Title:	Indigenous Medicine and Knowledge in African Society
Authors:	Kwasi, Konadu Molefi Asante
Keywords:	Traditional medicine‑‑Africa
Issue Date:	2007
Publisher:	Routledge
Description:	Through a discussion with Kofi Sakyi Kumankoma, an odunsinni and research associate, it became clear that this research was not so much about the depth of knowledge that one or several indigenous healers possessed but prevailing concepts of medicine related to health and healing among a representative group of indigenous Bono healers and archives of indigenous knowledge in the Takyiman district of central Ghana. The idea and object was to generate a substantive framework for investigations and writings that reflect how specialists of the Bono-Takyiman (Akan) therapeutic system conceptualize medicine and translate those conceptualizations into practice. The collected works of Dennis M. Warren (1941–1997) remains a benchmark for any study on the indigenous medicine and knowledge systems of the Bono (or Brong) of Takyiman as evidenced by how often Warren has been cited and his long bibliography. Arguably, much of Warren’s early and later works were based largely upon his dissertation research in the late 1960s and early 1970s in the Bono-Takyiman district of Central Ghana. In reading Dennis Warren’s dissertation on religion, disease and medicine among the Bono-Takyiman, this writer’s main contention with the document, specifically, its disease classification scheme, was that it relied primarily on the knowledge of Nana Kofi Donkor—father of Kofi Kumankoma and a wellrespected ɔbosomfoɔ—as the baseline data juxtaposed to several indigenous healers and the 4000 or so community members surveyed.
URI:	http://10.6.20.12:80/handle/123456789/10078
ISBN:	978‑0‑415‑95620‑8
Appears in Collections:	African Studies

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