Medicinal
Plants and Traditional Healing in
Contemporary
Rural South Africa
Saturday, 13 August 2016
A review of plants used in divination in southern Africa and their psychoactive effect
Numerous
indigenous healing traditions around the world employ plants with psychoactive
effects to facilitate
divination
and other spiritual healing rituals. Southern Africa has thus far been
considered to have relatively
few
psychoactive plant species of cultural importance, and little has been
published on the subject. This
paper
reports on 85 species of plants that are used for divination by southern
Bantu-speaking people. Of
these, 39
species (45 %) have other reported psychoactive uses, and a number have
established hallucinogenic
activity.
These findings indicate that psychoactive plants have an important role in
traditional healing practices
in
southern Africa.
More
Ritual uses of palms in traditional medicine in sub-Saharan Africa: a review
Ritual uses of palms in traditional medicine in sub-Saharan Africa: a
review
Palms (Arecaceae) are prominent elements in African
traditional medicines. It is, however, a challenge to find detailed information
on the ritual use of palms, which are an inextricable part of African medicinal
and spiritual systems. This work reviews ritual uses of palms within African
ethnomedicine. We studied over 200 publications on uses of African palms and
found information about ritual uses in 26 of them. At least 12 palm species in
sub-Saharan Africa are involved in various ritual practices: Borassus aethiopum, Cocos nucifera, Dypsis canaliculata, D. fibrosa, D. pinnatifrons, Elaeis guineensis,
Hyphaene coriacea, H. petersiana, Phoenix reclinata, Raphia farinifera, R.
hookeri, and R. vinifera. In
some rituals, palms play a central role as sacred objects, for example the
seeds accompany oracles and palm leaves are used in offerings. In other cases,
palms are added as a support to other powerful ingredients, for example palm
oil used as a medium to blend and make coherent the healing mixture. A better
understanding of the cultural context of medicinal use of palms is needed in
order to obtain a more accurate and complete insight into palm-based
traditional medicines.
More:
Traditional Medicines in Africa: An Appraisal of Ten Potent African Medicinal Plants
Traditional Medicines
in Africa: An Appraisal of Ten Potent African Medicinal Plants
The use of medicinal plants as a fundamental component of
the African traditional healthcare system is perhaps the oldest and the most
assorted of all therapeutic systems. In many parts of rural Africa, traditional
healers prescribing medicinal plants are the most easily accessible and
affordable health resource available to the local community and at times the
only therapy that subsists. Nonetheless, there is still a paucity of updated
comprehensive compilation of promising medicinal plants from the African
continent. The major focus of the present review is to provide an updated
overview of 10 promising medicinal plants from the African biodiversity which
have short- as well as long-term potential to be developed as future
phytopharmaceuticals to treat and/or manage panoply of infectious and chronic
conditions. In this endeavour, key scientific databases have been probed to
investigate trends in the rapidly increasing number of scientific publications
on African traditional medicinal plants. Within the framework of enhancing the
significance of traditional African medicinal plants, aspects such as
traditional use, phytochemical profile, in vitro, in vivo, and clinical studies
and also future challenges pertaining to the use of these plants have been
explored.
More
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