ABSTRACT
Our concern was not so much about the depth of knowledge that one or several indigenous healers possessed, but rather the prevailing concepts of medicine related to health and healing among a representative group of healers juxtaposed to indigenous knowledge archives of the Akan. The idea and objective was to ascertain a substantive framework for interpreting writings that have and continue to examine how specialists of the Akan therapeutic system conceptualize medicine and employ those conceptualizations in social practice. It must be stated, again, that the experiences, perceptions, and competencies of indigenous healers are not identical, and to use one person as a benchmark-which I am convinced Warren (1974) did-is problematic in the articulation of an “ethnomedical system” authenticated by so few sources that possessed equivalent levels of in-depth medicinal knowledge and aptitude. Essentially, one has to be “born into” the varied spiritual-cultural Bono (Akan) institutions, rather than arrive as a researcher or participant-observer, to access the depth of knowledge and sensibilities that provide more than a “glimpse”
into the nature and workings of those institutions. This challenge I clearly understood and accepted.
