable or determinant
in the social dynamics relating to ritual practitioners: one group’s conju-
ror or benevolent magician is another’s sorcerer or malevolent magician.
Logically, then, sorcerers and witches legitimised, rationalised, and neces-
sitated the existence of conjurors. The sorcerer provided job security for
the conjuror and vice versa. The relationship between conjuror, sorcerer,
patient/victim, and social group was cyclical and significant.
Conjurors were also particularly renowned for the production of vari-
ous charms and potions. At the request of their patients and customers—
and for a handsome price—conjurors skillfully concocted powerful and
alluring love medicines (wiíčhuwa), often made from an extracted hair of
the target or a sample of menstrual flow; good-luck charms for success in
gambling, games, and hunting; or deadly poisons with which one could
seek revenge and wreak havoc on one’s enemies.97 According to Sword,
a wakȟáŋ škáŋ wičháša (evil conjuror or magician who causes sickness)
“makes charms and philters and he may make very deadly potions. He
is in league with the great evil one. He can do mysterious things to any-
one, either present or far away. The things he does or makes are not
medicines. He makes charms to win games or to kill enemies, or to win

the love of men and women.”98 However, a conjuror lacked the ability
to produce and consecrate ceremonial bundles (wašíčuŋpi or wóphiyepi)
for other practitioners. While they may have had the ability to practice
various forms of treatment, sympathetic magic, and sorcery/witchcraft,
conjurors apparently could not imbue objects with the tȟúŋ or šičúŋ
(spiritual essence) of a spirit being. This ability was reserved for holy
men, who received their ceremonial bundles and learned how to impart
potency into objects through the mystery dance.
Additionally, the conjuror did not direct the major ceremonies of the
people, as did the holy man. Although a conjuror might belong to any
one or none of the dream societies, he appears to have played a more
idiosyncratic role in society, as opposed to the holy man who advised the
tribal council and played more of a social and political role within his
tribe. But as these categories are cumulative, permeable, and not mutu-
ally exclusive, a gifted and dedicated conjuror might prove and estab-
lish himself as a holy man and thus climb the ladder of Lakota religious
hierarchy.
In terms of ascribed ability, power, and potency the conjuror again
occupied a space between the medicine man and the holy man. Unlike
a medicine man a conjuror had the ability to, in Sword’s words, “cause
disease by his mysterious powers.”99 The human proclivity for good or
evil crosscuts the categories discussed herein, so that any type of prac-
titioner using any type of method or technique might use his skill and
power either to maintain and perpetuate life movement or to disrupt and
terminate it; to create and sustain life or to hamper and destroy it. This
ability to cause misfortune and inflict sickness induced the people to fear
and detest malevolent magicians.100
Providing further evidence of the superior power of the conjuror vis-
à-vis the medicine man is the fact that a medicine man could not suc-
cessfully treat or cure a sickness produced by a conjuror. “If a magician
has made one sick,” explains Sword, “then medicines will not cure such
a one. The magician or a holy man should treat such a person.”101 Only
another conjuror or a holy man, utilising mystico-spiritual or magico-
ritual techniques, could successfully treat and cure a sickness caused by a
waphíya wičháša.102 Pitted against a psychological or symbolic illness the
medico-techno-scientific knowledge and techniques of the medicine man
were largely impotent. However, the holy man was more potent than
either the conjuror or the medicine man. As Sword explains, “A holy
262 D. C. POSTHUMUS
Fig. 9.2 Holy men, conjurors, and medicine men
man may be a magician also. But such men are to be feared and the peo-
ple will not patronise them. A holy man is more potent than a medicine
man or a magician. He can cause his ceremonial bag to overcome the
medicines and charms of the others.”103 Again, we see that the conjuror
was truly the intermediate category between the holy man and the medi-
cine man (see Fig. 9.2).
In this chapter I utilised sympathetic, insider sources in an attempt
to classify the various types of nineteenth-century Lakota magico-med-
ico-ritual specialists. The complexity and plurality of Lakota healers and
healing practice reflects the idiosyncratic and non-dogmatic nature of
Sioux medical culture and spirituality in general, which are open to inno-
vation and practical adaptation. Traditional Lakota belief and practice
relating to healing and spirituality were and continue to be characterised
by an internal pluralism. Synthesising the classic sources utilised herein,
making them available in one place, and reaching a deeper understand-
ing of Lakota healers and magico-medico-ritual specialists that reflects
Lakota cultural perspectives is useful and important in academia and
beyond, to scholars in anthropology, history, medicine, Native American
studies, psychology, and religious studies, but also to Lakota people
and Native Americans in general, many of whom are in the process of
rediscovering, revitalising, and preserving their sacred traditions and cer-

emonies. These traditions live on today through the communal actions
of Lakota people and are a source of beauty and truth that can enrich
our lives and the world we all share.
Notes
1. Douglas R. Parks, Raymond J. DeMallie, and Vézina Robert, eds.,
A Fur Trader on the Upper Missouri: The Journals and Description
of Jean-Baptiste Truteau, 1794–96, 2 vols. (Lincoln: University of
Nebraska Press, 2018); Pierre Antoine Tabeau, Tabeau’s Narrative
of Loisel’s Expedition to the Upper Missouri (Norman: University of
Oklahoma Press, 1939); Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, The
Definitive Journals of Lewis and Clark, edited by Gary E. Moulton, vol.
3 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002); Edwin Thompson
Denig, Five Indian Tribes of the Upper Missouri: Sioux, Arickaras,
Assiniboines, Crees, Crows, edited by John C. Ewers (Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press, 1961); Edmund C. Bray and Martha
Coleman Bray, eds., Joseph N. Nicollet on the Plains and Prairies: The
Expeditions of 1838–39, with Journals, Letters, and Notes on the Dakota
Indians (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1976); Mary
H. Eastman, Dahcotah, or, Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort
Snelling (Afton, MN: Afton Historical Society Press, 1995); Rufus B.
Sage, Rocky Mountain Life: Or Startling Scenes and Perilous Adventures
in the Far West, During an Expedition of Three Years (Boston:
Wentworth, 1857); Francis Parkman, The Oregon Trail, edited by E.N.
Feltskog (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969).
2. Stephen Return Riggs, Tah-Koo Wah-Kan: Or, The Gospel Among the
Dakotas (Boston: Congregational Pub. Society, 1869); Gideon H.
Pond, ‘Dakota Superstitions and Gods’, in Collections of the Minnesota
Historical Society (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1889),
2: 215–255; Samuel W. Pond, ‘The Dakotas or Sioux in Minnesota as
They Were in 1834’, in Minnesota Historical Society Collections (St. Paul:
Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1908), 12: 320–501.
3. Riggs, Tah-Koo Wah-Kan, 92–93.
4. Pond, ‘Dakota Superstitions and Gods’, 215.
5. Pond, ‘Dakota Superstitions and Gods’, 252.
6. Raymond J. DeMallie, ‘Lakota Belief and Ritual in the Nineteenth
Century’, in Sioux Indian Religion: Tradition and Innovation, edited
by Raymond J. DeMallie and Douglas R. Parks (Norman: University of
Oklahoma Press, 1987), 25.
264 D. C. POSTHUMUS
7. In this category we find the extensive works of J. Owen Dorsey, ‘A Study
of Siouan Cults’, in 11th Annual Report of the Bureau of [American]
Ethnology [for] 1889–90 (Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1894),
351–544; J.R. Walker, ‘The Sun Dance and Other Ceremonies of the
Oglala Division of the Teton Dakota’, American Museum of Natural
History Anthropological Papers 16 (1918): 51–221; idem. Lakota
Belief and Ritual, edited by Raymond J. DeMallie and Elaine A.
Jahner (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991); idem. Lakota
Myth, edited by Elaine A. Jahner (Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, 2006); Clark Wissler, ‘Societies and Ceremonial Associations in
the Oglala Division of the Teton-Dakota’, Anthropological Papers of
the American Museum of Natural History 11 (1912): 1–99; Edward
S. Curtis, The North American Indian. Reprint, vol. 3 (New York:
Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1908); Frances Densmore, Teton Sioux
Music and Culture (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001);
Aaron McGaffey Beede, ‘Journals and Letters (1912)’, Orin G. Libby
Manuscript Collection, University of North Dakota, Grand Forks.
8. John G. Neihardt, Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man
of the Oglala Sioux (Albany: State University Press of New York Press,
2008); Joseph Epes Brown, ed., The Sacred Pipe: Black Elk’s Account of
the Seven Rites of the Oglala Sioux (Norman: University of Oklahoma
Press, 1989); Raymond J. DeMallie, The Sixth Grandfather: Black Elk’s
Teachings Given to John G. Neihardt (Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, 1984).
9. See, for instance, Royal B. Hassrick, The Sioux: Life and Customs of a
Warrior Society (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1964); William
K. Powers, Sacred Language: The Nature of Supernatural Discourse in
Lakota (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1986), 164–195.
10. Émile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss, Primitive Classification (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1963), viii.
11. Ruth Fulton Benedict, ‘The Vision in Plains Culture’, American
Anthropologist 24 (1922): 1–23; DeMallie, The Sixth Grandfather;
Densmore, Teton Sioux Music and Culture; Eugene Fugle, ‘The Nature
and Function of the Lakota Night Cults’, (W. H. Over) Museum News,
University of South Dakota 27 (1966): 1–38; Walker, ‘The Sun Dance
and Other Ceremonies’; Walker, Lakota Belief and Ritual; Wissler,
‘Societies and Ceremonial Associations’.
12. Nicollet is referring to the wačhípi wakȟáŋ or mystery dance.
13. Bray and Bray, eds., Joseph N. Nicollet on the Plains and Prairies, 269.
14. Wakȟáŋhaŋ could be an idiosyncratic term used or once used by
Northern Lakotas from the Standing Rock Reservation or a combina-
tion of wakȟáŋ and the continuative suffix -haŋ, meaning someone who
continually or habitually does or is engaged in wakȟáŋ things or doings.

But, more plausibly, it is wakȟáŋȟ’aŋ, a verb meaning to perform myste-
rious acts, to do magic, to do sacred things, to perform ceremonies. The
verb is likely also used nominatively in reference to practitioners.
15. Densmore, Teton Sioux Music and Culture, 245.
16. Alice C. Fletcher, ‘The Elk Mystery Festival: Ogallala Sioux’, in 16th
Report of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology,
Harvard University, [for] 1882, 3 [1880–1886]: 282 no. 4; idem. ‘The
White Buffalo Festival of the Uncpapas’, in 16th Report of the Peabody
Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University,
[for] 1882, 3 [1880–1886]: 260–275.
17. Walker, ‘The Sun Dance and Other Ceremonies’; Walker, Lakota Belief
and Ritual. Holy men are sometimes referred to as shamans or priests
in the literature. In anthropology, priests are usually distinguished from
shamans according to a number of criteria, such as the attainment of
trance states and status as full- or part-time practitioners. See Morton
Klass, Ordered Universes: Approaches to the Anthropology of Religion
(Boulder: Westview Press, 1995), 63–71; Powers, Sacred Language,
164–173. Shamans occupy a central position in religious belief and
ritual practice, serving as mediators between the human and nonhu-
man worlds and between the living and the dead. A shaman is often
endowed with clairvoyance, divinatory powers, and helper spirits and
fills many social and religious roles. Shamans are particularly known
for attaining trance states and leaving their bodies to commune with
nonhuman persons in the spirit realm. A shaman may play an offensive
or defensive role in the protection of his group against the aggressive
actions of other shamans or malevolent spirits. Thomas A. DuBois, An
Introduction to Shamanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2009); Alan Barnard and Jonathan Spencer, eds., Encyclopedia of Social
and Cultural Anthropology (New York: Routledge, 1996), 504–505;
Merete Demant Jakobsen, Shamanism: Traditional and Contemporary
Approaches to the Mastery of Spirits and Healing (New York: Berghahn
Books, 1999). Shamanism is a hotly debated and contested concept in
anthropology today, see Jane Monnig Atkinson, ‘Shamanisms Today’,
Annual Review of Anthropology 21 (1992): 307–330; Clifford Geertz,
The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York: Basic Books,
1973), 122; Michael T. Taussig, Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild
Man: A Study in Terror and Healing (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1986). Neither shaman nor priest is completely adequate in the
Lakota case. Practitioners seem to inhabit an intermediate, overlapping
space between classical anthropological definitions of priest and shaman.
While contemporary Lakota religious leaders are increasingly full-time
266 D. C. POSTHUMUS
practitioners, they also clearly utilise helper spirits, mediate between

worlds, and are believed to leave their bodies and enter into trance
states. Labeling Lakota ritual practitioners as shamans has met with
some resistance and criticism, but I believe there is substantial evidence
supporting the notion that Lakota ritual practitioners may be better
understood as shamans as opposed to priests.
18. Story 82 in George Bushotter, ‘Lakota Texts by George Bushotter;
Interlinear Translations by James Owen Dorsey, Aided by George
Bushotter and John Bruyier (1887)’, Washington, DC, Manuscript No.
4800/103(1–3). Dorsey Papers, National Anthropological Archives,
Smithsonian Institution.
19. Walker, Lakota Belief and Ritual, 73.
20. Walker, ‘The Sun Dance and Other Ceremonies’, 152–153; Walker,
Lakota Belief and Ritual, 91–92.
21. Walker, ‘The Sun Dance and Other Ceremonies’, 72, 199; Walker,
Lakota Belief and Ritual, 38, 43.
22. Walker, ‘The Sun Dance and Other Ceremonies’, 92.
24. Walker, Lakota Belief and Ritual, 181–182. This prerequisite is appar-
ently still a rite of passage for would-be holy men among most ritual
groups at Pine Ridge today (Posthumus 2008–2018).
26. Eugene Buechel, ‘Sioux Ethnology Notebook’ (Marquette, WI: n.d.),
31; Walker, ‘The Sun Dance and Other Ceremonies’, 58, 62–66;
Walker, Lakota Belief and Ritual, 104.
27. Hassrick, The Sioux, 288.
28. Walker, Lakota Belief and Ritual, 79–80.
29. Ella Cara Deloria, ‘Dakota Ethnographic Notes’ (Chamberlain, SD:
Dakota Indian Foundation, n.d.), 8.
30. Deloria, ‘Dakota Ethnographic Notes’, 7–8.
31. Walker, Lakota Belief and Ritual, 30, 117–118, 136–137.
32. Apparently, there was a close connection between the mystery dance
and the origins and discovery of medicine, cures, and disease theory.
Describing his father, a powerful practitioner, the Oglala holy man No
Flesh explains, “When he was a very young man, he had a vision, in
which the great bear took him to the region of the spirits. He joined the
spirits in the mystery dance and they instructed him in regard to all dis-
eases and the medicines good for them.” Walker, ‘The Sun Dance and
Other Ceremonies’, 161.
33. This represents a continuity with the past in that many contemporary
Oglala religious leaders are storytellers, educators, tribal historians, and
pipe and bundle keepers.

35. Walker, ‘The Sun Dance and Other Ceremonies’, 56; Walker, Lakota
Belief and Ritual, 94.
36. James W. Lynd, ‘The Religion of the Dakotas’, in Collections of the
Minnesota Historical Society 2 (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society
Press, 1889), 2: 161–163.
37. Walker, ‘The Sun Dance and Other Ceremonies’, 72, 79; Walker, Lakota
38. Lynd, The Religion of the Dakotas, 2: 161–162.
39. Pond, ‘Dakota Superstitions and Gods’, 238 (emphasis in original).
40. Pond, ‘Dakota Superstitions and Gods’, 251–252 (emphasis in original).
41. Hassrick, The Sioux, 290.
42. Densmore, Teton Sioux Music and Culture, 245; Walker, ‘The Sun
Dance and Other Ceremonies’, 74–75, 79, 90–92, 132–135, 153, 161;
Walker, Lakota Belief and Ritual, 78–79, 85, 94–95, 106, 113, 117,
129, 140.
43. Sword occasionally equates tȟúŋ with šičúŋ. See Sword in Walker, ‘The
Sun Dance and Other Ceremonies’, 153.
44. “In ritual magic,” explains John Michael Greer, The New Encyclopedia
of the Occult (St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 2003), 244, invo-
cation is “the act of bringing a deity or other spiritual power into the
magician. It is distinguished from evocation, which is the process of
summoning a spirit into some form of manifestation external to the
magician.” On this important distinction see also Aleister Crowley,
Magick: Liber ABA, Book Four, Parts I-IV (York Beach, ME: S. Weiser,
1997).
46. Walker, ‘The Sun Dance and Other Ceremonies’, 152–153; Walker,
Lakota Belief and Ritual, 90. According to Sword, “A Wasicun is one of
the Wakan beings. It is the least of them, but if its ton is from a power-
ful being it may be more powerful than many of the Wakan beings. This
Wasicun is what the priests do their work with, but the white people
call it the medicine bag, which is a mistake, for there are no medicines
in it. A medicine bag is a bag that doctors have their medicines in. If a
man has a Wasicun he may pray to it, for it is the same as the Wakan
being whose ton (wan) is in it.” Walker, ‘The Sun Dance and Other
Ceremonies’, 153. Here Sword appears to equate šičúŋ with both tȟúŋ
and tuŋwáŋ.
47. Walker, ‘The Sun Dance and Other Ceremonies’, 90–92, 152–153.
50. Curtis, The North American Indian, 3: 63.
268 D. C. POSTHUMUS
51. Walker, ‘The Sun Dance and Other Ceremonies’, 88, 90–92, 158;
Walker, Lakota Belief and Ritual, 129, 242–243.
52. The Oglala Lakotas possessed a detailed symbolic colour classification.
According to One Star, “Red is the color of the sun; blue, the color of
the moving spirit; green the color of the spirit of the earth; and yellow is
the color of the spirit of the rock. These colors are also for other spirits.
Blue is the color of the wind; red is the color of all spirits. The colors
are the same for the friends of the Great Spirits. Black is the color of
the bad spirits. A man who paints red is pleasing to the spirits.” Walker,
‘The Sun Dance and Other Ceremonies’, 159.
53. Walker, ‘The Sun Dance and Other Ceremonies’, 70–71, 76–77, 144;
Walker, Lakota Belief and Ritual, 67, 281.
56. Holy men directed all the major or great ceremonies because they per-
tained to all the people collectively. If something went wrong or was
done incorrectly all the people suffered. Walker, Lakota Belief and
Ritual, 68, 81. In general, holy men saw to the collective religious and
magico-medico-ritual needs of the people, while medicine men or herb-
alists saw to their individual needs. This represents a general theme: holy
men saw to the collective needs of their people, such as world renewal,
episodes of drought, famine, epidemics, and the like.
58. Today “the spirits,” “the elders,” or simply “tradition” are the claimed
normative or ideal authorities in determining what is proper and how
to conduct ceremonies. However, in actual practice it is often the influ-
ential leaders who train and influence others who determine the proper
ways to conduct rituals. Other practitioners adopt the forms that the
most prominent leaders practice. These well-known practitioners are the
underlying authorities in the religious and ritual domains.
59. Walker, ‘The Sun Dance and Other Ceremonies’, 58, 61, 67–69, 78,
121–122; Walker, Lakota Belief and Ritual, 67–68, 74, 81–82, 89, 181.
62. Various Lakota forms for consecrate include wakȟáŋ káǧa (to make
wakȟáŋ), wógluzepi (consecrated; taboo), yawákȟaŋ (to consider
wakȟáŋ), and yuwákȟaŋ (to make holy or special, consecrate). Wókȟaŋ
or wówakȟaŋ is something consecrated to the wakȟáŋ or for ceremo-
nial purposes. Eugene Buechel, A Dictionary of the Teton Dakota Sioux
Language, edited by Paul Manhart (Pine Ridge, SD: Red Cloud Indian
School, 1970), 371, 526, 630, 655; Walker, Lakota Belief and Ritual,
98, 112.
63. A holy man symbolically identified with his ceremonial bag or bundle
(wóphiye or wašíčuŋ), which was a manifestation and representation of a
particular spirit being, allowing for ritual transformations to occur. The
close connection between a human and the nonhuman person (šičúŋ)
represented by and encased within his ceremonial bundle (wašíčuŋ)
evokes classical anthropological and sociological discourse on totemism.
66. Powers, Sacred Language, 217, maintains that mediation is the most sig-
nificant feature distinguishing holy men from herbalists.
67. Walker, ‘The Sun Dance and Other Ceremonies’, 79, 135, 153, 161;
Walker, Lakota Belief and Ritual, 79, 85, 94, 97–98, 104, 106, 113.
68. Walker, Lakota Belief and Ritual, 94, 118.
Belief and Ritual, 95–96, 105, 117.
74. According to Walker’s interlocutors, “The mysterious (wakan) of any-
thing is the tontonsni [without physical properties]. The tontonsni is
that which causes it to act on other things or on mankind. It is that
which causes medicines to act on people. It is that which spirits act on
the people when they are not present. It is that from which the shamans
and medicine men get their power. It is that which the spirits get from
things which are offered them.” Walker, Lakota Belief and Ritual, 106.
76. Luther Standing Bear, Land of the Spotted Eagle (Lincoln: University of
Nebraska Press, 2006), 203, emphasis added. In fact, payment (wíši) in
the traditional manner of the giving of food, new clothing, a horse or
horses, or similar gifted items was an essential terminal riteme or con-
stituent element of the ritual treatment process. See Buechel, ‘Sioux
Ethnology Notebook’, and Walker, Lakota Belief and Ritual, 199, 237.
80. Walker, ‘The Sun Dance and Other Ceremonies’, 159. Perhaps this has
led to some of the confusion between medicine men and holy men and
their respective bundles. The wašíčuŋ or ožúha pȟežúta of a medicine
man was his medicine bundle containing his šičúŋ, which were the very
270 D. C. POSTHUMUS
medicines and paraphernalia he used in his practice. The wašíčuŋ or

wóphiye of a holy man was his ceremonial or sacred bundle containing
his šičúŋ, which was the tȟúŋ or potency of his spirit guardian.
82. This sentence clearly indicates the hierarchical role of holy men vis-à-vis
medicine men: in order to become a practitioner one had to first seek a
vision, which required seeking the mentorship and direction of a holy
man or shaman.
85. Participation in the mystery dance functioned in a similar way historically.
86. Story 199 in Bushotter, ‘Lakota Texts by George Bushotter’; Densmore,
Teton Sioux Music and Culture; David C. Posthumus, Fieldwork
Interviews and Personal Communications, 2008–2018; Walker, ‘The
Sun Dance and Other Ceremonies’; Walker, Lakota Belief and Ritual.
87. In Walker, Lakota Belief and Ritual, 161–163.
90. Walker, Lakota Belief and Ritual, 92–93. Tyon claims that conjurors
practiced their craft secretly because what they did was “very bad.… For
that reason, they do not want others to know about it, it is said. They
sometimes kill men by using medicine, they say.” Walker, Lakota Belief
and Ritual, 161.
91. Claude Lévi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology (New York: Basic Books,
1963), 198–201; Posthumus, Fieldwork Interviews and Personal
Communications.
92. Fugle, ‘The Nature and Function’, 24. Bruce Kapferer, Beyond
Rationalism: Rethinking Magic, Witchcraft, and Sorcery (New York:
Berghahn Books, 2003), 21, explains that rites performed to counter-
act sorcery/witchcraft reveal the cosmologies—as negations—that are
integral to its conception and practice. In the Lakota case diviners (holy
men) were enlisted to identify acts of sorcery/witchcraft, and rites to
counteract it involved the extraction of the sickness, conceived of as a
foreign pollutant, disease-object, projectile, or poison, or, more broadly,
as bad medicine or negative energy. The Lakota terms for poison
(oȟáka, oȟágya, ikté, and ȟmúŋǧa) semantically focus on influencing or
contaminating someone with negative power or losing spiritual power
through contact with negative influences. These beliefs and counter-
measures, rites and counter-rites, reveal the underlying cosmological
framework of Lakota sorcery/witchcraft, understood as the introduc-
tion of foreign objects, such as worms, maggots, fingernails, and other
projectiles, embedded in Lakota belief and mythology. See Walker,
1917, 161–163.
93. The association between toads, birds, and sucking appears to be an

example of imitative or homeopathic magical belief and the model of/
model for bipolarity of ritual symbols: birds suck worms out of the
ground, and so logically dreamers of birds use this technique also to
suck out sickness. As Tyon explains, “Whatever these toads suck, they
suck hard. So it is that a man who dreams of a toad is very wakan, they
believe. From the time of his dream, he doctors people using his mouth.
He takes all the bad blood out of the body, it is said.” Walker, Lakota
95. Fugle, ‘The Nature and Function’, 27; Walker, Lakota Belief and Ritual,
92.
96. Fugle, ‘The Nature and Function’, 24–25. Fugle notes the similarities
between Lakota conjurors and the Ojibwe kusabindugeyu practitioner
or shaman who cures primarily sorcery victims by sucking. The connec-
tions between Sioux and Ojibwe ritual and practitioners are both strik-
ing and fascinating and call for further investigation.
97. Walker, Lakota Belief and Ritual, 161–163, 242–243.
102. Tyon describes how the Bone Keepers caused sicknesses that only they
could treat and cure, blurring the moral distinction between good and
bad practitioner, conjuror and sorcerer, extractor and introducer of sick-
ness. Walker, Lakota Belief and Ritual, 162.
Index
A B
Afrikaner, 120, 123, 137 Badmaev, P.A., 90, 91, 97, 109
Aginskii, 88, 100–102, 106 Banks, Sir Joseph, 56, 57, 60, 64, 72,
Alcohol, 20, 35, 38, 120, 121 73
Alma-Ata, 82 Barbados, 211, 231
Aloe, 119, 120 Barotseland, 117
Alternative medicine, 5, 22, 81, 82, Bear parts as medicine, 253
107, 108 Biomedicine, 2–5, 8, 82, 141, 198
Andelin, Anders, 39, 42, 43, 50 Bioprospecting, 15, 26, 140, 142
Angelica archangelica, 20, 27, 28, 35, Bloodletting, 7, 69, 87, 151, 169,
36, 38, 47, 48 184, 185
Angola, 140, 152, 153, 156, 164, Bolsheviks, 84, 91, 92, 94, 98, 105,
168, 173, 174, 188, 198, 199, 106
210 Bonesetting, 5, 87
Apartheid, 12, 118, 133, 137, Botanical Gardens, 91, 97
138 Botany, 154, 252
Aphrodisiacs (love medicines), 38 Botswana (Bechuanaland), 117, 127,
Arjeplog, 30 131, 137
Arsenic, 90 Brazil, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 20, 151, 152,
Atlantic Ocean, 18 154, 173, 179, 180, 182–201
Atlantic slave trade, 152, 183, 233 Britain, 16, 26, 57, 58, 62, 63, 65, 72,
Ayurveda, 7, 15, 37, 82, 107 73, 75, 120, 144
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), 273

under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019
Studies Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15491-2
274 Index
British Empire, 4, 13, 116, 123 Colonialism, 4, 13, 14, 16, 23, 25,
British India, 14 26, 48, 56, 74, 76, 123–125,
Buddhism, 16, 83–87, 89–92, 94–96, 130–132, 142, 165, 174, 177,
98–101, 104–108, 110 232, 263
Renovationist movement in, 83, 85, Commercialisation, 8, 20, 136, 137
91, 92, 101 Conjurer, 255
Burning tinder as medicine (moxibus- Costa, Bernardo Francisco Bruto da,
tion), 42, 47 156, 163, 175
Buryatia, 82–85, 87–89, 91, 93–96, Courts. See Legal proceedings
98–100, 102, 107, 108 Cross-cultural interaction, 7, 47
Cupping, 42, 124, 167, 173
C
Cape Colony, 116, 127, 128 D
Cape Town, 139, 142 Dakota, 238, 239, 244, 261, 262,
Caribbean, 6, 11, 17, 19, 20, 24, 55, 264–266
57, 59, 65, 71, 72, 74, 77, 79, Danish West Indies, 14, 19, 20, 203,
203–208, 210, 211, 214, 215, 204, 205, 206, 208, 210, 213,
217, 220, 224, 226, 230–233, 226, 229, 235. See also Saint
235, 236 Croix; Saint Thomas
Castor oil, 20, 69, 120, 121 Datsans, 85, 88, 95–98, 101, 102
Catholicism. See Christianity Deloria, Ella, 241, 243, 264
Centre of Tibetan Medicine, 93, 99 Diagnosis, 167, 187
Ceremonial bundles, 244–246, Diet. See Nutrition
248–250, 256, 257, 259 Diviners, 115, 117, 126, 131, 134,
Charlatanism/charlatans, 6–8, 10, 183, 231, 236, 268
18, 20, 180–183, 185, 188–191, Domestic medicine. See Household
194, 195, 197, 198, 200, 201, medicine
238 Dorzhiev, Agvan, 83–85, 88–94, 96,
Chewa, 117, 118 99, 110, 112
Chikanga (Malawian healer), 137, Dreaming, in healer initiation, 256
138, 148 Drums, 30–32
China, 7, 37, 42, 81, 82, 86, 106, Durban, 119, 121, 136, 138, 139,
107, 109, 174 148
Chinese medicine, 7, 23, 47, 82, 86, Dzhidinskii, 88
98, 99, 107
Christianity, 11, 14, 21, 42, 100, 123–
125, 129, 131, 132, 139, 143, E
172, 229. See also Inquisition; Egituevskii, 88
Missionaries Enlightenment, 24, 35, 48, 59, 84,
Climate, 17, 25, 29, 33, 41, 45, 67, 85, 92, 95, 96, 106, 199
69, 74, 86, 105, 151, 152, 154, Enontekiö, 28, 31, 32, 34, 35, 37,
157, 159, 184, 185 49
Index 275
F Home remedies, 9, 179, 182, 184–

Fahlberg, Samuel, 16, 57–59, 65–74, 187, 197. See also Household
77–79 medicine
Faith healing, 118, 124, 131 Hospitals, 2, 45, 63, 128, 130, 132,
Finland, 1, 2, 28, 29, 33–37, 41, 42, 138, 155, 168, 182, 190
46, 47, 49–51, 75 Household medicine, 9, 24
Fish liver oil, 44, 47 Humoralism, 155, 168, 169
Flint, Karen, 26, 117, 119, 121, 122, Hybridisation, 3, 5, 7, 13, 20, 21, 30,
125, 130, 134, 138, 140–148 55, 57, 60, 68, 73, 82, 83, 116,
Folk medicine, 5, 8, 10, 11, 18, 24, 120, 139, 204
38, 49, 52, 102, 126, 199
Four Tantras, 86–89, 99, 104, 105,
108 I
France, 25, 59, 65, 71, 188, 189, 241, Iangazhinskii, 88
262 Ikitsokhurovskaia School, 89
Imbert, J.B.A., 189, 190, 200
Imperialism, 14, 25, 106, 114
G India, 21, 22, 25, 36–38, 56, 58,
Gelfand, Michael, 115, 116, 127, 129, 61, 63, 65, 66, 71, 75, 82, 86,
138, 139, 142, 145, 148 104–106, 142, 157–159, 161,
Ginseng, 87, 103 163, 170, 171, 174
Global history, 4, 7, 8, 10, 23, 24 Indian Ocean, 18, 119, 139, 159
Globalisation, 4, 6, 7, 22, 29, 107, Inquisition, 11, 12, 24, 182, 183,
230 186, 197, 199
Goa, 14, 18, 37, 149, 153, 156–158, Inoculation, 41, 42, 69, 70, 74
161–163, 170, 171, 174–176, Intellectuals, 3, 83, 85, 96, 117, 130,
186 131, 141, 180, 194–196, 198,
Gorbachev, Mikhail, 106 201
Gorky, Aleksei Maksimovich, 97, 98 Islam, 23, 24, 26, 100, 210
Gulf of Bothnia, 28
J
H Jamaica, 205, 208, 230, 234
Helsinki, 21, 48, 49, 51–53, 74, 75, Japan, 7, 37, 42, 83, 114
78, 91 Johannesburg, 134, 139
Herbalism, 115, 126, 134, 139, 144 Judaism, 11, 183, 186
Herbalists, 5, 19, 115, 117, 121, 125, Jukkasjärvi, 28, 39
126, 128, 131, 134, 138, 167,
247, 249, 253–255, 257, 266,
267 K
Herbs, 28, 34, 35, 37, 47, 86, 97, Kalmykia, 82–85, 87, 89, 93–95, 98,
103, 107, 125, 135, 177, 179, 100, 106–108
187, 209, 241, 250, 251 Kazakhstan, 82
276 Index
Khama, 123, 131, 144 Massage, 84, 87, 124, 225

Khoi, 119, 120, 133, 142 Medical anthropology, 25, 260
Khotso Sethuntsa (South African Medical culture, 3, 5–9, 11, 15, 18,
healer), 118, 137 30, 38, 42, 48, 55, 57, 68, 69,
Kyrenskii, 88 73, 116, 127, 134, 136, 138,
139, 180, 186, 193, 196, 260
Medical geography, 16, 190. See also
L Climate
Laestadius, Lars Levi, 37, 38, 49, 51 Medical pluralism, 6, 8, 23, 25, 119,
Lakota, 10, 12, 19, 20, 237–245, 138, 151, 158, 168, 170, 171
247–251, 254–257, 259–269 Medical training, 41, 42, 49, 102,
Lamas, 83–85, 88, 90, 92–96, 101, 153, 154, 158, 164
103, 111 Medicinal plants, 15, 34, 118, 125,
emchi-lamas, 83–85, 87, 88, 90, 151, 154, 156, 173, 187, 190,
93–96, 98–100, 102 192, 193
Lapland, 16, 26–36, 38, 41–52 Miasma, 155
Law, 15, 19, 21, 31, 126, 127, 145, Migration, 18, 21, 26, 119, 147, 180,
153, 160, 165, 172, 189, 192, 181
194, 212, 213, 230–232, 234, labour, 135, 138
242, 243 Mimesis, mimicry, 3, 167
Legal proceedings, 11 Minnesota Territory, 238
Linnaeus, Carl, 27–29, 42, 43, 47, 48, Missionaries, 15, 22, 24, 26, 64,
52, 56–59, 74, 75 116, 122, 124, 129, 131, 133,
Lister, Joseph, 4 134, 141, 144, 146–148, 237,
Literacy, 9, 138 238
Literate healers, 8, 12, 24, 193 Mobility, 17, 21, 59, 72, 75, 116,
Luck medicines/luck charms, 19, 117, 118, 136–148
136, 137, 258 Modernisation, 4, 14, 16, 20, 29, 30,
40, 41, 81, 83, 90–93, 106, 139,
171
M Monasteries, Buddhist, 17, 82, 84–86,
Magic, 10, 11, 24, 31, 34, 35, 38, 87, 88, 91–96, 100, 101, 106, 113
144, 146, 182, 186, 194–196, Mongolia, 85–90, 93, 94, 97, 100,
199, 212, 214, 230–233, 245, 102, 105, 106
247, 252, 258, 259, 263, 265, Morão, Simão Pinheiro, 183–186,
268, 269 197, 199
Maine, Kas (South African healer), 12, Moscow, 17, 93, 94, 100, 101,
135, 137, 147 107–109
Malawi (Nyasaland), 22, 26, 116–118, Mozambique, 118, 140, 147, 163,
120, 122, 127, 130, 131, 133, 175
135, 136, 138, 141–146, 148 Muthi shops, 119, 138
Maloderbetovskaia School, 89 Mystery dance, 242–244, 256, 259,
Mashonaland, 127 262, 264, 268
Index 277
N Post-colonial, 83, 100, 169, 177

Namibia, 127, 138 Prayer, 20, 131, 132, 183, 187, 246,
Natal, 15, 119–121, 126, 128, 129, 248
133–135, 138, 140, 142 Professionalisation, 14, 17, 121, 128,
Natal Native Medical Association 134, 137, 139–141, 143
(NNMA), 134 Punishments for illegal healing, 116
Ndebele, 124
Negreiros, Almada, 151, 166–168,
173, 177 Q
Ngoni, 118, 124, 131, 135, 146 Qing Empire, 88, 90
Nigeria, 127 Quackery/quacks, 6, 10, 14, 18, 22,
Norway, 29, 36, 37, 40, 47 23, 95, 128, 166, 167, 169, 188,
Nunes, José Correia, 149, 162, 164, 191, 212, 231
176, 177
Nutrition, 28, 35, 44, 120
R
Race/Racism, 10, 14, 25, 26, 140,
O 141, 143, 147, 175, 176, 192,
Obeah, 14, 19, 203–227, 229–233, 195, 211, 231, 232
235, 236 Rand (Witwatersrand), 119, 133
Oglala, 241, 242, 252, 256 Reindeer, 20, 28–30, 32, 33, 39, 40,
Opium, 37, 62 43, 47, 103
Oral history, 9, 35, 122 Research on healers’ medicines, 15
Rhodesia, 115, 124, 127–129, 138,
148
P Ribeiro, Manuel Ferreira, 149,
Patients, 3–6, 8, 9, 20, 21, 24, 45, 61, 154–157, 159, 164, 167–169,
63, 69, 70, 73, 84, 94, 172, 174–177
102, 111, 120, 126, 128, 130, Rovaniemi, 39, 48, 50
131, 133, 136, 138, 139, 155, Russian Imperial Medical Council, 90
162, 169, 171, 177, 182, 184, Russia. See Soviet Union
185, 187–189, 194, 245, 257,
258
Payments to healers, 8, 136. See also S
Commercialisation Saint Barthelemy, 66, 77
Pepper, 35–38, 43, 51 Saint Croix, 203–212, 215, 216, 220,
Plantation economy, 152, 172 222, 223, 225, 226, 230, 235
Poisons, 30, 86, 119, 122, 258 Saint Eustatius, 67, 70, 71
Popular medicine. See Folk medicine Saint Petersburg (Leningrad), 85, 89,
Portugal, 11, 24, 140, 150–156, 159, 109–112
161–163, 172, 175, 181–183, Saint Thomas, 211, 230, 235
186, 199 Salvarsan, 90, 94, 137
278 Index
Sámi, 16, 17, 27–49, 51 Sweden, 16, 26, 28, 29, 35, 37, 49,
Sámi medical culture, 16 50, 56–59, 64, 65, 71–74, 76,
San, 118, 120, 141, 142 77, 79
São Tomé and Príncipe, 149–168, Swedish East India Company, 37, 50,
170–177 74
Scholten, Peter von, 211–213, 216 Sword, George, 239, 241, 243, 245–
Schulzen, Fredric, 16, 57–65, 72, 73, 249, 251–253, 258, 259, 265
75, 76 Syphilis, 61, 62, 68, 90, 94, 95, 174
Scott, Helenus, 61–65, 71, 73, 75, 76
Secrecy, 8, 17, 19, 131, 133, 139,
204, 257 T
Senegambia, 210 Tanzania, 25, 129, 141
Shamans (holy men), 7, 10, 241–249, Teno river, 28
252, 257, 263, 264, 267 Tete, 123
Shire river, 122 Tibetan medicine, 7, 10, 16, 17,
Shona, 115, 117, 127, 128, 141, 145 82–113
Sigaud, José Francisco Xavier, 190, medical texts, 90, 104
191, 200 Tobacco, 20, 27–29, 37, 119, 137
Sioux, 237–241, 243, 244, 260–269 Tobago, 65, 220, 235
Slavery, 56, 71, 172, 193, 197, 199, Torne Lappmark, 28–33, 41, 42, 47
205, 210, 221, 230–235 Tornio, 28, 29, 34, 41
Smallpox, 41, 43, 44, 64, 69, 70, 74, Traditional medicine, 6, 25, 40, 42,
78, 87, 162 47, 82, 119, 138, 140, 141, 145,
Snake skin, 38 147, 148
Snake stones, 37, 38 Transbaikalia, 88, 91, 97, 105
South Africa, 12, 15, 25, 26, 117, Transkei, 129, 138
118, 121, 124, 128, 137, Trials. See Legal proceedings
140–145, 147, 148 Trinidad, 208, 220, 235
Southern Africa, 8, 17–20, 116, 118, Tshaka, 121, 122
119, 122–125, 127, 131, 137, Tswana, 117, 118, 123, 131, 138
139, 140, 143, 147 Tuberculosis, 94, 135, 155
Soviet Union, 10, 16–18, 83–85, 92, Tugnugaltaiskii, 88
96, 100, 105, 106, 111 Tumbuka, 117, 118, 146
Spirits, 86, 87, 123, 124, 133, 135, Tuva, 82, 84, 86–89, 95, 100,
137, 138, 142, 195, 196, 208, 106–108
218–220, 223, 224, 237, 238,
240–252, 256–259, 263–268
Stalin, Joseph, 17, 84, 92, 96, 98 U
Succulents, 120 Ulan-Bator, 101
Sugar, 12, 30, 41, 43, 51, 65, 150– Unani, 7, 15, 158
152, 172, 190, 192, 209, 226 United States (US), 2, 15, 71
Sun dance, 241–243, 247, 254, 256, Utsjoki, 28, 29, 32, 33, 38, 39,
262–268 41–49, 51, 52
Index 279
W X
Walker, James R., 241, 242, 244, 246, Xhosa, 117, 123, 124, 126, 138, 143
247, 249, 253
Western medicine. See Biomedicine
Witchcraft/witches, 6, 10, 11, 19, 24, Z
31, 34, 115, 116, 122, 124–127, Zambesi river, 118, 123
130, 133, 134, 148, 167, 183, Zambia, 116–118, 129, 135
187, 189, 194, 195, 199, 207, Zimbabwe, 25, 127, 138, 141, 145,
213, 231, 245, 248, 258, 259, 147
268 Zululand, 121, 126, 134, 135, 138,
Witch doctors, 10, 14, 115, 117, 143, 147, 148
124–127, 129, 130, 134, 135,
148, 185
World Health Organization (WHO),
81, 82

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Healers and Empires

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Healers and Empires

Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019934455

Cover illustration: © Historical image collection by Bildagentur-online/Alamy Stock Photo

The editors acknowledge with gratitude the support of the Helsinki

1 Healers and Empires in Global History: Healing

2 Traditional Arctic Healing and Medicines of

3 Reports on Encounters of Medical Cultures:

4 Tibetan Medicine and Buddhism in the Soviet Union:

5 Contestation, Redefinition and Healers’ Tactics

6 Complicating Hybrid Medical Practices in the Tropics:

7 Doctors, Healers and Charlatans in Brazil: A Short

8 Risking Obeah: A Spiritual Infrastructure in the Danish

9 Toward a Typology of Nineteenth-Century Lakota

Markku Hokkanen Department of History, University of Oulu, Oulu,

Fig. 8.1 Spiritual experts and their clients. Charte over

Healers and Empires in Global History:

Markku Hokkanen and Kalle Kananoja

© The Author(s) 2019 1

Contestation and hybridisation are not, it should be emphasised, mutu-

The Triumph of Modern Medical Science

Empire.10 The social history of medicine is a significant subfield for

cultural field containing several medical systems.16 The cultural approach

in pluralism needs to be understood in the broader context of cultural

to the dynamism of Central Asia’s medical culture, which flourished in

Methodologies for Histories of Healing

by anyone. However, distinctions between different types of healers

histories.37 Other regional histories as well as numerous case studies

twentieth century, although the processes of interviewing and editing

Locating Healing in Imperial and Colonial History

As an important general point of periodisation, it should be noted

practitioners tended to be concentrated in these areas, too, with wealth-

case studies of mobile individuals (Kontturi), to small island environ-

Focusing on African and Afro-Caribbean practitioners of Obeah,

medical encounters, mobilities and agencies and help in locating new

in politics, law and religion underline the close connections between

1993); Mark Harrison, Public Health in British India: Anglo-Indian

‘The Importance of Knowing About Not Knowing: Observations from

2002); Brad R. Huber and Alan R. Standstrom, eds., Mesoamerican

Traditional Arctic Healing and Medicines

In 1737, Carl Linnaeus, later von Linné, published Flora Lapponica.

Found near fell brooks everywhere in Lapland; common especially in wet,

© The Author(s) 2019 27

The stalks of the Angelica archangelica were a summertime delicacy of

Healing or Heathenism? Contestation and Negotiation

Contestation and negotiation concerning acceptable healing prac-

available contain no sign of action taken against remedies based on ingre-

Indian or Indigenous Medicine? Cross-Cultural

impact.34 Angelica archangelica had even been considered an impor-

Lapland was at this point a popular destination for gentlemen explorers.

The old manuscript Experimenta (1685), written by Franciscus Redus and

In Laestadius’ description, the reference to the Ganges is very interest-

Many remedies of the Sámi reflected their way of life: a bleeding

Traditional Cures or Modern Medicine? Hybridisation

The traditional remedies of the Sámi underwent a great change in

- - nothing is better than fresh codfish, and it is consumed here through

When scientific medicine started gaining ground, the medical tradition

The day-to-day environment of the Sámi, often considered healthy,

This chapter investigated the significance of imported medicine in the

12. The Sami traditionally lived in teepee-like dwellings made of animal skins

28. En Samling af Läkedomar och Huus-Curer (A Collection of Remedies and

The Triumph of Modern Medical Science

Methodologies for Histories of Healing

Locating Healing in Imperial and Colonial History

Healing or Heathenism? Contestation and Negotiation

12. The Sami traditionally lived in teepee-like dwellings made of animal skins

28. En Samling af Läkedomar och Huus-Curer (A Collection of Remedies and

61. Arno Forsius, ‘Rokotus isorokkoa vastaan Suomessa: Kuvauksia lääket-

84. Suomen Kansan Vanhat Runot: 12, Pohjois-Pohjanmaan Runot 2:

Two Physicians in Global Medical Networks

9. Lars-Olof Skoglund, ‘Schulzenheim, von (Schultz, Schulzen, von

27. RA/CM, ÅFP Fredric Schulzen 1798.

65. Jensen, ‘The Creolization of Medicine,’ 162.

90. Reinhartz, ‘The Caribbean Cartography’, 24; Weiss, Slavhandel och slav-

Research and Repression, 1928–1944

25. Bakaeva and Zhukovskaia, eds., Kalmyki, 402; Dordzhieva, Buddiiskaia

41. GARB, f. R-248, op. 1, d. 14, l. 9–11 (Protokol obyedinennogo sove-

69. GARB, f. R-248, op. 4, d. 68, l. 8а–11 (Information report from

82. Tsyrenzhapova, ed., Tibetskaia Meditsina U Buriat, 120–134, 147–151,

Indigenous, Migrant and Mobile Medicines and Healers

Healing, Medicines and Politics in Early Nineteenth

Colonial Influences, Impacts and Challenges