African Local Knowledge and Livestock Health Treatment: Diseases and Treatments in South Africa

William Beinhart and Karen Brown. 2013. African Local Knowledge and Livestock Health Treatment: Diseases and Treatments in South Africa. New York: James Curry. 304 pp.

At a time of intense global search for answers to numerous health, economic, social, and other varying challenges that continue to evolve or mutate to face humankind, a book on African local knowledge on livestock health and treatment is a progressive development. The word "African" in the context used in the book, however, is not a sampling of the rich knowledge pouches that exist across the continent. African knowledge, as used by Beinhart and Brown, is restricted to that obtainable among Africans resident in South Africa, from where a sample of a little over two hundred interviews were conducted among rural, mainly smallholder, livestock farmers. Though very minimal by way of representing what is the huge body of veterinary knowledge that lies unexplored, and mostly unrecorded among the one billion residents of Africa, African Local Knowledge and Livestock Treatment still makes an important contribution.

Beinhart and Brown are clear in their definition of...