Slide Three Medical Missionaries

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Slide 2 – Missionary Medicine
“Missionary medicine can be seen as a combination of one’s belief in the power of biomedicine along with medical care being provided by those ‘called by God’, who served as mere servants of the Great Healer of souls, (i.e. God).” - Sterling Pg. 55
Slide 3 - Medical Missionaries (1)
In the latter part of the 19th Century missionaries in East and Central Africa set up of rural hospitals and rural clinics, which saved many lives because of immunization and reducing infant mortality. They also “trained African medical personnel, who introduced ‘Western’ midwifery and child care practices, and who dealt with Chronic and endemic disease”.
Slide 4 Medical Missionaries (2)
The Biblical scripture “Let your light so shine …show more content…

Missionaries saw themselves as saviors to the poor as evidenced their representation of a Lighter Bear for the world.
Slide 6 – The Role of Medical Missionaries (1)
Missionaries were not a ‘uniformed group’ with respect to ideas and opinions and as such their motives and agenda cannot be generalized.
While initially much of the literature tended to make Missionaries appear to be heroic, saint like characters.
According to Colby and Bennet (1995) missionaries came in on the cultural, social and political side of the conqueror just as the soldier colonist was a military conqueror. However their weapons were that of mass mental …show more content…

Because more African Healers moved to the cities they lost access to the rural areas however this presented an opportunity for the commercial trade of umuthi “traditional herbs”. The increased trade allowed African Healers to expand their services.
White doctors initially seemed to respect the work of African healers, and some sought their assistance. However in the twentieth century, biomedical doctors grew increasingly skeptical of such healers and their abilities and began to claim that African healers were 'unscientific' and 'ineffective'.
The change was largely due to the development of competition between indigenous healers and biomedical doctors, and the professionalization of biomedicine in Europe and the colonies. Especially as White doctors began to lose their traditional client base to African Healers. African ‘doctors’ were open to learning from Western Medicine and how they can learn new methods. However, biomedicine sought to eliminate the African healers in order to restrict authority to Whites.

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