ABSTRACT
This chapter presents some of the ambiguities in 'traditional medicine'. Professionalisation is an issue not only for 'traditional medicine' but for hospital medicine too, where all the usual defining characteristics of a formal 'profession' are not necessarily equally well established. As with 'traditional medicine', there are ambiguities in the way the term 'profession' is used; and these ambiguities derive from people's different assumptions about a 'profession' as an institution and their assessments of its contribution to patients' care. But whereas Ayurvedic and Unani medicine both have a large corpus of ancient literature in which their formal theories and practices have been set out, few if any systems of traditional medicine in Africa have such a corpus. For any profession of traditional medicine, no less than the law, has to be seen to have an interest in curbing the criminal element among healers, whether as 'quacks' or as 'troublemakers'.
