Book of Healing

Joseph Odùmósù, Michael Oládèjo Afoláyan, Helen Tilley

• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
• Year: 2026
• Print ISBN:
  9780299351007
• eBook ISBN:
  9780299351038
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: African History
• Index: History

The first book-length study of Yorùbá therapeutics, encompassing thousands of remedies for more than 160 different ailments, Ìwé Ìwòsàn (Book of Healing) was originally published in 1910 by Ìj??bú healer, politician, and public intellectual Joseph Odùmósù. Much of the scholarship on African healing cultures has been reconstructed from unwritten sources and texts produced by missionaries, colonial officials, and anthropologists. Of the small number of firsthand accounts in African languages (beyond Arabic) that have survived in written form, Odùmósù's is the most extensive and encyclopedic. 

While the existence of Odùmósù's massive work is well-known in southwestern Nigeria, it has not previously been available in English. Michael ?lád??j? Af?láyan and Helen Tilley have translated the volume in its entirety, and here use it as an entrée into greater understandings of Yorùbá medicine, spirituality, and print culture during a time of rapid change under British colonialism and the spread of Christianity.
 

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Note on Translation
• Introduction: Joseph Odùmósù, Print Cultures, and Therapeutic Powers
• Part I
• Part II
• Part III
• Appendix A: Different Names for Different Plants in Yorubaland
• Appendix B: Program of the Event of Dedication/Unveiling of the Memorial Stone, September 13, 1941
• Appendix C: The Sermon Delivered on the Occasion of the Erection of a Tablet in Memory of the Late Joseph Odùmós
• Appendix D: A Brief Life Review of the Late Dr. Joseph Odùmósù by a Grand-Daughter [ca. September 1941]
• Appendix E: Odùmósù Family Tree
• Glossary