Contribution to Book
Environments of Health and Disease in Tropical Africa before the Colonial Era
Disease and the Environment in the Medieval and Early Modern Worlds
(2022)
Abstract
A long-standing narrative that has its origins, in part, in early modern European travel narratives entwines Africa, diseased environments, and death. By probing these seventeenth-century narratives as historical sources and reflecting critically on their contents, however, this chapter reveals a Eurocentric “smokescreen” that hides a much more complex picture. African understanding of the “environment” – and of disease causation – was far more extensive than how we think of it today: it embodied not only the physical landscape but also the spiritual and social realms. Managing the multiple spheres that comprised the environment meant that pre-modern Africans had developed a complex variety of disease mitigation techniques, each targeting the suspected origin of disease. The chapter also includes an exploration of the author’s working hypothesis about the making, demise, or subsistence malaria and plague in selected regions of the African continent’s environment, demonstrating how working cross-disciplinarily and bringing together evidence from the humanities and the sciences – including research on ancient DNA – allows us to slowly build a clearer picture of the intricate relationship between diseases and the environment in the African past.
Disciplines
Publication Date
June, 2022
Editor
Lori Jones
Publisher
Routledge
ISBN
9780367151720
DOI
https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429055478
Citation Information
Gerard Chouin. "Environments of Health and Disease in Tropical Africa before the Colonial Era" 1stDisease and the Environment in the Medieval and Early Modern Worlds (2022) p. 127 - 158 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/gerard-chouin/1/