Promotion

	A documentation of traditional Sudanese healthcare culture.
	A reference for health care professionals, researchers, and students.
	A field manual and primer for medical anthropologists, folklorist, and community health workers.
	A pocket book for NGOs.
	A handy source for researchers in the medical, pharmaceutical, and related social sciences, and for as broad a sector of readers as the English language permits.

	Draws a road map for the field, places the necessary landmarks, and provides explanations of common features.
	Stimulates research that would establish traditional medicine. The more we study traditional medicine, and the more we clarify its domains, the easier it will become for policy-makers and educators to take positive attitudes.
	Helps physicians and pharmacists to be better social workers. They would be, if they were better informed about how wisely the Sudanese people use the resources of the environment in managing their health.
	Increases informed awareness among groups already concerned with this subject, from museum curators, to legislators working in the medical field, and entrepreneurs looking for sound investment in medicinal plants.
	Helps medical historians surveying relics of the past, and may be useful to medical anthropologists and sociologists with little training in medical sciences, or medical personnel with little training in or knowledge of the social sciences.
	Reminds the Sudanese intellectuals in particular that a common health heritage is a significant aspect of the common cultural identity of the Sudanese people. This is why I have written this book in English instead of the more widely-read Arabic. Many southern Sudanese intellectuals have no working knowledge of Arabic. This group concerns me most.