Medicine Murder in Colonial Lesotho: The Anatomy of a Moral Crisis

by Colin Murray

Medicine murder involved the cutting of body parts from victims, usually while they were still alive, to be used for the preparation of medicines intended to enhance the power of the perpetrators. A 'very startling' increase in cases of medicine murder apparently took place in Basutoland (now Lesotho), in southern Africa, in the late 1940s and the early 1950s. It gave rise to a dramatic crisis of late colonial rule. Was this increase a real one? If...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0748622845
• ISBN13: 9780748622849
• Release Date: May 2005
• Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
• Length: 494 Pages
• Age Range: 22 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher