Healers and Empires in Global History by Healers & Empires in Global History

Author:Healers & Empires in Global History
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030154912
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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 protect 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 colonial economy, and generally, the African population probably suffered from worsening health in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, 119 there was money to be made in towns and mines. The more successful migrant workers and urban dwellers could pay for their medicines in cash, and up front, which had an impact upon healers’ practices. 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 colonial 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 salvarsan 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

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