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      Hybridising Medicine: Illness, Healing and the Dynamics of Reciprocal Exchange on the Upper Guinea Coast (West Africa)

      research-article
      *
      Medical History
      Cambridge University Press
      Illness, Healing, Knowledge, Hybridisation, West-Africa, Guinea Bissau Region

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          Abstract

          The present article seeks to fill a number of lacunae with regard to the study of the circulation and assimilation of different bodies of medical knowledge in an important cultural contact zone, that is the Upper Guinea Coast. Building upon ongoing research on trade and cultural brokerage in the area, it focuses upon shifting attitudes and practices with regard to health and healing as a result of cultural interaction and hybridisation against the background of growing intra-African and Afro-Atlantic interaction from the fifteenth to the late seventeenth century. Largely based upon travel accounts, missionary reports and documents produced by the Portuguese Inquisition, it shows how forms of medical knowledge shifted and circulated between littoral areas and their hinterland, as well as between the coast, the Atlantic and beyond. It shows that the changing patterns of trade, migration and settlement associated with Mandé influence and Afro-Atlantic exchange had a decisive impact on changing notions of illness and therapeutic trajectories. Over the centuries, cross-cultural, reciprocal borrowing contributed to the development of healing kits employed by Africans and non-African outsiders alike, which were used and brokered by local communities in different locations in the region.

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          Author and article information

          Journal
          Med Hist
          Med Hist
          MDH
          Medical History
          Cambridge University Press (Cambridge, UK )
          0025-7273
          2048-8343
          April 2016
          : 60
          : 2
          : 181-205
          Affiliations
          Unidade de Clínica Tropical/Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT), Instituto de Higiene e Medicina Tropical (IHMT), New University of Lisbon (UNL) , Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Rua da Junqueira, 100, 1349-008 Lisbon, Portugal
          Author notes

          The author wishes to acknowledge the financial support of the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT) in Portugal, and to thank anonymous referees for their insightful remarks and suggestions on earlier versions of this paper, and Alexander Medcalf for his diligence and care during the proof stages.

          [* ]Email address for correspondence: philip.havik@ 123456ihmt.unl.pt
          Article
          00003 S002572731600003X
          10.1017/mdh.2016.3
          4847413
          26971596
          2e97b986-1ce3-4e86-9fac-0df1ef3282a5
          © The Author 2016
          History
          Page count
          References: 166, Pages: 25
          Categories
          Articles

          History
          illness,healing,knowledge,hybridisation,west-africa,guinea bissau region
          History
          illness, healing, knowledge, hybridisation, west-africa, guinea bissau region

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