Yoruba Medicine, Its Origin and More information.

Yorubic medicine is indigenous to and widely practiced on the African continent. Yorubic medicine has its roots in the Ifa Corpus, a religious text revealed by the mystic prophet, Orunmila, over 4,000 years ago in the ancient city of Ile-Ife, now known as Yorubaland. Within the last 400 years, this healing system has also been practiced in the day-to-day lives of individuals in the Caribbean, and South America, in large part, because of the traditions brought over by African slaves arriving in the Americas.
Orunmila's teachings were directed at the Yoruba people which centered around the topics of divination, prayer, dance, symbolic gestures, personal and communal elevation, spiritual baths, meditation, and herbal medicine. This ancient text, the Ifa Corpus, is the foundation for the art of divine herbology. Although Yorubic medicine has been practiced in Africa for over 4,000 years, its fundamental principles are little known to Westerners around the world. Among the various medical techniques for diagnosis and treatment, Yorubic medicine provides an important and valuable system worthy of study. The purpose of Yoruba is not merely to counteract the negative forces of disease in the human body, but also to achieve spiritual enlightenment and elevation which are the means of freeing the soul.


As with all ancient systems of medicine, the ideal of Yoruba herbology is to condition the body in its entirety so that disease will not attack it. (The term Osain is also used to describe Yorubic herbology. The word "Osain" means "the divine Orisha of plants". I will also use this term throughout the essay.) Many Westerners take it for granted that "African medicine" is a vague term for a collection of medical "voo doo". This myth about African medicine creeped in over centuries of misunderstandings. What is left is the negative image of primitive "voo doo" witch-doctors. This "voo doo" mentality is devoid of the sacred realities born of African thought in respect to religion, philosophy, and medicine. Therefore, the reader must separate witch-doctor myths from the genuine article when considering African herbal medicine.

In order to understand the system of Yoruba medicine, it is important to have some knowledge of the historical conditions that gave birth to this African art of healing. Many factors and dynamics were involved which influenced the beginnings and the development of this indigenous medicine.
The Yoruba history begins with the migration of an East African population across the trans-African route leading from the mid-Nile river area to the mid-Niger.¹ Archaeologists, according to M. Omoleya, inform us that the Nigerian region was inhabited more than forty thousand years ago, or as far back as 65,000 B.C.² During this period, the Nok culture occupied the region. The Nok culture was visited. by the "Yoruba people", between 2000 and 500 B.C. This group of people wer led, according to Yoruba historical accounts, by King Oduduwa, who settled peacefully in the already established Ile-Ife, the sacred city of the indigenous Nok people. This time period is known as the Bronze Age, a time of high civilization of both of these groups.
According to Olumide J. Lucue, "the Yoruba, during antiquity, lived in ancient Egypt before migrating to the Atlantic coast." He uses as demonstration the similarity of identity of languages, religious beliefs, customs, and names of persons, places and things. In addition, many ancient papyri discovered by archaeologists hint at an Egyptian origin.
Like almost everything else in the cultural life of Egypt, the development of science and medicine began with the priests, and dripped with evidences of its magical origins. Among the people, amulets and charms mere more popular than pills as preventive or curatives of disease. Disease was considered to them as possession by evil devils, and was to be treated with incantations along with the roots of certain plants and mystical concoctions. A cold for instance, could be exorcised by such magic words as: "Depart, cold, son of a cold, thou who breakest the bones, destroyest the skull, makest ill the seven openings of the head!...Go out on the floor, stink, stink, stink!" In many ways, this provided an effective cure, known today by various contemporary medicine as psychosomatic. Along side the incantations that were used, the sick patient was given a foul tasting concoction to help ward off the demon housed in the body.