The belief in Medicine and magic constitutes the fifth segment of the belief structure in African Traditional Religion. Among the Yoruba, the belief in medicine, which is generally called “Oogun” accounts for both the simple and complex healing system among the people. The simple “oogun” takes care of minor illnesses curable through easily available herbs which all and sundry in the society could administer without any professionalism. On the other hand the application of complex “oogun” in the Yoruba healing system which usually took the form of both physical and metaphysical “rituals” deal with serious and complex illnesses or ailments and is the preserve of professionals. Indeed in the traditional Yoruba society, the custodians of the healing system were usually priests or priestesses, diviners and herbalists sometimes all rolled into one person.

It is significant to point out that the Yoruba believed that sicknesses or illnesses were misfortunes usually caused by the ill-will of ill-action of one person against another more often than not through the agencies of witchcraft and magic. This belief essentially made the causes of illnesses, particularly serious and protracted ones not only physical but metaphysical. Consequently the healing should also entail both physical and metaphysical methods. This usually involved a twin process of Diagnostics and Medication. The Diagnostic stage was necessary not only to identify the nature of the illness, but also to reveal the metaphysical cause of the illness and also if necessary to seek for permission from the powers responsible for the illness to threat it. The medication stage was usually a combination of first metaphysical rituals of sacrifices for appeasement and secondly physical treatment through prescription of various herbs and other curative remedies. Even when illnesses were physical in nature, the belief was that this was only a superficial observation. There is therefore the need to divinely inquire into the circumstances of such illnesses so as to underline and re-enforce the conviction that illnesses are not ordinary, they carry religious connotations and must be metaphysically approached. It is therefore the responsibility of the medicine man to discover the real cause(s) of the illness and apply the spiritual and physical treatments necessary. Now in the contemporary Yoruba society a new trend is developing both in the personalities and methods involved in the traditional healing system in Yorubaland. There is a movement towards de-emphasizing of the spiritual and metaphysical aspect of traditional medicine. This is seen as the fall out of the influence of the western orthodox medical practice, which places almost exclusive prenum on the physical and technical diagnostics and medication for illnesses. As this new trend receives wider acceptance there is the need to balance the traditional form of healing with all its vital ingredient, with the orthodox medical practice, otherwise the Yoruba society tends to loose its rich and holistic healing system.