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. These parts were then used in medicines intended to enhance the power of the murderers. A 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. This book offers a highly readable analysis of how the crisis arose and why it disappeared.

494 pages, Hardcover

First published May 11, 2005