Essays on Some Maladies of Angola 1799

Western science and pharmacology first learned about many African diseases, remedies, and medicinal practices through José Pinto de Azeredo's highly original and influential text. A unique Enlightenment-era medical text written specifically about health issues in Angola, this is the first work by a Portuguese physician to describe accurately, through first-hand observation, medical practices and substances used in Angola during the peak period of the transatlantic slave trade.

This first English-language edition of Essays on Some Maladies of Angola was translated by Stewart Lloyd-Jones (University of Stirling) and includes scholarly essays by Timothy Walker (University of Massachusetts Dartmouth), Adelino Cardoso (Universidade Nova de Lisboa), António Braz de Oliveira (Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal) and Manuel Silvério Marques (Universidade de Lisboa).

JOSE PINTO DE AZEREDO (1764--1810) was born in Brazil, trained in medicine at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and lived in western Africa (Luanda) for nearly a decade at the end of the eighteenth century. He observed indigenous African folk healers to learn their medical traditions. His Essays on Some Maladies of Angola (1799) is an empirical work of early ethnography through which African conditions influenced European ideas about medicine.