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Traditional Chinese medicine is often portrayed as an enduring system of therapeutic knowledge that has become globalized in recent decades. In Other-Worldly, Mei Zhan argues that the discourses and practices called “traditional Chinese medicine” are made through, rather than prior to, translocal encounters and entanglements. Zhan spent a decade following practitioners, teachers, and advocates of Chinese medicine through clinics, hospitals, schools, and grassroots organizations in Shanghai and the San Francisco Bay Area. Drawing on that ethnographic research, she demonstrates that the everyday practice of Chinese medicine is about much more than writing herbal prescriptions and inserting acupuncture needles. “Traditional Chinese medicine” is also made and remade through efforts to create a preventive medicine for the “proletariat world,” reinvent it for cosmopolitan middle-class aspirations, produce clinical “miracles,” translate knowledge and authority, and negotiate marketing strategies and medical ethics. Whether discussing the presentation of Chinese medicine at a health fair sponsored by a Silicon Valley corporation, or how the inclusion of a traditional Chinese medicine clinic authenticates the “California” appeal of an upscale residential neighborhood in Shanghai, Zhan emphasizes that unexpected encounters and interactions are not anomalies in the structure of Chinese medicine. Instead, they are constitutive of its irreducibly complex and open-ended worlds. Zhan proposes an ethnography of “worlding” as an analytic for engaging and illuminating emergent cultural processes such as those she describes. Rather than taking “cultural difference” as the starting point for anthropological inquiries, this analytic reveals how various terms of difference—for example, “traditional,” “Chinese,” and “medicine”—are invented, negotiated, and deployed translocally. Other-Worldly is a theoretically innovative and ethnographically rich account of the worlding of Chinese medicine.
An illuminating account of how early medicine in Greece and China perceived the human body Winner of the William H. Welch Medal, American Association for the History of Medicine The true structure and workings of the human body are, we casually assume, everywhere the same, a universal reality. But when we look into the past, our sense of reality wavers: accounts of the body in diverse medical traditions often seem to describe mutually alien, almost unrelated worlds. How can perceptions of something as basic and intimate as the body differ so? In this book, Shigehisa Kuriyama explores this fundamental question, elucidating the fascinating contrasts between the human body described in classical Greek medicine and the body as envisaged by physicians in ancient China. Revealing how perceptions of the body and conceptions of personhood are intimately linked, his comparative inquiry invites us, indeed compels us, to reassess our own habits of feeling and perceiving.
Millions of Americans are taking prescription drugs made in China and don't know it-- and pharmaceutical companies are not eager to tell them. This probing book examines the implications for the quality and availability of vital medicines for consumers. Several decades ago, penicillin, vitamin C, and many other prescription and over-the-counter products were manufactured in the United States. But with the rise of globalization, antibiotics, antidepressants, birth control pills, blood pressure medicines, cancer drugs, among many others are made in China and sold in the United States. China's biggest impact on the US drug supply is making essential ingredients for thousands of medicines found in American homes and used in hospital intensive care units and operating rooms. The authors convincingly argue that there are at least two major problems with this scenario. First, it is inherently risky for the United States to become dependent on any one country as a source for vital medicines, especially given the uncertainties of geopolitics. For example, if an altercation in the South China Sea causes military personnel to be wounded, doctors may rely upon medicines with essential ingredients made by the adversary. Second, lapses in safety standards and quality control in Chinese manufacturing are a risk. Citing the concerns of FDA officials and insiders within the pharmaceutical industry, the authors document incidents of illness and death caused by contaminated medications that prompted reform. This is a disturbing, well-researched book and a wake-up call for improving the current system of drug supply and manufacturing.
When Bill Moyers visited China to explore the mysteries, and the healing potential, of Chinese medicine for his acclaimed PBS series "Healing and the Mind," he sought out David Eisenberg as his guide. For every reader fascinated by the seemingly fantastical aspects of Chinese medicine, from acupuncture addiction to Qi Gong martial arts, this captivating book offers deeper and more detailed encounters with the physicians and patients, the mystics and the martial artists, who were featured on television. Here is a sympathetic, yet objective appraisal of the concept of Qi (chee), the vital energy which is the unifying principle of Chinese medicine. Here are Chinese sages from the Yellow Emperor of 2700 B.C. to the very modern Dr. Fang, who remarks, "Acupuncture without Qi is only as effective as one man's sticking needles in another." And here are Chinese people from all walks of life as they seek relief, through a rebalancing of their Qi, their vital energy, for ailments from colds to cancer.
Traditional Chinese medicine has a strong scientific basis, but the science of these important preparations is often rarely discussed. Western approaches often simplify traditional Chinese medicine to drug discovery in Chinese plants, however, the majority of traditional Chinese medications use complex mixtures of plant extracts, rather than single purified drugs. The combination of different extracts is based on yin, yang and chi theories, which are often poorly understood in the West. Yin and yang are known to be the balance of agonists and antagonists, whereas chi derives from signalling processes in the body and regulates bodily functions. Traditional Chinese medical practitioners understand that yin, yang and chi constantly interact in the body to maintain health. Western medical practitioners understand how to use agonists and antagonists and how to modify signalling processes, but generally do not accept the use of complex plant extracts to perform these functions. Aimed at medical scientists, and including detailed explanations of the theories behind the science, this text may help researchers to understand Chinese medical practitioners and to communicate more effectively with them. It will also lead to greater acceptance of traditional medications in the West. Presenting a clear rationale for the use of traditional Chinese medications in Western medical facilities, it enables scientists to find new directions in experimental design and encourage examination of these useful, but often poorly understood, preparations in clinical trials.
Cochran reconsiders the nature and role of consumer culture in the spread of globalization and illuminates enduring features of the Chinese experience of consumer culture. The history of Chinese medicine men in pre-socialist China, he suggests, has relevance for the 21st century because they achieved goals that resonate with their successors today.
In this book, we endeavor to introduce readers to the cultural background, origins and historical development of traditional Chinese medicine. We surveyed the most important events in its long history and the conditions that influenced its development, including the cultural and philosophical ideas and assumptions that led to the development of the particular methods and techniques of healing that characterize Chinese medicine. Our goal is not to give an exhaustive survey of the history and philosophy of Chinese medicine, but rather to convey the patterns of its development and allow readers to gain an understanding of the distinctive features of traditional Chinese medicine.
Clear, scintillating overview -- specially of the modern era