Bantu Folklore (Medical and General)

Abstract

THIS is an interesting little work. It will be of value to students of primitive races. It deals chiefly with the ideas of the South African Kafir tribes on the subject of magic, medicine, diseases, and initiation ceremonies. Incidentally it gives a great insight into the extraordinary mixture of superstition, quackery, and practical research in native medicine. The Kafirs are nearly always at fault in their guesses as to the origin of diseases. Some maladies are thought to be caused by the supernatural influence of snakes or of water monsters, half man and half animal, or by the strange bird called impundulu, which by some is thought to be the origin of lightning. Other diseases are attributed to direct poisoning—the word for poison, ubuti, being a very old Bantu root that means the “essence of the tree.” This is a word that in many Bantu languages means medicine quite as much as poison, all the medicines of primitive man having been derived from the bark, sap, fruit, Or leaves of trees. Some of the “snakes” alluded to by the author as the cause of intestinal diseases (in the native mind) are evidently distorted accounts of guinea-worm or tape-worm.

Bantu Folklore (Medical and General).

By Dr. Matthew L. Hewat. Pp. 112. (Cape Town: T. M. Miller; London: J. and A. Churchill, n.d.)