The Witch Doctors, Keepers of the Flame

 Advertisement

A reason for the detachment with which doctors view the healer is the association of healing in the popular mind with occultist practices, such as seances and the activities of the witch doctor. Doctors themselves are not exempt from these popular prejudices. Yet if we take the time to examine the work of the witch doctor, we find that the Western doctor has much to learn from him. In the meeting between witch doctor and sufferer, the humanity of the patient is never disregarded.

He or she does not receive the blow to one's selfdom, which is the standard in Western culture, where the patient often feels he or she has been dehumanized and reduced to the level of a simple number or case. The witch doctor would never be so crass or ignorant. This kind of therapeutic problem is alien to tribal medicine, where the soul is considered to necessitate healing along with the body.

Our distant ancestors did not see themselves as distinct from the environment. The stars, the spirits and the gods that controlled the cosmos also controlled the people. Human beings were intimately involved with nature. Shamans and medicine men use prayers, chants, talismans, herbs and potions to influence a world that humans in primitive society could not understand or influence.

Faith healing of a simple kind is present still in so-called 'backward' parts of the world where medical science has made few inroads. The therapeutic powers of the local witch doctor are boosted by the implicit belief in the potency of his magic in the community. From centuries of observation and experiment, he has developed a pharmacopoeia for everyday needs, such as inducing vomiting in the case of poison; purgatives for ridding children of worms; sedatives for quieting hysterics; and potions for chest colds, headaches, whooping cough, dysentery, snakebite, swellings, and stings.

If his remedies were all totally ineffective, the medicine man would soon lose his standing in the community, just as a doctor would in ours. The witch doctor's remit is to deal with a multiplicity of illnesses-sudden fevers, barrenness in women- and to help the community cope with the sudden death of a chief. The pharmaceutical knowledge of witch doctors has often preceded that of scientific medicine.

Malaria was successfully treated by South American tribes prior to Old World doctors, and African Somalis diagnosed the transmission of the disease by the mosquito at least two centuries before Europeans. The modern witch doctor compares favourably with the western doctor. The comparison is especially favourable regarding illnesses of a hysterical or psychiatric nature, illnesses such as impotence and loss of speech.

A great deal of the witch doctor's treatment is psychological in essence and is in the realm of faith healing. The witch doctor flourishes in primitive societies because of the belief that good and evil govern both the spirit world and the human world. The witch doctor is on the side of the good, and his chief function is to protect the community from evil spirits. In the light of modern discoveries of the relationship between mind and body in illness, the ancient craft of the witch doctor appears surprisingly modern.

Primitive societies all over the world have their medicine men, or witch doctors. They nearly all wear colourful ceremonial costumes and use mysterious rituals to impress their suggestible patients. Native medicine is also closely bound up with the local religious cult, and involves the use of totem figures and charms to ward off sickness, which is usually attributed to evil spirits.

The witch doctor is both physician, psychiatrist, chaplain and private detective. Death is rarely regarded as a natural and unavoidable event but is usually ascribed to be the work of a supernatural agency. Here the witch doctor will be required to act as a priest to decide what spirit has been affronted or abused. His capacity as private detective will be utilized, as the witch doctor must then investigate possible conspirators responsible for the illness.

He is also a therapist, as part of his job is to administer herbal remedies, massage or heat treatment. He will also make ritual incantations, which will lull the patient into a state of placidity.

Many of the multicoloured ceremonial rituals, the masks and extravagant grass costumes put on by native doctors have a design. They are a visual assistance to psychiatric doctoring. Native medicine on the tribal level is almost invariably combined with psychiatry, an approach which 'civilized' practice has only newly adopted.

The visual aids, symbolic incantations and persuasive assertion used by native doctors may be regarded either as sympathetic magic or as a mild hypnotic suggestion. The doctor might say while bathing his patient: 'Your trouble is departing as this river is flowing out to sea.'

The religious mien of native psychiatry is provided by the local cult. This may entail a belief in the intercession of one of the ancestors, often recently dead, whose power as an elder is remembered. A suffering person may feel that his or her illness is accountable to the spirit of a dead uncle who beat him badly during his childhood. He will be advised to desist from the bad behaviour that has brought about this visitation from the spirit.

In parts of Ghana, there is a tradition of the use of deep hypnosis by witch doctors, who may induce a trance in a roomful of patients at a time. Authorized observers claim that the Ghanaian native doctors are able to cure serious skin disorders by this spiritual method.