User talk:Wyatt Tyrone Smith/sandbox3

Talk page created for Traditional African Medicine

I've created this talk page to keep track of the changes I've made (and the reasons for them) so I can transcribe them to the TAM talk page.

1.1 Colonial era:

• Rewrote section 1.1 Colonial era to more accurately reflect the content of sources referenced. For instance, no mention is made of science considering traditional healing to be backward; one ref says medical practices were outlawed, the other says the practitioners were considered witches and outlawed; I've stuck to the facts that some practices were outlawed. Owuanibe mentions a war on witchcraft but that isn't substantiated in any other reference - I've removed that.

1.2 Modern period:

• Reworded this paragraph totally and removed phrases like "In recent years", "interest has recently..." as they become dated very quickly. Corrected wording that implied homeopathy, iridology etc are accepted Western treatments. Also removed the term Western, because the hospital includes TCM, which is eastern. Removed Owuanibe's comment about medical technology destroying African cultural values - not relevant to this page.

2. Diagnostics:

• Cleaned this up a bit and used Helwig as the major source. Kept the bit about incantations by Owuanibe.

3. Treatments:

• Shortened the intro to this section, cleaned up and combined sentences. I listed the treatments for easier reading, as the run-on paragraph was very info-dense.

3.1 Medicinal plants:

• Fixed the reference - Stanley2014: "Recognition and Respect for African Traditional Medicine"
• Cleaned up and combined some sentences throughout this section. Used the lang template throughout.
• removed the discussion of Securidaca as none of the references mention it.
• Was going to rewrite the section about the ACE Inhibitor Activity study as it was copy-pasted directly from the ref, but instead went to the original paper and worked from that. Converted the table for the study into a list. The table was taking up a lot of space and was breaking the page up. This feels more natural and no info has been lost. - Descriptions of the plants limited to appearance and common name for consistency. Removed the additional information about the medicinal uses that was present in only some of the descriptions, again for consistency.
• Rewrote the bit about aloes to reflect what the reference said. Also mentioned what the palms were actually used for.
• Rewrote the Dold and Cocks study since most of it was copy-pasted directly from the ref. (Used the lang template here as well.)
• Removed section title 3.1.1 Recent discoveries - becomes dated quickly
• Replaced medicalxpress.com ref with three citations it used.

4.3 Importance:

• Removed the table in section 4.3 importance, mostly because it doesn't add much of relevance. The data are outdated and the gist of the information is presented in the text before it. If the reader wants more info they can follow the links in the External links section.

General:

• I decided to mostly remove Onwuanibe from the biliography and use it in only a few places as a reference. The work is from 1979 and is appropriate for its time but not an accurate reflection of the current views, opinions and data available regarding TAM. The opinions expressed about the colonial period are also dated and misleading, while the views about the technology of the modern period (1970's) are typical of the time, but no longer relevant.

Wyatt Tyrone Smith (talk) 19:35, 5 June 2020 (UTC)