Ärzte und Medizin in Afrika

common people', in other words almost anything commonly accepted and practised. This is fair enough, but before medicine became scientific how, in this day and age, can we separate folklore from orthodox practice? The beliefs and customs of the past are so numerous that it is impossible to make a complete collection, and any attempt to do so must result in an unreadable jumble. The study of folklore is important for many reasons; there can be no proper understanding of life in medieval England or in any other period without a knowledge of the customs of the common people, and not of the common people only. The study of folklore , as Tylor showed a hundred years ago, can reveal striking affinities between places far apart and these must be taken into account when studying culture and communications between peoples. Some customs are common to peoples whose languages spring from different roots. Out of folklore was born empirical medical practice. Professor Forbes prefers to consider the customs of the past as superstitions, irrational beliefs and fears. In this book it is these which he describes with a wealth of detail and copious references. In this he has done uncommonly well and has produced an intriguing book on the customs surrounding conception, pregnancy and confinement. He has not set out to produce a complete history of witches and midwives, but has chosen those facets of the subject which interest him most. In so doing he has avoided losing himself in his subject as so many in the past have tended to do. For the most part he lets the facts-if superstitions can be called facts-speak for themselves and does not attempt to draw inferences from them. It is his last two chapters which are the most important for the medical historian and are most satisfying. These describe the early rise of the midwife from the woman whose only qualification for the work was the personal experience of many childbirths, to a professional person, or at least a woman skilled in her art. In the final chapter he has collected together much original material on the licensing of midwives. Professor Forbes devotes an interesting chapter to pregnancy and fertility tests and another to the prediction of sex. The superstitious uses of the caul are described in a chapter on 'the veil of good fortune'. One of its most popular uses was to …