A Case Study of Disease and Culture in Action: Leprosy Among the Hausa of Northern Nigeria

Abstract

In an earlier theoretical paper¹ it was postulated that no culture, irrespective of its degree of simplicity or complexity, functions without a range of medical knowledge and beliefs, practices and practitioners. It was advanced that this medical constellation does not operate in a chaotic or haphazard manner, but rather that it may be appraised as a system—a system of medicine. It was further postulated that all systems of medicine, again irrespective of the degree of simplicity or complexity of the cultures, do not perform in a chance, meaningless fashion, but rather that they operate within a definite range of behavior. The interaction of culturally different medical practitioners, diagnoses and treatments, accordingly, need not be an individualistic, subjective affair; it can be appraised and calculated by rational scientific methods allowing for effective prognostication. In a series of papers this reasoning was tested in one particular cul-ture area, the Middle East,² and a paradigm was structured concerning the dynamics which can occur when the system of medicine of the Middle East interacts with that of the West.³