traditional healers
Indigenous medicine keepers
Traditional healers are practitioners who use indigenous or culturally inherited methods to treat illness and promote well-being, often drawing on spiritual beliefs, herbal remedies, and rituals passed down through generations.
They operate outside conventional Western medicine and may be known by various titles depending on their culture—curandero, sangoma, shaman, medicine man.
In many communities, traditional healers address not just physical ailments but also spiritual and social imbalances believed to cause disease.
The village consulted traditional healers before seeking treatment at the clinic.
- curanderoLatin American folk healer
- folk medicineTraditional healing practices
- medicinal plantsFlora with healing properties
- plant medicineBotanical treatment for ailments
- sacred plantsVegetation with religious importance
divination · shamanism · medicine man · village elder · prayer · indigenous knowledge · ethnobotany · spirit guides · trance states · herbal medicine · oral traditions · sacred rituals · laying on of hands · laying hands · cultural preservation · initiation rites · Ayurveda · tribal customs
- healersnurse, doctor, physician, surgeon, medic
- Southern African cultureubuntu, indaba, ancestral worship, biltong, pap
- folk medicinefolk medicine, herbalism, herbal remedies, herbal medicine, herbalist
- traditional religionancestors, ancestral spirits, deities, rituals, sacrifices
- tribal beliefsanimism, shamans, ancestral spirits, nature spirits, spirit worship
- tribal healingmedicine man, medicine woman, curandero, herbalist, bush doctor
traditional healersmedical doctors
Licensed practitioners of medicine
surgeons · MDs · specialists · general practitioners · family doctors