Library · African
Mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee
T. Edward Bowdich. London, 1819.
What it is
An account of a British diplomatic mission to Kumasi, the capital of the Asante kingdom, in 1817. Its chapter on materia medica lists, plant by plant, the medicines used in Kumasi and how they were prepared, with the Twi name first and a botanist's identification after it.
Whose knowledge it records
The plant list is Asante knowledge, recorded by Henry Tedlie, the mission's assistant surgeon, while he lived in Kumasi, with the botanical identifications supplied later in London by Robert Brown. The rest of the book is Bowdich's own account of the mission.