I was born in the middle of the second world war when my country, Nigeria , was under the colonial rule of Great Britain . My grandfather died in 1946 when I was 4 years old, but I could still recollect the occasions when grand dad used to come home with some herbs in his native raffia hand bag. I was later to understand that the herbs were for malaria fever and it was later found to be growing in the bushes around our house. By the time I was 5 years old, I had already started schooling in my native village, Ilese, Ogun State of Nigeria . At this time, orthodox medical establishments have started flourishing in the western part of Nigeria . I was aware that there was a General Hospital at Ijebu-Ode which was then the divisional headquarters in my area. In spite of the available facility, my late father, Mr. Richard Ayodele Okubena still continued to treat us with the malaria herbal medicine which he inherited from my grandfather. By the time I was 7 years old, I was able to identify this herb at the bush behind our house. The herbs were normally boiled with water for the extraction of the juice and it was indeed very bitter that we were always compelled with the cane to drink a big cup of the herb anytime there was an attack of malaria. Usually, the attack of malaria was accompanied with rigour and severe joint pains all over the body but this remedy which was usually cooked in the early evening and taken early in the night, was diuretic. Victims of malaria after this treatment would usually urinate four to six times during the night and by morning all signs and symptoms of the disease would have disappeared by the following morning.
As I grew older, I became aware that there were more herbs than the traditional malaria herb known to my family. In my village, there were traditional herbal healers and traditional birth attendants. I remember very vividly that all my brothers and sisters, born between 1942 and 1955 were all born at home with the assistance of a traditional birth attendant, even though the General Hospital with a maternity ward facilities were in existence. Traditional herbal practitioners usually kept a data base for all the remedies known to them. Many of them were uneducated and I recollect that I had the opportunity of assisting some of these people in updating their data base by either recording new remedies in their note books or reading from old records to refresh their memory as the need arose. For more details on how I changed professions from being an accountant to a management consultant, a farmer and eventually a herbal practitioner. Read Moore.
I was born in the middle of the second world war when my country, Nigeria , was under the colonial rule of Great Britain . My grandfather died in 1946 when I was 4 years old, but I could still recollect the occasions when grand dad used to come home with some herbs in his native raffia hand bag. I was later to understand that the herbs were for malaria fever and it was later found to be growing in the bushes around our house. By the time I was 5 years old, I had already started schooling in my native village, Ilese, Ogun State of Nigeria . At this time, orthodox medical establishments have started flourishing in the western part of Nigeria . I was aware that there was a General Hospital at Ijebu-Ode which was then the divisional headquarters in my area. In spite of the available facility, my late father, Mr. Richard Ayodele Okubena still continued to treat us with the malaria herbal medicine which he inherited from my grandfather. By the time I was 7 years old, I was able to identify this herb at the bush behind our house. The herbs were normally boiled with water for the extraction of the juice and it was indeed very bitter that we were always compelled with the cane to drink a big cup of the herb anytime there was an attack of malaria. Usually, the attack of malaria was accompanied with rigour and severe joint pains all over the body but this remedy which was usually cooked in the early evening and taken early in the night, was diuretic. Victims of malaria after this treatment would usually urinate four to six times during the night and by morning all signs and symptoms of the disease would have disappeared by the following morning.