ABSTRACT
Samuel Cartwright unknowingly saw only a glimpse into what comprised traditional African medicine. His assertion was that superstitious thoughts and ideas among enslaved Africans also caused a notable mortality rate. The idea of African medicine was placed in the realm of superstition, witchcraft, conjuring, gris-gris, root doctors, charms, Voodoo, Hoodoo, Ju-Ju, trick-doctors, etc. Some of the folklorists speculated on what they thought represented African medicine. It requires no belief in the supernatural whatever to make one afraid of persons whose business it is to devise poisons to place in the food of their victims, and if the evidence of our collection of compositions is to be trusted, there was on the plantations in the old days a vast amount of just that short of thing. Antebellum society did not acknowledge African medicine. They reinforced the idea of African "superstitions" as being the main foundation of the African belief system.
