Yoruban contributions to the literature on keloids.

N an address at the National Gallcry of Art, Washington, D.C., in January 1970, Dr. EkpoEyo, the director of the Nigeria Department of Antiquities, challenged the claims and widely held views that the so-called "primitive and developing peoples" of Africa had made no worthwhile contributions to the foundation and growth of knowledge. He pointed out that this conclusion had always been the outcome of studies and reviews limited to the written form of literature alone, and cautioned that a true assessment of the contributions of these people to knowledge can only come from careful study of their oral and art forms of literature as these were the only media through which they perpetuated and thus passed on their knowledge to posterity.' On this advice, investigations have been carried out in Western Nigeria on Yoruba myth (oral literature) embodied in the Ifa Literary Corpus,2 and on the terra-cotta heads (art literature) excavated from different groves in Ife, the religious capital of the Yorubas. The purpose of these investigatiors was to find out the contribution, if any, which the Yoruba people of Western Nigeria have made to the body of world literature on keloid, which affects about 6% of the population.3 This paper reports the