The first book-length study of Yor鸑?therapeutics, encompassing thousands of remedies for more than 160 different ailments,
彽?彽瓋跣 (
Book of Healing) was originally published in 1910 by 岶ẹ̀b?healer, politician, and public intellectual Joseph Od籯鏀? Much of the scholarship on African healing cultures has been reconstructed from oral sources and texts produced by missionaries, colonial officials, and anthropologists. Of the handful of firsthand accounts from across all of sub-Saharan Africa that have survived in written form, Od籯鏀?s is one of the most extensive and encyclopedic.
While the existence of Od籯鏀?s massive work is well-known in southwestern Nigeria, it has not previously been available in English. Michael Ọl墂ẹ̀jọ Afọl嫝an and Helen Tilley have translated the volume in its entirety, and here use it as an entr嶪 into greater understandings of Yor鸑?medicine, spirituality, and print culture during a time of rapid change under British colonialism and the spread of Christianity.
