[The seat of healing power and destruction. Intrusion into the human body in Eastern Africa's medicine].
When present bioethical debates on intrusion into the human body lead to the question how such conflicts occurred in other cultures such as those of East Africa, fundamental problems of cross-cultural comparison have to be reflected. The history of African contacts with foreign medicine, being the source of some relevant conflicts, must be considered first. A closer look into African procedures for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes reveals a view of the human body varying from the present Western view. Especially the reasons for taking substances from bodies or dissecting them are taken from very different concepts. Body materials are not applied for substitution of substances (as in transplantation or transfusion), but for their healing power derived from another's persons life force. Insight into corpses was not sought for anatomical knowledge, but for identifying a destructive force. Despite such fundamental differences, the colonial and post-colonial developments brought European and African concepts together causing conflicts by misunderstandings as well as chances for acceptance, as in the case of blood transfusions.