Ìwà, African Medicine and the Management of Somatorm Disorders

In the recent times, some works have surfaced to argue for the endorsement of African medicineAfrican medicine to serve as a complement for orthodox medicine. Laudable as this may seem, it is important for African medicine to indicate the reliable metaphysical system which undergirds it. This is where Ìwà comes in to serve as the background framework for understanding the intersection between metaphysics and medicine. Since the human body is made of billions of cells, where each of them is an entity or being, then dis-eases or ailments should not be perceived only from the empirical angle alone. In this chapter, I discuss the three popular divisions of dis-eases in African medicine before indicating how healers function in each of them. As a way of showing the significance of African medicine in a way that is able to complement Western orthodox medicine, this chapter discusses its management of illnsesses that are classed as somatoformsomatoform disorders or those whose aetiologies are unknown in western orthodox medicine. By doing this, this chapter would have offered African medicine its long overdue metaphysical backing whilst also making a case for how African medicine can be relevant in contemporary times.