Self-medication and the trade in medicine within a multi-ethnic context: A case study of South Africa from the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries

Social History of Medicine

Volumn 18, Issue 3, 2005, Pages 439-457

  Digby, Anne ^a  

^a OXFORD BROOKES UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Herb trade; Medical market; Medical pluralism; Missionary; Patent medicine; Pharmacist; Self medication; South Africa

Indexed keywords

EID: 29144505332     PISSN: 0951631X     EISSN: 14774666     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/shm/hki045     Document Type: Review

References (154)

1. For example, J. K. Crellin, Home Medicine: The Newfoundland Experience (Montreal, 1994);
2. C. E. Rosenberg (ed.), Right Living, and Anglo American Tradition of Self-Help Medicine and Hygiene (Baltimore, 2003);
3. D. Craig, Familiar Medicine: Everyday Health Knowledge and Practice in Today's Vietnam (Honolulu, 2000).
4. E. H. Burrows, A History of Medicine in South Africa up to the End of the Nineteenth Century (Cape Town, 1958), pp. 191-4;
5. M. Ryan, A History of Organised Pharmacy, 1885- 1950 (Cape Town, 1986);
6. E. Lastovica, 'Sequah, a Quack in Nineteenth-Century Cape Town', Cabo, 4 (1987);
7. D. Gordon, 'From Rituals of Rapture to Dependence: The Political Economy of Khoikhoi Narcotic Consumption', South African Historical Journal, 35 (1996);
8. M. Cocks and A. Dold, 'The Role of "African Chemists" in the Health Care System of the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa', Social Science and Medicine, 51 (2000).
9. Government papers, UG 32-1912, Census of 1911. Part V. Occupations, pp. 706-7;
10. H. Deacon, H. Phillips, and E. van Heyningen, The Cape Doctor in the Nineteenth Century (London, 2004), pp. 36-7.
11. This formed an estimated 15 per cent of the population. See D. W. Goyns, Pharmacy in the Transvaal, 1894-1994 (Braamfontein, 1995), p. 96.
12. A. Digby, Making a Medical Living (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 39-41.
13. P. Starr, The Social Transformation of American Medicine (New York, 1982);
14. J. H. Young, The Medical Messiahs (Princeton, 1967).
15. M. M. Lock, East Asian Medicine in Urban Japan (Berkeley, 1980) pp. 97-8, 135, 145-7, 151-2.
16. C. H. Feinstein, An Economic History of South Africa: Conquest, Dispossession and Development (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 252-6.
17. H. Giliomee, The Afrikaners (Cape Town, 2003), p. xiii.
18. C. G. W. Schumann, Structural Changes and Business Cycles in South Africa, 1806- 1936 (London, 1938), p. 146.
19. A. Porter, 'Religion, Missionary Enthusiasm and Empire', in A. Porter (ed.), The Oxford History of the British Empire, The Nineteenth Century (Oxford, 1999), p. 231.
20. M. Gelfand, Christian Doctor and Nurse (Sandton, 1984);
21. J. L. and J. Comaroff, of Revelation and Revolution, 2 vols (Chicago, 1991-7), ch. 7;
22. P. S. Landau, 'Explaining Surgical Evangelism in Colonial Southern Africa: Teeth, Pain and Faith', Journal of African History, 37 (1996);
23. C. Allwood, 'Mission as Healing the Sick; Christian Medical Missionaries in South Africa', Missionalia, 17 (1989).
24. R. B. Beck, 'Bibles and Beads: Missionaries as Traders in Southern Africa in the Early Nineteenth Century', Journal of African History, 30 (1989), pp. 213, 225.
25. London Missionary Society Chronicle (1902), 264.
26. C. Bundy, The Rise and Fall of the South African Peasantry (Cape Town, 1988), pp. 74, 91, 129.
27. W. D. Hammond-Tooke, Bhaca Society (Cape Town, 1962), p. 261;
28. W. D. Hammond-Tooke, The. Tribes of the King William's Town District (Pretoria, 1958), p. 55. The 'Red people' (ababomvu) were Africans who used a mixture of red ochre and animal fat on their bodies to protect against the cold and sunburn, and who retained their traditional culture.
29. R. Wilson, Pious Traders in Medicine (Philadelphia, 2000), pp. 63, 67-71, 78, 122-3, 127-8.
30. Government Gazette, 30 August 1849.
31. National Archives, Cape Town, CO 4055, Memorials of 1850; Cape of Good Hope Almanac (1843);
32. Volksblad, 25 January and 1 February 1850.
33. CO 4055, Memorial from Dr Orpen, 8 February 1850.
34. B. Krüger, The Pear Tree Blossoms (Genadendal, 1966), pp. 56-7, 181;
35. B. Krüger and P. W. Schaberg, The Pear Tree Bears Fruit (Genadendal, 1984), pp. 65, 43-4, 113.
36. National Archives, Cape Town, MC 3, Medical Committee, 27 June 1842; Burrows, Medicine, p. 155.
37. National Archives, Cape Town, CO 4029, document 368, 30 March 1846.
38. National Archives, Cape Town, MC 10, letters to Medical Council, 8 December 1848.
39. MC 7, Colonial Office to Medical Council, 1821-5, memorial from drug vendors, 20 May 1824.
40. M. Steyn, The Diary of a South African (Cape Town, 1919), p. 116.
41. Mrs Heckford, A Lady Trader in the Transvaal (London, 1882), p. 258;
42. V Alien, Lady Trader (London, 1979), pp. 130, 175, 179.
43. A. Jackson, Trader on the Veld (Cape Town, 1958), p. 36.
44. P. Jowell and A. Folb, Into Kokerboom Country, Namaqualand's Jewish Pioneers (Cape Town, 2005), pp. 12, 35-8.
45. W. F. Fish, The Autobiography of a Counter Jumper (London, 1929), p. 179;
46. Steyn, Diary of a South African, pp. 200-2;
47. P. W. Laidler and M. Gelfand, South Africa. Its Medical History, 1652-1898 (Cape Town, 1971), p. 308;
48. South African Medical Journal, I (1884), 126;
49. South African Medical Journal, III (1895-6), 127;
50. Cape. Almanac, 1847.
51. Personal communication from Mervyn Susser on his family's trading store in the northern Transvaal; South African Medical Journal, II (1887), 119;
52. Ryan, Pharmacy, pp. 69-70, 95;
53. Government Ordinances 12 and 82;
54. Burrows, Medicine, p. 82.
55. Jackson, Trader, pp. 30, 62.
56. Rand Daily Mail, 1 March 1906.
57. Goyns, Pharmacy, p. 26.
58. Giliomee, Afrikaners, pp. xix, 37, 320.
59. R. Melzer, The Housewife Doctor', Adler Museum Bulletin, 9 April 1983, 1 -2.
60. Quoted in Burrows, Mediane, p. 187.
61. R. Van Reenen (ed.), Emily Hobhause (2nd edn, Cape Town, 2000), pp. 76, 93, 95;
62. E. van Heyningen, 'Women and Disease: The Clash of Medical Cultures', in Rethinking the. South African War (forthcoming).
63. Lastovica, 'Sequah', pp. 10-18.
64. Burrows, Medicine, pp. 153, 155-6, 257;
65. Government paper, UG 6-1927, Report of the Department of Public Health, 1925- 6, p. 192.
66. W. Beinart, The Political Economy of Pondoland, 1860-1930 (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 23, 27;
67. S. Marks and A. Atmore (eds), Economy and Society in Pre-Industrial South Africa (London, 1980), p. 144.
68. Cape official papers, G13-1888, Reports of District Surgeon, p. 53.
69. National Archives, Cape Town, A 1403, O'Donnell account books for 1886-9 and 1901-6.
70. National Archives, Cape Town, A 2044, William Saville Lewis, receipt of 7 November 1906.
71. National Archives, Cape Town, A 2044, Lewis, receipts 12 October 1908; 29 January, 19 June, 9 September 1909; 18 January 1910.
72. University of York, Borthwick Institute, Gale papers, 'Notes on the History of the Church of Scotland Hospital at Tugela Ferry', n.d.
73. W. Beinart, 'European Traders and the Mpondo Paramountcy, 1878-1886', Journal of African History, 20 (1979), 474-5.
74. Jackson, Trader, p. 47.
75. D. Hobart Houghton (ed.), Economic Development in a Plural Society (Oxford, 1960), p. 91;
76. D. Hobart Houghton and E. M. Walton, The Economy of a Native Reserve (Pietermaritzburg, 1952), p. 66.
77. M. Hunter, Reactions to Conquest (Cape Town, 1979), pp. 140, 305-6;
78. Hammond Tooke, Bhaca Society, pp. 29, 296.
79. Houghton and Walton, Native Reserve, p. 80;
80. D. Hobart Houghton, Life in the Ciskei (Johannesburg, 1955), pp. 34-5.
81. I. Schapera, Migrant Labour and Tribal Life (Oxford, 1947), pp. 122, 125-6, 229, 231, 237-8.
82. University of Cape Town Archives, BC 217, box 4, daybook of J. E. J. Williams, 1862-4.
83. Ryan, Pharmacy, pp. 1-9, 31, 33, 37-8.
84. Houghton, Economic Development, p. 113.
85. Interview with Philip Isaacs.
86. McGregor Museum, Kimberley, MMK 4700, Gaston's prescriptions.
87. Ryan, Pharmacy, p. 27, table II.
88. Goyns, Pharmacy, p. 10.
89. Max Friedman, rearing Cape Town pharmacist (Atlantic Sun, 30 August 2001).
90. Ryan, Pharmacy, pp. 2, 38.
91. Alleged Illegal Practice by a Chemist', South African Medical Record, 25 March 1906;
92. 'The Unzimkulu Prescribing Case', South African Medical Record, 10 May 1906;
93. South African Medical Journal, IV (1896-7), 166.
94. R.E. Phillips, The Bantu in the City (Lovedale, 1938), p. 130.
95. B. J. F. Laubscher, 'The Psychology of Quackery', Journal of the Medical Association of South Africa, 1 (1927), 353-4.
96. UG 19-1936, Proprietary Medicines, paragraph 7, p. 8.
97. Mafeking. Mail, 14 February 1917
98. East London Daily Dispatch, 8 May 1920;
99. Cape, 6 August 1920.
100. M. H. de Kock, Selected Subjects in the Economic History of South Africa (Cape Town, 1924), p. 353.
101. Jackson, Trader, p. 26.
102. Bloemfontein Post, 2 November 1903.
103. G. Callaway, Sketches of Kafir Life (Oxford, 1905), p. 93.
104. UG 19-1936, Proprietary Medicines, paragraph 12, p. 11.
105. Phillips, Bantu, p. 130.
106. Hunter, Reactions, pp. 305-6;
107. UG 22-1932, Report of Native Economic Commission, 1930-2, paragraph 947.
108. B. G. M. Sundkler, Bantu Prophets in South Africa (London, 1948), p. 222.
109. J. T. Brown, Amonq the Bantu Nomads (London, 1926), pp. 138-9.
110. Campbell Library, Durban, KCM 55084 (b), file 3, G. V. Essery, 'Zulu Medicine' (1956/7), p. 5.
111. Quoted in B. Tyrrell and P. Jurgens, African Heritage (Johannesburg, 1983), pp. 94-101.
112. UG 49-1929, Report of Department of Public Health, 1928-9, p. 59;
113. UG 43-1935, Report of Department of Public Health, 1935, p. 12.
114. UG 19-1936, Proprietary Medicines, paragraph 12, p. 10.
115. Letter from Secretary to Newspaper Press Union of South Africa, South African Medical Journal, 8 June 1946.
116. Government Gazette, October 1952;
117. Star, 24 November 1952.
118. Rand Daily Mail, 1 November 1953.
119. National Archives, Pretoria, GES 1788, 25/30M; Kwa Muhle Museum Durban, traditional medicine room.
120. Post, 13 January 1963, 7 June 1959;
121. L. Kuper, An African Bourgeoisie (New Haven, 1965), p. 267.
122. Kuper, Bourgeoisie, pp. 290, 292;
123. Sunday Times, 9 August 1953.
124. A. Hutchins et al., Zulu Medicinal Plants. An Inventory (Pietermaritzburg, 1996), p. 3.
125. D. H. Varley and H. M. Matthews (eds), The Cape Journals of Archdeacon N.J. Merriman (Cape Town, 1957), p. 176.
126. C. Searle, The History of the Development of Nursing in South Africa, 1652- 1960 (Pretoria, 1965), p. 99.
127. Gordon, 'Rituals of Rapture', pp. 67-8, 72-3.
128. F. Masson, 'An Account of Three Journeys from Cape Town into the Southern Parts of Africa', Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 66 (1775), 287.
129. N. Mathie, Dr W. G. Atherstone, 1814-1898, 3 vols, vol. II (Grahamstown, n.d), pp. 474-5;
130. information in Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden Conservator; C.W. L. Pappe, Florae Capensis Medicae Prodomus (Cape Town, 1857), p. 17.
131. South African Medical Journal, I (October 1884), 126.
132. de B. Webb and J. B. Wright (eds), The James Stuart Archive, 4 vols, vol. II (Pietermaritzburg, 1979 and 1982), pp. 84, 281.
133. C. van Onselen, The Seed is Mine (Oxford, 1997), pp. 93, 113, 186;
134. Essery, 'Zulu Medicine', p. 5;
135. Campbell Library, Laura Longmore Collection, KCM 98/8/21 /24.
136. V. Williams, 'Here, eat this root', Arena, (17 October 1998), 1-2.
137. Massel Bay Advertiser, 11 September 1888.
138. Advertisement in Domestic Monthly, January 1899.
139. J. B. Shepherd, Land of the Tikoloshe (London, 1955), pp. 9-11.
140. T. D. M. Skota, The African Yearly Register (Johannesburg, 1931), p. 278.
141. KCM 98/8/21/24.
142. Cocks and Dold, 'African Chemists', pp. 1505-15.
143. Essery, 'Zulu Medicine', p. 5;
144. Van Wyck et al., Medicinal Plants, p. 14.
145. For example, the conservation work of the South African National Biodiversity Institute and National Botanical Gardens (www.nbi.ac.za).
146. Business Report, 17 October 2001.
147. Kwa Muhle Museum traditional medicine room.
148. Power of African Herbs Put to the Test', Cape Argus, 5 August 1998.
149. Personal communication from Tania Andersen of the McGregor Museum, Kimberley.
150. Outspan, 19 October 1951.
151. See, for example, a study of 57 plants used by Xhosa, Zulu, and Sotho healers in connection with childbirth, which found that 16, or more than a quarter, were toxic.
152. See D. J. H. Veale, 'South African Traditional Herbei Medicines Used During Childbirth', Journal of Ethnopharmacy, 36 (1992), 185-91.
153. In 989 skin lightening lotions were made illegal on the grounds that they could cause disfigurement or cancer.
154. UG 19-1936, Report on Proprietary Medicines.