Subverting Purity: Magic, Medical Pluralism and Tenacious Syncretism

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter shows that the beginning of the Basel medical mission in West Africa in 1885 marked a turning point, changing knowledge of hygiene in a number of ways and exposing the fragility and inconsistencies within the missionary project. The arrival of scientifically trained mission doctors led to a campaign to devalue African medicine, practitioners and bodily knowledge, which transformed the existing relationship between the Basel missionaries and African healers. But the Basel Mission doctors also emerged as a permanent source of hazard for their own organisation by disregarding and shifting existing boundaries of purity. For the population on the Gold Coast and in Cameroon, the medical mission proved less of a turning point than an extension of their existing healing and belief systems. They incorporated new norms of hygiene into their existing concepts of purity, health and cleanliness. Confronted with this tenacious syncretism, the Basel medical missionaries had no choice but to accommodate African ways of thinking and acting if they wanted to gain them for their cause.