TRADITIONAL MEDICINE IN THE FIGHT AGAINST MALARIAL FEVER IN COLONIAL LAGOS: A HISTORICAL EXPLORATION ADEDAMOLA SEUN ADETIBA Adekunle Ajasin University Abstract Traditional medical practitioners during the formative stage of tropical medicine in the nine- teenth and early twentieth centuries had evolved series of models and systems that recognized, diagnosed and treated several fever infections. Fever was accorded a generic description as there was no special method of diagnosing or treating specific fever infections like yellow fever, malaria and typhoid. It was, however, the infiltration of orthodox medicine into the traditional medical system that brought about the contemporary classification of such infections. Notwithstanding, in the containment of malaria among African populations in Lagos till the early twentieth centu- ry, traditional medicine proved to be more efficacious than Western medicine. This particularly was because the indigenous population recognized and associated more with their traditional medical practices and resisted the services of Western doctors and public health workers. Hence, in the early years of the 1900s, there were only few Africans receiving medical services in the African Hospital established in Marina in 1894. The traditional medical practitioners, therefore, were the major and perhaps the only trustworthy health providers that could tackle the medical challenges of the indigenous people during the early stage of colonialism in Lagos. This paper through a historical methodology therefore explores the efficacy of traditional medical systems in the healing of malaria and in the process situates a narrative around the value it was accorded in a particular territory in British West Africa, Lagos. Keywords: Traditional medicine, therapy, public health, colonial rule INTRODUCTION THE SOCIAL FRAMING AND KNOWLEDGE OF diseases is indeed as old as diseases themselves. That is all societies, irrespective of the climes they are situated, definitely had an understanding of their pecu- liar social problems, and as such, had evolved means of dealing with them. These frames were obviously embedded in both traditional and orthodox medical systems. Prior to the biomedical development of the latter part of the nineteenth century, African populations had evolved