Women and Medicine on the Gold Coast, 1880-1945
Abstract
Prior to colonial rule and the imposition of western medicine and practices, several countries in Sub-Saharan Africa relied on traditional medicine to treat tropical diseases that ravaged the populace. Specialists in traditional medicine, both men and women, restored and preserved their patients' health through herbarium and spiritism. Like their male counterparts, female traditional medicine practitioners on the Gold Coast were highly respected by people for their knowledge and competence as their communities' primary healers and caregivers. This study, drawing on various primary and secondary sources, including oral traditions, colonial reports, medical journals, and historical accounts, argues that women played a substantial role in traditional medicine on the Gold Coast. However, the disruption of traditional medicine practises caused by the imposition of colonial rule and Western medicine in the late nineteenth century led to the exploitation, marginalisation, and exclusion of women in some fields of the newly imposed colonial medical system on the Gold Coast. This study explores native women's roles in medicine on the Gold Coast during the pre-colonial period and how Western medicine and practices altered their role and place in the field during colonial times.