Walkin’ Over Medicine

Preface

Preface The material on African-American traditional medicine presented in this book spans a time period of more than 20 years. It is derived from my own community-based studies in Arizona and Michigan, work in two urban prenatal clinics, conversations and written communications with traditional healers, and my several years'experience as a behavioral scientist in a pediatrics clinic. It includes examples of folklore collected by some of my students in a university class and, of course, is augmented by the work of other scholars. The various methods of data collection for my own work—both formal and informal—are briefly reviewed below. My introduction to the subject was the ethnographic study of health beliefs in a low-income neighborhood of Tucson, Arizona, in 1970-1971. The description and analysis of my findings were presented as my doctoral dissertation to the Department of Anthropology at the University of Arizona. In 1971 I accepted a teaching position at Michigan State University, where I have in the years since taught undergraduates, graduate students, medical students, and medical residents. Many of them have been very helpful in giving me examples of their own knowledge and experience of traditional medicine, some of which are included here. My Tucson experience kindled a particular interest in the reproductive health of women. This experience was the basis of my first research in Michigan—a pilot project done in collaboration with Dr. Shirley Johnson. We were contacted by the physician-director of a Lansing prenatal clinic who expressed concern about the problems he saw in delivering quality care to the clinic's multiethnic, low-income clientele. Some difficulties he blamed on poor communication; he was sure, he said, that many women did not understand many of the terms that were used by clinic staff, yet they never said so. He also felt that the ideas the clinic staff held about what is good for pregnant women were not fully shared by the women in question . In response to his request we developed a questionnaire that covered respondents' understanding of selected medical terminology; their health care experiences; and their knowledge and beliefs about menstruation, venereal disease, childbearing, contraception, pregnancy , abortion, and the menopause. It was administered to a sample of women that, though small (N=31), represented just over half of all women coming in for their first prenatal visit during the summer xi xii Preface of 1975. Results showed that many of them did not understand the medical terminology in use at the clinic, and as suspected, many of their beliefs were culturally patterned and quite different from those of the doctors and nurses responsible for their care. Most did not have the knowledge needed to allow them to prevent pregnancy if they so wished. The results were interesting, but the time it took to administer the questionnaire—nearly two hours—precluded its usefulness in any busy medical setting. We therefore developed a short, self-administered form including 38 multiple-choice questions designed to provide a profile of a woman's knowledge of reproduction, including her own contraceptive and reproductive history. Answers to the multiple-choice questions included both the most prevalent misinformation held by respondents in the pilot study and the information seen as correct by clinicians. In the summer of 1978 it was tested at a hospital clinic offering gynecological and obstetrical services in the inner city of Detroit, Michigan. Again, the results showed that many of the 200 women who filled out the questionnaire were misinformed and/or lacked the information about the basic reproductive facts essential to control fertility. A number of the beliefs found in these studies continue to be reported in research done since that time. Another research interest that had carried over from my Arizona study was that of the recruitment and role of the traditional healer. Several of my Tucson informants had engaged in the healing of others. Some had prepared home remedies for family, friends, and neighbors, and one or two others practiced healing in the context of religious services. One individual, Mother Delphine Carver, was able to make a full-time living from her healing practice. I was not able to locate any such individuals in Lansing, however, so I initially took a different tack. A variety of traditional healers and advisers offer their services through the classified advertisements of newspapers with large numbers of African-American readers. In 1973 and again in 1977 I engaged in research involving correspondence by mail and telephone with a number...