Goitre in two African sculptures.

THE history of goitre in Central and West Africa is obscure. Greenwald1 thinks that for many regions 'such as Nigeria, most of the Congo, and parts of East Africa the evidence is equally convincing that goiter is of recent occurrence. . .'. This may not be so. It may have been common from an early period even though references to it are few. In the far north, in the Rif country of Morocco, goitre was reported by Leo Africanus2 in 1510 and again by Marmol Caravajal in 1573.3 Mungo Park14 noted it among the Mandingoes of Bambara on the Upper Niger in 1796. Bowditch4 found that it was common around Kumasi in Ashanti country. Daniell5 saw what may have been transient thyroid enlargement among adolescent girls on the Benin and Biafra coasts. Cameron6 referring to the Congo says 'The people here are greatly afflicted with goitre, and strangers residing amongst them are said to feel symptoms of that disease after drinking the water for a few days.' Native words for goitre are recorded in dictionaries by Bentley7 and Whitehead.8 These are the chief literary evidences for the occurrence of goitre in Africa. Ghalioungui9 emphasizes that iodine deficiency is not the only factor in the onset of goitre, it may also be due to genetic and other causes. In contrast to much European or South American art, African native art is not greatly concerned with the representation of disease. There are exceptions, however, and a very striking one is shown in Plates 1 and 2. It is a West African Yoruba figure in the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum, where it was exhibited from 1952 until 1964.10 According to William Fagg, it is 'in the characteristic style of Abeokuta, and particularly of the Ogundipe family who have flourished there as brass casters since the foundation of the town about 1830, working especially for the Ogboni society, which formerly exerted considerable political power but was primarily a cult of the earth spirits'.11 The figure shows a kneeling woman. She wears a small waist apron, her hair is dressed into an elaborate crown and she holds a calabash box or lidded bowl-a common form of offering vessel for a particular cult such as that of the river goddess Oshun. But the outstanding feature is the bilateral swelling of her neck. Within its strongly stylized art form the representation of this figure is basically naturalistic …