Traditional-Medicine-in-Heritage-Alive.pdf

1997

Integrative Medicine Research, 2017

a b s t r a c t Traditional and complementary medicine (T&CM) plays an integral role in providing health care worldwide. It is based on sound fundamental principles and centuries of practices. This study compared traditional Indian medicine (TIM) and traditional Korean medicine (TKM) basing on data obtained from peer reviewed articles, respective government institutional reports and World Health Organization reports. Despite the fact that TIM and TKM have individual qualities that are unique from each other including different histories of origin, they share a lot in common. Apart from Homeopathy in TIM, both systems are hinged on similar principle of body constitutional-based concept and similar disease diagnosis methods of mainly auscultation, palpation, visual inspection, and interrogation.

Historical Archaeology

China Media Research, 2016

This dialogue, between Adam David Roth (an international historian and theorist of rhetoric and Western medicine) and Hongxia Zhang (a Chinese scholar who works on traditional Chinese medicine), reveals striking parallels between Traditional Western Medicine (TWM) rooted in ancient Greece and Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). Commonalities and differences between traditional Eastern and Western philosophies of the body and approaches to healing are discussed in this dialogue. The discussion includes how, and in what ways, traditional healing practices and their attendant philosophies of health have changed over the centuries. As the dialogue unfolds and the questions emerge, readers will discover that the connections between Eastern and Western medicines may be greater than you might imagine them to be. [Adam Roth & Hongxia Zhang. A Dialogue on Traditional Medicine: East Meets West. China Media Research 2016; 12(4): 85-92]. 10

"In recent years an increasing number of state-based heritage protection schemes have asserted ownership over traditional medical knowledge (TMK) through various forms of cultural documentation such as archives, databases, texts, and inventories. Drawing on a close reading of cultural disputes over a single system of TMK—the classical South Asian medical tradition of Ayurveda—the paper traces some of the problems, ambiguities, and paradoxes of making heritage legible. The focus is on three recent state practices by the Indian government to protect Ayurvedic knowledge, each revolving around the production of a different cultural object: the translation of a seventeenth-century Dutch botanical text; the creation of an electronic database known as the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL); and the discovery of an Ayurvedic drug as part of a bioprospecting benefit-sharing scheme. Examined together, they demonstrate that neither TMK, nor Ayurveda, nor even the process of cultural documentation can be treated as monoliths in heritage practice. They also reveal some complexities of heritage protection on the ground and the unintended consequences that policy imperatives and legibility set into motion. As the paper shows, state-based heritage protection schemes inspire surprising counterresponses by indigenous groups that challenge important assumptions about the ownership of TMK, such as locality, community, commensurability, and representation."

2003

Integrative Medicine Research, 2016

Korea has kept the heritage of Korean traditional medicine (KM) during the 19th century harsh modernization, and has established a medical system in parallel with Western medicine. The purpose of this study was to review systematically the history and current system for educating highly qualified traditional medical doctors in Korea. KM produces 750 certified medical doctors every year with a 4-7-year curriculum in 12 universities and their affiliated hospitals. There are 22,074 clinicians along with 2474 clinical specialists in eight departments as of 2014. A national licensing examination and continuing medical education for KM are used for maintaining qualifications of KM doctors, and independent organizations are established for the evaluation of educational institutes. KM has thrived to establish an independent and competitive educational system for KM doctors, equivalent to Western medicine, and has regained a pivotal role for public health in Korea. This study would be useful for cultivating traditional medicine and establishing its educational system in the world.

This manuscript is developed from the findings of the Qatar Unified Imaging Project (QUIP), a research project documenting the cultural heritage of Qatar and the bordering Gulf regions through primary sources. Through the critical evaluation of published works and primary sources we explore the culture of traditional medicine in the Arab world beginning with historical texts of the 11th century to the most current study of Qatar in the 21st century. Traditions contain and reflect the cultural beliefs of the people who created and preserved what they believed most valuable. Medical heritage figures prominently into the historical documentation of Qatar in the 20th century, and reflects the historical contributions of the Arabs to the development of chemistry and pharmacology, as well as the transnational influences that have affected Qatar’s health care systems over time. Western-based medicine in the Gulf was introduced by Christian missionaries. These “modern” practices were grounded in a very different belief system, one foreign to the established healing culture. Despite ongoing developments in modern medicine many traditional practices maintain their popularity today. There is a viable place for tradition and heritage in healing. Medical anthropology helps us to identify cultural representations within traditional treatment practices that positively inform evolving healthcare procedures. We hypothesize that health care professionals can serve their clients’ needs more effectively through the integration of traditional techniques into patient care. Keywords: folk medicine, traditional medicine, herbal therapy, integrative healing, Arab medical heritage, South-west Asia, Qatar

Herbal Medicine in Yemen, 2012

This paper takes the example of a plant that grows in Yemen and explores its properties in light of the World Health Organization's definition. The anthropological fieldwork that forms the basis of the study was carried out in Zabid and its hinterland, and the plant in question is called hanzal in Arabic, colocynth in English, or colloquially bitter gourd. The bitterness of the colocynth is also proverbial among the Jewish community of Yemen. The colocynth has formed part of the Yemeni materia medica for a long period of time, both in terms of its practical application and its description in the medical manuals. In traditional medicine, the causes of illness can also be of supernatural origin. This has been one of the most basic principles of human health concerns since ancient times and the evidence can be found beginning with the earliest medical texts from the ancient Near East. Keywords:colocynth; human health; Jewish community; materia medica ; traditional medicine; Yemen; Zabid