Traditional Healers and Their Female Clients: An Aspect of Nigerian Sickness Behavior

Abstract

The behavior and attitudes of Yoruba women in relation to pregnancy and childrearing are described and attention is drawn to their continued patronage of traditional practitioners in their search for magico-medical means of ensuring conception. Sick infants are increasingly being taken to hospital, most mothers having become convinced of the value of modern medicine for acute illness. Educated women are tending to discard local treatments entirely. In most cases, however, traditional precautions are concurrently observed. The practice of one hundred healers is reviewed and reasons suggested for the persistence of therapeutic methods which are culturally approved and personally reassuring.

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