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 Ìjẹ̀bú healer, politician, and public intellectual Joseph Odùmósù. 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, Odùmósù’s is one of 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 Ọládẹ̀jọ Afọláyan 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.

Joseph Odùmósù (1863–1911) was part of a burgeoning cultural and political renaissance in southwestern Nigeria that crystallized in the wake of British conquest in the late nineteenth century. He acquired the first printing press in his home district of Ìjẹ̀bú, launched its first magazine, spearheaded a trade boycott, and presided over a chapter of the Aborigines Protection Society. He was also a traditional healer, trained by a group of masters known as experts in the realm of herbal remedies.

Michael Ọládẹ̀jọ Afọláyan is an expert in systemic text linguistics with a special focus on Yorùbá language and literature. He is the author of the memoir Fate of Our Mothers: The Collected Memories of an African Village Boy and the translator of Welcome to the White Man’s World: Isaac Oluwole Delano’s Historical Novel, Aiye D’aiye Oyinbo. Now retired from Southern Illinois University, he works part-time as an educational consultant.

Helen Tilley is an associate professor of history with courtesy appointments in law and anthropology at Northwestern University. She is the author of the award-winning book Africa as a Living Laboratory: Empire, Development, and the Problem of Scientific Knowledge and the editor of several volumes, including Therapeutic Properties: Global Medical Cultures, Knowledge, and Law.