By Ebele Orakpo

…Experts clear air on herbalist, Witch Doctor; insist traditional medicine not a fetish

•Science yet to unravel the mystery of plants ‘talking’

“What is really happening? I have completed the dosage of my anti-malaria drug and I am still ill. Could it be a fake drug? But I got them from the hospital pharmacy,” said Mrs Haruna.

“No, I don’t think so because I experience the same thing. So I usually take herbal medicine and it works all the time,” said Niyi.

 “It’s like the malaria parasite has learnt a survival strategy so that no weapon formed against it will prosper. As Eneke the bird said, ‘Since men have learnt to shoot without missing, it has learnt to fly without perching. It must have learnt from its senior colleague the expatriate rat called Belgium rat.

“Hmm! See you see grave oo,” interjected Mary, adding: “Those herbal medicines are very dangerous.”

Replied Niyi: “Oh really? So why didn’t our forefathers all die before our colonial ‘saviours’ came on the scene? That was how we were brainwashed into demonizing everything about our culture and tradition and even what nature has bestowed on us. For crying out loud, not everything about Africa is bad but we throw away the baby with the bath water in most cases.”

 ”You are absolutely correct. That is how they told us that our palm oil and groundnut oil are unhealthy and gave us their olive oil and soybean oil. It’s high time we went back to our roots as Africans,” said Mrs Haruna.

In this report, herbal medicine experts speak on why herbal medicine is demonized, the difference between herbalist/traditional medicine practitioners and witch doctors; why the Bible says your food is your medicine, why taking whole herbs is more effective and why it’s best to use herbs in your environment than imported herbs.

Excerpts:

Instrument of Colonialism

According to Prof. MacDonald Idu, professor of Phytomedicine, , at the University of Benin:” Religion has forced many people into demonizing herbal medicine. Our colonial masters turned our hearts around to redefine our own beliefs as fetish and brought their own which they used as an instrument of oppression and they did it successfully. So whatever we had as our healing pathway was described as a fetish so that we could embrace their own. That is the real story; it’s an instrument of colonialism, making people think that traditional medicine is a fetish.

It is not a fetish, it depends on how you look at it. The key thing is that people don’t understand that there is a difference between a witch doctor and a herbal doctor. A witch doctor uses mediums like witchcraft, to do divinations but herbalists correctly use plants for medicine which is reflected in the Bible. That is why the title of my inaugural lecture is The Plant called Medicine. Daily, we eat one form of plant or another other so what is the issue? I think it is the confusion they have in their minds, not being able to tell the difference between a witch doctor and a herbalist.

“You can’t do traditional medicine without herbs. I remember many years ago while in the Presidential Initiative Committee, I looked at various practices in Southern Nigeria; I met people who use both, they consult spirits, throw cowries and try to look at the future. I also met people who are just plain; they have the knowledge of plants and use plants as medicine; so the path you choose depends on you. If you are able to distinguish between them, you would be able to enjoy God’s free gift.”

Speaking in the same vein, a Clinical herbalist, Dr Bola Deji-Okubanjo said it’s because many people believe that anything traditional, is diabolic so “they are trying to guard their spiritual end of it, forgetting that God created the herbs as food and medicine. The devil didn’t create herbs so those who reject herbs do so out of ignorance. They don’t understand the Bible. But most traditional medicine practitioners around us are usually wicked so we assume the usage of herbs is evil.”

Traditional medicine practitioner vs herbalist

“When you say traditional medicine, it means the type of medicine practised by our forefathers, they are our tradition. For instance, we use the bitter leaf to treat some ailments. It’s our own tradition, it’s not orthodox. I like to use the word Indigenous instead of traditional so I prefer Indigenous Medicine. When we begin to call it Indigenous Medicine, probably some people will change their mindset. We use scent leaf (African Basil) for instance, to treat stomach pain and other things. We need to really emancipate ourselves from mental slavery. We have been so locked up in our minds to just believe that everything that has to do with plants is a fetish. It is not true,” said Idu.

“I am a clinical herbalist, which means I went to the university to learn about medicinal herbs and the ailments they heal and what is in your body that will make them heal you. So I know about herbs because I prepare them for my patients. I also learnt about the sicknesses that will be my catchment as a clinical herbalist (about 350 ailments), and then the herbs to use for them and on what condition; how one would interact against the other or against a drug that a patient had taken. So Clinical Herbalism is a branch of medicine but rather than use drugs produced by pharmacists, a clinical herbalist uses herbs produced by clinical herbalists or pharmacognosists. 

Now, native doctors have learnt the art of herbal medicine for diseases that are common in their catchment area but in addition, they conjure spirits so they are one and the same as the witch doctor. What they do is spiritualism and they have a good knowledge of medicinal herbs in their region but medicine doesn’t classify them as doctors or therapists; they are classified as spiritualists. They are different from clinical herbalists who studied Herbology. Anyone who studied herbology is a herbalist. When you are able to produce herbal medicine and treat some levels of ailments, you become a clinical herbalist. It’s a professional course on its own,” said Deli-Okubanjo.

Plants talk

“If I tell you that plants talk, you will say it’s a fetish. I have observed it myself and it is really mysterious. My Indian friend, mentor and supervisor, the late Prof. L.S Gill, brought this up as we discussed some research issues. He asked me if I knew that plants talk,” I said I’ve heard about it because I am a field man. I collate data from people with indigenous knowledge, document them and then pick up some plants for complete research activity. I formulate them into products; we do the toxicology and all that has to do with plant medicine, dosage and what the plant is used for. He said he has a walkway that leads to his car park which he lined up with plants so on his way out each morning, he would reach out and touch the plants, smile and say: “Good morning plants.

 How are you?” the plants would be all bright and lively but any time he fails to do that, he would notice that they would all be dull.

“Some years ago, I met a man in Ishiagu, Delta Igbo area. He was treating a patient and I was curious. I asked him how he knew that the particular plant he used was the right one for the ailment. He didn’t perform any ritual, no divination, no incantation. he just went to the bush, came back with a branch and administered it on the patient who became relieved immediately! He said: ‘I went into the bush and I talked to the plants and this particular one said it could treat this particular patient.’ It sounded mysterious to me because scientifically, it cannot be proven. I am learned to some extent but I will tell you this from the depth of my heart: The fact that it cannot be scientifically proven does not mean that it is not true.”

Continued Idu: “I also met another man in Ughelli, Delta State, I asked him how he gets inspiration and he said when he sleeps and dreams about plants, in the morning, he would go looking for the plant. I have met many people like that who use dreams as a medium. I have also met so many people with such wisdom and knowledge passed down from generation to generation, to those who are interested.”

 This assertion was corroborated by Mr Nath who said he was pained that his grandmother died with her knowledge of medicinal plants. “She was so good with plants that every patient brought to her house went home healed. At a point, very difficult cases were referred to her from the Teaching Hospital and she treated them. She talked to the plants and they tell her which one to use for any given ailment. She begged all of us to learn from her but none of us did. I regret it now honestly,” he said.

Also, a retired professor at the University of Jos, told this writer some years ago that from her observations, plants respond to music, especially Classical music though she said it needs to be researched. She observed that each time she plays her piano which sits close to her flower garden, the dull flowers seemed to come alive.

Said Idu: “What you don’t understand, don’t criticize; that’s where we have problems. There’s a particular plant found only in one area in Nigeria, unfortunately, the plant is almost extinct because they have been cutting it for wood. We tested it for diabetes and it beat hands-down any good diabetic drug you have. We used it raw. We want to patent it. That plant was also very effective for cancer when we did gene expression. It’s a PhD project. We tried it on the reproductive system and it worked but the plant is almost extinct.”

Lost knowledge

Prof. Idu regretted that Nigeria, nay, Africa, has lost quite a lot of knowledge. Narrating his experience with a medical doctor recently, he said: “A medical doctor wanted to study phytomedicine; I asked him which area he would prefer so that we could bring out the protocol and decide on the plants he would work on. He described his area of interest. I then asked him if he has anybody in his family or village that has knowledge of plants that can assist him because I like starting from the grassroots so that you will be able to appreciate the fact that nature has powers.

He said his father was a native doctor; I was elated. ‘Can you go and tell him you want to work in this particular area, let him tell you what he uses in treating his patients? We can then bring it out and start proving whether it is true or not.’ He said the man is late. I asked if he documented his practice because that is where we are having problems, a lot of indigenous knowledge is lost for lack of documentation and even where there is documentation, it’s a problem for the present generation to continue with the practice.

“He said yes, that the man wrote a very voluminous book containing all the plants and the treatment regimen. I asked him to go and study the book, bring out all the herbs used for these areas he is interested in and we would start from there. He was quiet for some minutes. I asked what the problem was because I had given him an assignment. He put his head down and said he had burnt the book! Because he is a medical doctor, he thought that plants were a fetish and he burnt generational knowledge, his inheritance! I felt like crying. I was hard on him and he never came back. That knowledge would have been transferred to him, he would have been able to manage it and it would have even helped his practice but he felt he was doing himself well.

The late Professor Lambo was a physician and also studied traditional medicine. He used the two. I know several medical doctors that are combining orthodox and herbal medicines. If we can get it right, I believe our healthcare system will work like magic. Forget the stories of herbal medicines being toxic because enormous research work has been done in almost all the universities to determine all the impacts in the body so we shouldn’t deceive ourselves.”

Environmental Indices

There is a theory that works for indigenous knowledge. There is a particular plant given to me by a female herbal practitioner, she said it’s very good for pains but when I wanted to pick it up for some research work, she said: ‘Prof., please don’t pluck this plant anytime from 5:00 pm,’ she was serious about it. I didn’t need to know why because I did some research work on bitter leaf with my project students. We had a bitter leaf farm and we harvested at 7 am, 12 noon, 4 pm, 8 pm, and 12 midnight. We did that serially. We noticed the phytochemistry of the timing differs; there was a peak time and then we tried to verify and it was constant. That automatically means that if you want the best out of that plant, that is the best period to harvest.

“It’s a theory that says that God has given us everything we need within our environment just as the Bible said in Genesis 1. So everything we need is within our environment and these are plants we are used to, plants we’ve been eating and our body has been digesting and expelling and we’ve been doing everything with that plant. In other words, within us, we have enough resources to take care of ourselves. Now, if you bring plants from places like China or the US to treat people, it will work, but I believe that if you want the best for your health, look for plants that are within your environment that can be used for your particular ailment.

That is what I call Environmental Indices. Look for that thing within your environment that suits your particular need, your body will be able to absorb it easily, and it will be more effective in terms of targeting that particular ailment. I really don’t believe that there is any plant that you would bring from any part of the world that wouldn’t have a replicate in Africa.”

This is very true because Nigeria has its own version of the almighty olive fruit called Canarium schweinfurthii (African olive, Ube osa in Igbo, Atili in Hausa) which has not been exploited although in Plateau State, the oil is extracted and used as body cream apart from the fruit being used as food.

Nigeria, hub of bio-resources

“Africa is the hub of bio-resources and Nigeria is the hub-hub. Nigeria is so loaded; I can tell you authoritatively that there are so many plants in this country that have not been identified but they are there. I have surveyed every part of Nigeria. We have huge bio-resources but it is just unfortunate that we don’t appreciate what we have. If you don’t appreciate what you have, you lose it.

As we speak now, the Chinese are in our villages, harvesting our plants and carrying them to China and we are doing nothing about it. We say they are fetish, they will finish everything there and bring back to us to buy,” said Idu.

Herbs are better taken whole

“At a time, we had Chloroquine and then they told us that it was not working, that our bodies have adjusted to it. They brought Artemisinine from China and today, everybody knows it is failing. We are back to square one but the truth is that there is something called a synergistic pattern in plants. There is synergy among all the chemicals in plants. When you analyse the chemical components of a plant, sometimes you see 50, 60 and 100, or more chemicals depending on the type of plant. You will see the high ones eg, Chemical A, some lower ones like B and C and then some that are so little, F. They all work synergistically to give a particular effect and heal that particular ailment but we throw all that away.

From my observation, I’ve come to see that it is better to use the plant whole rather than working so hard to bring out the active component because when you take the plant whole, it works on a lot of things and that is why a lot of people talk about Gbogbonise.

 When you take a particular plant, mango leaf for instance, they say it’s good for malaria, or hypertension etc, but you can see that it does not have a single target. That molecule you are looking for has only one single target but the whole leaf has multiple targets. It can work for several things. Now, which one is better? The whole leaf of course!” Idu stated.

Harmful Alkaloids

When reminded of the alkaloids which may be harmful to the body, Idu said: “You can’t do without alkaloids, it’s too much of alkaloids that are bad. Someone said that the issue is not how bad the plant is, it is the dosage, and how you take it. I have seen plants that are very effective at smaller dosages but kill at higher dosages. So that is where science must combine with indigenous medicine practitioners.

It’s already happening but we must, as a nation, make it a policy. It’s not like elevating it to the status of orthodox medicine; there is a difference between orthodox medicine and herbal medicine some orthodox medicines are gotten from plants; the only difference is that they bring out one or two of the components and use them as target drugs.

So I believe through policies, if science is heavily introduced into indigenous medicine practice, we would all be healthy and be able to make more money for ourselves. You can imagine the billions of dollars spent on drug importation. If we are investing in our herbal medicines, we will be saving those billions of dollars for other things that would move this nation forward.

There is a need for government to draw out a policy that would make herbal medicine relevant and improve our indigenous status,” Idu stated.

Your food, your medicine

Speaking on the issue of your food being your medicine, Dr. Deji-Okubanjo whose major is Biblical herbs said:

“It’s very simple. What do we call medicine these days? They will tell you that something was extracted from a tree or leaf and then they make it into food or drugs for you. Have you ever wondered why someone who has a blood shortage is asked to take ugu (pumpkin leaf)?  It’s because even though ugu is food, it is also a medicine for the supply of iron, and so are a lot of our vegetables. When you start using ugu as therapy, it becomes a medicine, that is when your food has become your medicine. But if you live a proper life where your medicine is your food and your food is your medicine, it means that you are really taking your time to ensure that you eat well, drink well and do those things as written in the Bible.

God gave us specifications for what we should eat in the Book of Leviticus. I wonder how many of us have taken the pain to look at them and really engage in them. Those are the gaps we have seen in our health. There are a lot of things that God talked about in the Bible like Turmeric, called Curcumin; Lettuce, Aloe vera (John 19: 39-40), Flax (Linum usitatissimum) and many others. If someone cannot go to the toilet and he takes flax, he will be able to go to the toilet. Meanwhile, this is one of the foods recommended for humans in the Bible but we refuse to eat it. It also stops dysentery, gonorrhoea, fever and gout.

“What of garlic? Garlic (Allium sativum) is in the Bible, Numbers 11:5-6. It stops angina, cancer, cold, diabetes, flu, hypertension, and infections, keeps your body warm, brightens your face, increases your semen for men who are not having erections, it kills parasites etc.

“Talking about garlic, you would have read the Bible where it is said that the women, after their menstrual cycle, would have a bath of purity. By biblical standards, when your wife is having her bath of purity, the man would be having a soak in garlic. Garlic is one of the drinks they give to both the man and the woman so that when they meet, he will have enough semen to impregnate her garlic naturally fosters love so when you leave such a thing, you can imagine what you left out of your life.

“The Bible also talks about Milk thistle or Silybum marianum (Genesis 3:18.) and says we should eat it as a vegetable. It stops you from alcoholism and helps to repair your system against asthma, pyrosis (heartburn), ascites, liver failure, kidney failure, jaundice, and urinary tract infection. Mmilk thistle does all these and yet, it’s a vegetable and we are not eating it. It can be found in fruit markets. I’m an integrative oncologist, meaning that I have moved from the level of being a clinical herbalist to being an integrative oncologist.  I treat cancer patients with herbs and they have been surviving.

Does it not now mean that a percentage of what is wrong with us as humans are because of our deviation from a proper diet? We stopped taking the drugs our Creator prescribed for our system; He didn’t make a mistake, we must be the ones making the mistake of what we are eating. I think that is what has kept everybody under.”