Diverse Biologies and Experiential Continuities: Did the Ancient Chinese Know That Qinghao Had Anti-Malarial Properties?
Elisabeth Hsu
Abstract
This article treats Chinese medical theories and concepts as cultural
constructs that arose as much from practice-oriented concerns as from sociopolitical
negotiations within the medical field. It further explores the interface of
the biological and cultural. It is often futile to investigate how Chinese medical
descriptions relate to biological processes, because the local biologies that the
Chinese physicians recognized in the past and continue to describe in the present,
are contested by mainstream medicine, but recent bioscientific research on
the anti-malarial properties of the Chinese medical drug qinghao opens up new
avenues for the historian. To be sure, no attempt is made to equate ancient
nosologies to modern ones, nor to justify the cultural through the biological. In
order to avoid pitfalls of simple equations, this article takes the experiential not
merely as a subjective but as an inter-subjective reality that mediates the biological
and cultural. The findings are striking: once one reads the Chinese medical
texts as reporting on the experiential, one of their many possible readings is
that they provide concrete descriptions of morbid conditions that also the contemporary
mainstream physician recognizes.
constructs that arose as much from practice-oriented concerns as from sociopolitical
negotiations within the medical field. It further explores the interface of
the biological and cultural. It is often futile to investigate how Chinese medical
descriptions relate to biological processes, because the local biologies that the
Chinese physicians recognized in the past and continue to describe in the present,
are contested by mainstream medicine, but recent bioscientific research on
the anti-malarial properties of the Chinese medical drug qinghao opens up new
avenues for the historian. To be sure, no attempt is made to equate ancient
nosologies to modern ones, nor to justify the cultural through the biological. In
order to avoid pitfalls of simple equations, this article takes the experiential not
merely as a subjective but as an inter-subjective reality that mediates the biological
and cultural. The findings are striking: once one reads the Chinese medical
texts as reporting on the experiential, one of their many possible readings is
that they provide concrete descriptions of morbid conditions that also the contemporary
mainstream physician recognizes.
Full Text: Untitled
ISSN 0823-2105
© 2012 Canadian Society for the History of Medicine/
Société canadienne d'histoire de la médecine