© The Society for the Social History of Medicine 2005, all rights reserved
Self-Medication and the Trade in Medicine within a Multi-Ethnic Context: A Case Study of South Africa from the Mid-Nineteenth to Mid-Twentieth Centuries
Centre for Health, Medicine and Society, School of Arts and Humanities, Oxford Brookes University, Gipsy Lane, Oxford OX3 OBP, UK. E-mail: adigby{at}brookes.ac.uk
The article analyses the distinctive experience of self-medication in South Africa, where the preferences of racial and ethnic groups structured a differentiated consumption of herbs, home and folk remedies, patent and proprietary medicines, and pharmaceuticals. Also examined are the interlocking agencies of missionaries, traders, storekeepers and pharmacists in the creation of regional diversity within an evolving medical market. The article indicates that sufferers developed hybrid and plural forms of self-medication that were historically and culturally variable as a result of natural and manufactured products becoming increasingly accessible and affordable. These provided attractive substitutes and/or complements to the medicines of both ‘western’ and traditional doctors.
Keywords: South Africa; self-medication; medical pluralism; medical market; missionary; pharmacist; patent medicine; herb trade
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37 Quoted in Burrows, Medicine, p. 187.
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85 Kuper, Bourgeoisie, pp. 290, 292; Sunday Times, 9 August 1953.
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97 Advertisement in Domestic Monthly, January 1899.
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103 For example, the conservation work of the South African National Biodiversity Institute and National Botanical Gardens (www.nbi.ac.za).
104 Business Report, 17 October 2001.
105 Kwa Muhle Museum traditional medicine room.
106 ‘Power of African Herbs Put to the Test’, Cape Argus, 5 August 1998.
107 Personal communication from Tania Anderson of the McGregor Museum, Kimberley.
109 See, for example, a study of 57 plants used by Xhosa, Zulu, and Sotho healers in connection with childbirth, which found that 16, or more than a quarter, were toxic. See D. J. H. Veale, ‘South African Traditional Herbel Medicines Used During Childbirth’, Journal of Ethnopharmacy, 36 (1992), 185–91.
110 In 1989 skin lightening lotions were made illegal on the grounds that they could cause disfigurement or cancer.