Library · African
A Contribution to South African Materia Medica (third edition)
Andrew Smith. Lovedale, South Africa, 1895.
What it is
A book of the plants used as medicine in the Eastern Cape, arranged by the complaint they were used for. For each plant it gives the Dutch and local names, a description, and how the leaf or root was prepared and taken, with cases the author was told about.
Whose knowledge it records
Written by Andrew Smith and printed by the Lovedale mission press in the Eastern Cape. Most of what it records came from Xhosa healers and households, whose plant names it prints under a colonial slur for Black South Africans; we do not reproduce that word, and mark each place it is cut.