Author(s): Aloy Nnamdi Obika, Obiora Eke

Abstract: From time immemorial, the Igbo who the researchers used as a representative nation for most nations in the third world countries, has been using folk medicine. Such medicine combines faith healing, herbs and minerals. But no matter how inchoate it may sound, the truth is that it produced more elders with higher longevity than what orthodox medicine is producing nowadays. But recently, a lot of accusations are being levelled against it. To the accusers, folk medicine attacks the liver and other vital organs of the body. But then, why did it not kill our ancestors? The stand of this paper is that although some side-effects can sometimes be recorded in its usage, such is also the case in many orthodox drugs. In fact, it has been discovered that in many cases when Western medicine is quite incapable, folk medicine becomes the only solution. In order to prove that Igbo folk medicine is an indispensable aspect of health care delivery in this 21st century, the researchers used both direct and indirect data collected from practitioners of folk and orthodox medicine, patients, elders, books and Internet sources. The discovery is that some manufacturers on seeing the shortcomings in what they are producing have resorted to adding the word herbal to their products so as to give it an air of efficacy. Even, some prominent pharmaceutical companies, Bayer being an example, have started studying and transforming folk medicine to orthodox medicine. This is because they have seen the resistance of some diseases to their drugs. Or have you heard of folk medical practitioners borrowing from orthodox medicine, making it to look like traditional medicine? When a man with bone fractures has been booked for amputation, he runs to the folk medicine practitioners for his broken bones to regain its original shape, thereby showing the superiority of folk medicine over orthodox medicine.

Keywords: Folk medicine, Orthodox medicine, Herbal products, Igbo nation, Longevity.

DOI: 10.22161/ijels.46.9