Asian Medicine

The phrase 'global health' appears ubiquitously in contemporary medical spheres, from academic research programmes to websites of pharmaceutical companies. In its most visible manifestation, global health refers to strategies addressing major epidemics and endemic conditions through philanthropy (e.g. the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) and multilateral, public-private partnerships (e.g. the Global Fund against AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria). Within this context, global health can be understood as a series of concerted responses to the perceived failure of decades-long struggles against major infectious diseases in non-industrialized countries, culminating in the post-Second World War era of international health and development. Global health efforts appeal for action in favour of 'neglected' populations by focusing on access to innovative and existing treatments, particularly drugs. More recently, the scope of global health has expanded to include non-communicable diseases, including psychiatric and neurological conditions, injuries, cardiovascular disease and cancer, as well as innovative screening and treatments, such as medical genetics. In all areas, global health carries a series of assumptions -from the primacy of metrics and evidence-based practices to the incorporation of human-rights and poverty-eradication principles -that seem to oppose the earlier era of international health and development. This volume moves beyond acknowledgements of the discursive prominence of global health to examine deep transformations regarding the actors, the targets and the tools involved in the governance of health at the international level. We argue not only that the global health enterprise signals a significant departure from the post-war targets and modes of operation that were typical of international public health (1940s-80s) but also that new configurations of action have moved it beyond concerns with infectious diseases and state-based programmes.

Asian industrial medicines have witnessed a remarkable growth in both production and consumption over the past two decades À in most regions of Asia and increasingly, around the world. This changing landscape is closely linked to the forging of new markets, which in turn influence the medicines' design, manufacturing and production, marketing, and protection as intellectual property. In the process, traditional herbal formulations have been transformed À sometimes (re)invented À giving rise to a new generation of drugs marketed for new aims, involving new users, prescribers and providers. Nevertheless, researchers in anthropology, history and Asian studies have paid scant attention to the modulations of traditional herbal formulations and the dynamics surrounding their contemporary use. Although anthropologists have studied the changing sets of ideas and regimes of value that emerge in the biography of drugs from their production to their use (Whyte, , studies that follow this 'social life of medicines' approach have generally glossed over the making of medicines as material things (Pordi e, this issue). Drawing on social studies of science and technology, this special issue aims to fill this gap, showing how 'traditional' Asian medicines are made, how they are designed for use in specific segments of the (global) market, and how the efficacies of products are constructed. This volume originates from a panel at the Fifth International Conference on the Pharmaceutical Life Cycle held in Driebergen, the Netherlands, in September 2013, which gathered scholars working on China, Tibet, South Korea, the Philippines, Indonesia and India. The contributions show in great detail how in making new 'traditional' products, manufacturers combine ingredients through processes of reformulation, purification and reverse pharmacology, creating new therapeutic indications tailored to new markets and drawing increasingly from the categories of biomedicine. The special issue takes as its point of departure a new configuration of Asian medicines that Pordi e and Gaudilli ere (2014) in a recent article named the 'reformulation regime'. This term describes contemporary manufacturing and production practices in industrializing Asian medicine as well as their central role in reshaping how traditional knowledge-based pharmaceutical innovations are regulated, appropriated and protected by law. The reformulated drugs, Pordi e and Gaudilli ere argue, constitute an alternative modernity that differs in key ways from the exclusive molecular paradigm that has

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A passion for perfumes has been a constant throughout Islamic history. We can see it when we walk through the markets of the Middle East or the huge malls of the Gulf cities. Further evidence is provided by the recent opening of a museum, the 'House of Perfumes' (Bayt al-ʿuṭūr) in the historic centre of Dubai, in a traditional district known as al-Shindagha, facing Dubai Creek. This essay proposes a few considerations on the cultural importance of perfumes in Islamic society, from earliest times until today, beginning with the use of the words rīḥ, ṭīb and ʿiṭr in the foundational texts.

In this personal narrative, Vaidya Balendu Prakash tells the story of how he grew up in a north Indian family lineage specialising in rasashastra, a clinical specialty of Ayurveda that deals with the complex processing of mercury and metals converting toxic materials into therapeutic forms, largely known as bhasmas. As a college student, Prakash was confronted with his father's medical knowledge through a personal illness and accepted the challenge of continuing the family lineage. His training in both Western science and Ayurveda, his experiences and experiments with different ways of knowing about Ayurveda-through his father and through ayurvedic institutionalised learning-led him to document his research based on observation, combining 'traditional' knowledge and 'modern' research methodology in a unique way. In this contribution to 'Field Notes' , he shares his insight into developing the standards for the processing of mercury and metal-based formulations, with the aim of ascertaining reproducibility. He has also developed ayurvedic treatment protocols for certain forms of cancer and chronic diseases. * This article developed from an initial interview between Dr Prakash and Barbara Gerke in Dharamsala in October 2012, which was then continued by e-mail and completed during a visit to his clinic in Dehradun. To preserve the voice of the author, we have left the transliteration in the form that he used.

This essay studies the representation of women and gender in the unprecedented, elaborately detailed medical paintings created by Desi Sangye Gyatso at the end of the seventeenth century in Lhasa, Tibet. It compares the textual version of the information rendered in the paintings with their visual translation. The study discovers a rather complex and mixed picture. It finds that the more systematic portrayals of human anatomy betray a deep androcentrism, with images of female bodies either marginalised or entirely absent. However, other less standard parts of the set that depict a wide swathe of daily life on the Tibetan plateau show much more diversity in gender conception. A far greater number of females are depicted there. Women are still shown almost exclusively in gender-specific roles and are virtually never deployed to stand for a genderneutral medical condition, which is always represented either by a default male figure or a gender-ambiguous one. And yet some of these less standard depictions show either gender egalitarianism, or indeed show little gender differentiation at all, even with respect to attire and bodily features such as breasts and hair. Some images even suggest that gender differentiation was not an important issue, at least some of the time. Yet still other portions of the less standard vignettes do display strict gender distinction and also indicate the greater importance of male medical issues and the inferior status of the female body. In sum, the medical paintings suggest that a wide range of gender conceptions operated not only in Tibetan medicine but also across society more broadly, and these were neither consistent nor fixed.

His research focuses on the history of medicine and science in China, especially during the Song dynasty (960-1276 CE). His publications include the books titled The Evolution of Chinese Medicine: Song dynasty, 960-1200 and Medical Practice in Twelfth-century China -A Translation of Xu Shuwei's Ninety Discussions [Cases] on Cold Damage Disorders. His next book focuses on the reconstruction of the medical encounter in twelfth-century China based on medical case records arising from various sources. Chinese Medicine and Culture is an interdisciplinary academic journal focusing on the study of Chinese medicine. It aims to promote communication and dialogue between researchers in the natural sciences and humanities of Chinese medicine. The objectives are to build an interactive platform for interdisciplinary research on Chinese medicine and to comprehensively reflect the high-level and latest research results of Chinese medicine in the fields of medical science research, cultural exchange and historical heritage conservation.

Objective: This study was designed to determine the level of awareness and extent of use of computer shields among computer users in Owo, in South-West Nigeria. Material & Methods: The subjects were selected by a simple random sampling method. Data collection was through a combination of e-mail based on-line questionnaire using the survey monkey website, and the self administered semi structured hard copy questionnaire. The information obtained from the respondents with the questionnaire included their bio-data, extent of computer use, history of ocular symptoms, awareness and utilization of computer shields. The data obtained with the study instrument was collated and analyzed using the SPSS 15.0.1 statistical software, cross tabulation of attendants results were done with chi-square test and statistical significance was set at p ≤ 0.05. Results: 108 of 124 selected subjects filled their questionnaire to acceptable level. There were a large number of respondents who were aware of t...

The use of herbal medicine in China has a long history. Since ancient times, plants have been the main source of medicines for people’s healthcare all over China. Today, medicinal plants are widely used in different medical systems including Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and Tibetan Medicine (TM) for health care and functional food in China, and as supplies of natural products for industrial manufacturing for the international market. In the last half-century, great progress has been made in science and technology and there has been rapid social and economic development. The impact of this rapid development and population pressures on medicinal plants from wild habitats increases day by day. The modernization policy of traditional medicine in China is seen as a challenge to maintaining traditional medical systems. The Chinese Himalayan Region covers five provinces (Tibet, Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan, and Yunnan) in west China, with a land area of 2 million km², including the Qingha...

Traditional Medicine collectively referred to as complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) when commonly used outside their traditional context, alongside other medical systems, including Western biomedicine.The World Health Organization officially promoted traditional medicine in developing countries in 1978, there have been increasing interests among developing countries in integrating traditional medicine into a national health care system. Integrating traditional medicine into a modern health care system, moreover, can benefit industrialized nations as well. The contributions of Traditional and Modern Scientific Medicines to health care delivery have attracted a great deal attention in most communities worldwide. Traditional Chinese medicine, Ayurveda, Kampo, traditional Korean medicine, and Unani have been practiced in some areas of the world and have blossomed into orderly-regulated systems of medicine. More than 80% of the world's population in over 170 of WHO's 194 Member States currently use some form of traditional medicine, such as herbal medicine, yoga, Ayurveda, acupuncture and acupressure, and indigenous therapies.To generate awareness about traditional medicine, since the 1980s, a number of publications on self-health care have been developed to inform people about the benefits and uses of traditional medicine. Some of the areas of focused research include studies on the development of anticancer drugs, cardiovascular diseases such as arteriosclerosis and angina pectoris, respiratory diseases such as bronchial asthma, obesity, diabetes and other metabolic disorders, and basic studies on acupuncture therapeutic mechanisms for various bone and joint and spinal disorders, and on different kinds of composition of the human body. To ensure the safety, standardization, efficacy and quality of traditional medicines, the practitioners must follow the same stringent standards and regulations for production and use of traditional medicines as are followed for allopathic medicines. This study aims to summarize the advancements made in understanding the efficacy, effectiveness of Traditional Medicine. Traditional and local knowledge systems need to be protected, preserved, and studied as different ways to approach modern healthcare, science, and technology at large. Significant challenges exist in integrating the differing perspectives. Traditional knowledge is derived from years of history and experience and is preserved through long, complex narrations lacking the traditionally rigorous scientific scrutiny required by modern medicine. Modern scientists are prone to quickly dismiss its merit, considering it to be irrelevant as a result. For many, traditional medicine is the first port of call, and practitioners of traditional medicine have played an important role in treating chronic illnesses. These traditional medicines and practices have been preserved, organized and modernized during the past several decades, and have been fully integrated into the national health-care delivery systems from the central to the most peripheral administrative levels.

The Pahans and the Telis are two of the smallest indigenous communities in Bangladesh. The Pahans, numbering about 14,000 people are widely scattered in several northern districts of the country, while the Telis are such a small community that nothing has been reported on their numbers and lifestyle. Both tribes are on the verge of disappearance. One each of the Pahan and the Teli community was located after much search in two adjoining villages of Natore district, Bangladesh. Since the tribes were found to still depend on their traditional medicinal practitioners for treatment of ailments, it was the objective of the present study to document their traditional usage of medicinal plants and to evaluate such plants against modern research-based pharmacological activity studies on these plants. Interviews were conducted of the practitioners of the Pahan and Teli community of Natore district with the help of a semi-structured questionnaire and using the guided field-walk method. Plant specimens as pointed out by the practitioners were collected and pressed on the field and identification completed at the Bangladesh National Herbarium. The Pahan tribal practitioners used 13 plants distributed into 9 families for treatment of 14 different ailments. The Teli tribal practitioner used 15 plants divided into 14 families for treatment of 17 different ailments. Eight out of the thirteen plants used by the Pahan tribal practitioner (61.5%) had reported relevant pharmacological activities in the scientific literature, while six out of the fifteen plants used by the Teli tribal practitioners (40%) had such relevant pharmacological activities in accordance with their usage. The medicinal plants used by the Pahans and Telis warrant further scientific studies toward discovery of lead compounds and efficacious drugs and the documentation and protection of the traditional medical knowledge held by these tribes.

Objective: To determine the basic demographic patterns of cardiovascular diseases, deaths, and the frequency of clinical causes of deaths in medical wards of a tertiary health centre in a rural area, south west Nigeria. Materials and methods: Retrospective analysis of patients’ records admitted into the medical wards of Federal Medical Centre IdoEkiti, Ekiti State, South west Nigeria were conducted. The study subjects were patients of 16 years and above who died of cardiovascular diseases from January 2009 to December 2012. Data analysis was done using SPSS Version 16. Results: A total of 681 patients with cardiovascular diseases were admitted in medical wards within the study period, of which 70 died with crude mortality rate of 10.3%. Male mortality were 30 (42.9%) and females 40 (57.1%) ratio 1:1.3. The age range was 25 – 100 years with mean of 66.4 + 16.3 years, with more deaths occurring in the elderly (72%). The most frequent cause of deaths was stroke (68.6%). Conclusion: Fem...

This paper examines the characteristics of the illustrations in Heo Jun’s Dong’ui’bo’gam (Treasured Collections of an Eastern Physician), which are the sole distinctively Korean pictorial representations in the history of Korean medical texts. Those anatomical images differ from earlier East Asian anatomical charts in three important ways. First, they embody the view that Daoist practices for preserving health and vitality (yangsheng) are closer to the essence of life than is medicine. Second, unlike existing medical texts, which mainly focused on the organs inside the body and the channels on the surface of the body, they emphasise building up systematic outer ‘bodily form’. Third, they reflect Heo Jun’s regard for the anatomical content of the earlier Inner Canon and the Classic of Difficulties rather than the contributions of positivistic anatomy from and after the Song and Yuan Dynasties, and the diagrams of the five zang- organs are devised in accord with such a view. In my vie...

How different was European pharmacy from Arabic pharmacy in the first half of the nineteenth century, before the advent of Pasteurism and the victory of germ theory in the 1870s? This article aims to examine continuity and change in Egyptian pharmacy during the first half of the nineteenth century, through the lens of textual analysis. After a brief discussion of the terms historically used in Arabic for pharmacists, we will turn to a typical form of preparation, the syrup, and look at the way syrups are dealt with in a number of major medieval pharmacopoeias, still in extensive use during the nineteenth century, as well as one composed by a professor at the medical school founded by Muḥammad ʿAlī: first, through comparing and contrasting general instructions for preparing syrups; and second, through recipes for syrups bearing the same name and used to treat the same illnesses in the books under discussion. What differences do we find? What stays the same? And what do these signify for the history of medicine in Egypt?

Abū al-Mūnā Dawūd ibn Abī Naṡr al-Kūhīn al-ʿAṫṫār, Minhāj al-dukkān (How to Run a Pharmacy). See ed. al-ʿĀṡī (1997). 6 See ed. Marín and Waines (1993) and trans. Nasrallah (2018). All English versions of recipes from Kanz al-fawāʾid fī tanwīʿ al-mawāʾid (Treasure Trove of Benefits and Variety at the Table) in this chapter are adapted from Nawal Nasrallah's amazing translation. 7 Nasrallah (2007: 65).

This article analyzes the audio diaries of a Tibetan physician, originally from Amdo (Qinghai Province, China), now living in New York City. Dr. Kunchog Tseten describes his experiences during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, in spring and summer 2020, when Queens, New York-the location where he lives and works-was the "epicenter of the epicenter" of the novel coronavirus outbreak in the United States. The collaborative research project of which this diary is a part combines innovative methodological approaches to qualitative, ethnographic study during this era of social distancing with an attunement to the relationship between language, culture, and health care. Dr. Kunchog's diary and our analysis of its contents illustrate the ways that Tibetan medicine and Tibetan cultural practices, including those emergent from Buddhism, have helped members of the Himalayan and Tibetan communities in New York City navigate this unprecedented moment with care and compassion.

This article analyzes the audio diaries of a Tibetan physician, originally from Amdo (Qinghai Province, China), now living in New York City. Dr. Kunchog Tseten describes his experiences during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, in spring and summer 2020, when Queens, New York—the location where he lives and works—was the “epicenter of the epicenter” of the novel coronavirus outbreak in the United States. The collaborative research project of which this diary is a part combines innovative methodological approaches to qualitative, ethnographic study during this era of social distancing with an attunement to the relationship between language, culture, and health care. Dr. Kunchog’s diary and our analysis of its contents illustrate the ways that Tibetan medicine and Tibetan cultural practices, including those emergent from Buddhism, have helped members of the Himalayan and Tibetan communities in New York City navigate this unprecedented moment with care and compassion.

This article addresses issues at the interface of public international law and international intellectual property law, and argues that developing countries interests’ will be better protected by the proposed amendment of Article. 31 of the TRIPS Agreement and by the ongoing efforts to elaborate a legal instrument for the protection of traditional knowledge, both of which extend and deepen the special and preferential treatment of developing countries. The issue of protection of traditional knowledge has not only made inroads into treaties (via the proposal to amend TRIPS to include disclosure of origin and prior informed consent—Article. 29 bis), but it has also introduced alternatives to foundational intellectual property law principles relating to term of protection and exclusive rights. The ongoing work programme of the World Intellectual Property Organisation’s Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore committee shows potential for the formulation of an internationa...

In this paper, I explore how both the Central Tibetan Administration in Dharamsala, India, and the Bhutanese government utilized Buddhist leaders and religious practices to promote public health measures during the pandemic, considering that there was a high acceptance rate of COVID-19 vaccination in these Buddhist communities. I also touch upon how classical Sowa Rigpa understandings of infectious disease transmission and prevention might have played a role in vaccination acceptance. I hypothesize that Buddhist leaders in Dharamsala and in Bhutan were able to utilize their authority to support the advice of their health departments in multiple ways partly because ideas of disease prevention and protection – Sowa Rigpa protective pills, Buddhist rituals, and vaccination history – were already prevalent in the communities. Specifically, I argue that during 2021/22, medico-religious and ritual engagements played a supportive role in COVID-19 vaccination efforts. They reveal different layers of trust, such as in existing public health systems and in religious and political authorities. I raise further questions about how Sowa Rigpa was utilized differently in Dharamsala and Bhutan and to what extent it was integrated into public health efforts. This paper is largely based on articles that were published during the pandemic between 2020 and 2022.

This article reveals an important, yet hidden, Korean response to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 that goes beyond the actions of the state. It focuses on the Korean medicine doctors who were excluded from any government-led public health or treatment plans for COVID-19. Bypassing the state, they used telehealth to provide herbal medicines to 20 percent of COVID-19 patients in South Korea. Traditional medicine doctors volunteered their services and financial resources to fill a gap in COVID-19 care. Most observers attribute Korean success in controlling COVID-19 to the leadership of the technocratic state with buy-in from the population. However, the case of Korea offers an example of bottom-up healthcare in a community where people chose their own native cultural resources and helps to explain how doctors were able to take the initiative to autonomously work with people in the community to help to stop the otherwise rapid transmission of the virus.

Around the turn of the twentieth century, Korean thinkers debated on the dilemma of how their country should deal with the challenge of modernity. Aiming to resist the westernisation of Korea, the physician Sŏk-kok took the unique approach of using the medical theories of Chinese antiquity to explain Korea’s propitious place in the world. In the context of Japan’s increasing influence leading to annexation in 1910, Sŏk-kok used the model of regional qi in China to explain variation of qi in the world. With China’s collapse, Korea had become the new centre of civilised learning, characterized by its increasing yang qi. Thus, identifying strengthening yang of the East as his solution, Sŏk-kok also challenged the traditional medical orthodoxy of nourishing yin qi by arguing for focusing more on strengthening people’s yang qi. To put theory into practice, the powerful toxic drug aconite became his metaphor to strengthen the yang of Korea as a civilisation through aconite-based drug ther...

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This translation forms a triptych with the following two articles in this double special issue: Gu Man, Zhou Qi, and Liu Changhua, "Techniques for Piercing the Mai Recorded in the Laoguanshan Han Tomb Bamboo Slips" and Zhou Qi, "Research on the Lacquered Channel Figurine Excavated from a Han Tomb in Tianhui." Here you can read an entire Tianhui Laoguanshan text in translation on the subject of therapeutic piercing. The contribution by Gu, Zhou, and Liu positions the therapy in relation to ideas and techniques in other manuscript texts contemporary to the one translated here and the printed classics of Chinese medicine. These articles are accompanied by opinion pieces written by current practitioners of Chinese medicine as expert witnesses to the evolution of the techniques and their relevance, or not, to modern practice. Together, we present an interdisciplinary analysis that we hope will engage the reader actively in the process of multifocal interpretation. The text here is introduced by a translator's introduction that reflects broadly on the unique challenges of rendering this fascinating work into English.

The classics of Chinese medicine are redolent with allusions to weaving as they describe a new imperial anatomy and physiology of the medical body. The superior physician in the Yellow Emperor's corpus manipulated ji 機, the trigger mechanisms at strategic points on the surface of the body, which provided remote relief from the symptoms of illness. Through stimulating these points, medical practice with needle and moxibustion could control the many spirits that inhabited the body, weaving them into a numinous fabric. This paper explores the spatiotemporal geographies of meaning expressed in the manuscripts and artifacts excavated at the Laoguanshan tomb sites. In particular, an analysis of the medical texts, models of mechanical pattern shaft looms, and a tiny lacquered medical figurine recovered there suggest that local translational knowledge transfer between medicine, weaving, and water technologies occurred in the upper reaches of the Yangzi Valley. The resulting innovations were at the heart of a new imperial Chinese medicine.

Only in recent years has a substantial group of scholars in the field of Asian medicine sought to study medicine and religion together as a focused topic of inquiry.For example, although not included in this volume, Pierce Salguero stands out as ahistorian who has published numerous volumes on the topic of Buddhist healing. Asan historian of Daoist medicine (for want of a better term), Stanley-Baker bringstogether nine of these scholars into this volume that fills an important lacuna in thefield. The theme that runs as a thread through all the chapters is the idea of the convergence of religious practice with health, healing, and medicine. Or to put it anotherway, medicine is the field of human endeavor that most challenges the idea that religion and science are different things.
This volume, therefore, makes a very important contribution to the scholarly fieldsof the humanistic studies of medicine and of religion. As one of the authors, NathanSivin, points out, most healing in pre-modern China involved religious practice. Thevolume reminds us that many medical humanities scholars, whether historians oranthropologists, have not necessarily received training in understanding religion,meaning that the study of medicine becomes a narrow category bereft of contexts in which people understand themselves and the world through a religious lens. Conversely, few scholars of religious studies receive training in medical humanities.Hopefully, through this book, the field shifts attention to a better awareness of themedico-religion nexus.

Herbal medicine was an essential part of premodern Islamic medicine, and continues to be so. Ḥabba sawdā’ (black seed), a herb which according to Muslim ḥadīth was already recommended by the Prophet Muḥammad, has always been used, but its popularity has exploded during the past thirty years, The article argues that this is partly due to the rise of fundamentalist Islam.

The Santals form the largest tribal community in northern Bangladesh reside primarily in Rajshahi and Rangpur Divisions, where they live in the districts of Rajshahi, Rangpur, Thakurgaon, Dinajpur, and Panchagarh. Although they are fast losing their traditional medicinal practices, they still have their own medicinal practitioners who rely mostly on medicinal plants for treatment of a variety of ailments. The traditional medicinal practices vary quite extensively between the twelve clans of the Santals. The objective of the present study was to conduct an ethnomedicinal survey amongst the Soren clan of the Santal community residing in two villages of Tanor Santal Para in Rajshahi district to collect information on their use of medicinal plants. Interviews were conducted of the two existing Santal traditional medicinal practitioners of the Soren clan with the help of a semi-structured questionnaire and using the guided field-walk method. Plant specimens as pointed out by the practitioners were collected and pressed on the field and identification completed at the Bangladesh National Herbarium. Information on 53 medicinal plants distributed into 32 families was obtained in this survey. Ailments treated by these plants included skin disorders, respiratory tract disorders, gastro-intestinal disorders, sexual dysfunctions, sexually transmitted diseases, diabetes, helminthiasis, pain, urinary problems, filariasis, leprosy, tuberculosis, epilepsy, snake bite, enlarged heart, and paralysis. The medicinal plants used by the Santals merit further scientific studies for some of their formulations are used to treat diseases like diabetes, paralysis, enlarged heart, tuberculosis, and filariasis for which modern medicine has no known cure or medicines have developed resistant vectors.

Sinhala Buddhists in inner-city Colombo, Sri Lanka, turned to local-and national-level structures of trust in their quest to stay safe and mitigate suffering during the COVID-19 pandemic. We explore this through an ethnographic case study of the Sri Narada temple in Narahenpita and a textual analysis of the national government's response to the pandemic. Our research shows that both the temple and national government advocated similar pathways to immunity, including vaccination, Ayurveda, and Buddhism. We argue that in both instances, conceptions of health are plural and relational and embedded in the broader social context, as opposed to individualist notions of health. They also encompass moral issues around social service, merit, and what it means to be a "good" Buddhist. However, these common pathways led to dissimilar outcomes, mediated by qualitatively different relations of trust.

The notion of a single Silk Road between East Asia and West Asia is a problematic one, not just because these roads carried many more products than silk, not to mention cultural and religious ideas, but also because the concept suggests one-way traffic along a single route (Billé, Mehendale and Lankton, 2022). The same problems attach to the maritime version of the Silk Road. This article discusses the role of Arabic in the multilingual context of commercial and cultural contacts between West Asia and South, Southeast and East Asia, as well as the difference between its role in the continental and maritime routes of the Silk Roads network.

Interest in the practice of traditional Tibetan Medicine is burgeoning in the United States
and of increasing interest to allopathic medical communities. University classes, weekend seminars or longer training programs are appearing across the country. This paper examines the current development and operations of how lineage and transmission of gSo ba rig pa occurs in relationship to historical and modern Tibetan background, challenges and ethical issues related to translations, loss of lineage based training structures and standards, as of yet unregulated within the United States.
Traditionally, full training of Tibetan doctors ( sman pa ) emphasizes the protection and preservation of an unbroken lineage. Those seeking full or partial training face myriad issues in relation to lineage, the integration of allopathic, and other indigenous medical systems. Cultural appropriation, translation, authentic transmission from cultural and practical learning approaches all must be considered. Who is authorized to give and receive transmission? Likewise, what translational issues arise from moving the system into non-native languages?
This paper explores these crucial questions within the international gSo wa rig pa community. I assert that seeking clarification and unity while engaging in the opening of this unique system to the sciences and healing modalities of other countries and cultures is essential. Continuation of this system that values unbroken and authentic teachings is paramount. Nevertheless, of critical importance is allowing for preservation, even outside of the culture of origin, albeit with careful navigation.

Since their establishment in the 1960s, Medical Humanities has become increasingly prominent in academia, valueably contributing to physicians' education and interdisciplinary scholarship. The COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted the discipline. The crisis fostered selfreflection on the discipline and its role inside and outside academia. The COVID-19 pandemic has reminded us that responding to a public health crisis is impossible by relying solely on science and that sanitary emergencies have social, political, economic, cultural, and emotional aspects. This awareness has been particularly strong in China, a country uniquely challenged by the COVID-19 crisis. However, acknowledging the value of the humanities in understanding health and illness leaves open questions about the effective implementation of them in medical schools. This paper will offer perspectives on the challenges of integrating humanities in medical curricula in the Chinese academic setting. It will discuss data gathered from a Medical Humanities course delivered at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in Shenzhen in 2024 and the results of a survey conducted the same year among 4th-year students about the advantages and shortcomings of integrating humanities into medical education.

KP Girija, the author of the book, skilfully navigates through traditional
healing practices or nattuvaidyam derived from the broad region of Kerala, using the often inadequate English language. The implications of this book are increasingly relevant across many sectors such as art, culture, food, education, and healthcare. It maps how colonialism crushes and controls preexisting traditional practices and ways of life on the one hand while, on the other hand, caste-privileged groups appropriate certain practices and erase/delegitimise other practices. She quotes Cleetus (2007),
In a caste ridden society with a distinct and different socio-cultural hierarchy, anyone in a low social position was likely to be called a quack and discarded.
The author initially sets out to explore and understand how knowledge, skill and education embedded within indigenous healing practices of Kerala relate with the often shame-inducing, “modern education” system. Girija, however, confronts Ayurveda, the inevitable elephant in the room, which has located itself as the “scientific” face of traditional medicine, supposedly satisfying and even imitating most of the (often contrasting) requirements laid down by modern medicine.

Social science research on medicine in India has moved from village-based ethnographies to studies of the major medical traditions, and from a focus on indigenous folk practices to the influence of global biomedicine. This article shows how these academic trends have influenced the contemporary understanding of medical pluralism in India. The article then describes the socio-political structuring of medical plurality, by relating historical shifts in government policy on indigenous medicine to ethnographic material on “bone doctors” and other subaltern traditions in north India. It highlights the role of the state as constitutive of contemporary medical pluralism and suggests how current analytical frameworks for understanding the phenomenon of medical plurality might be reconceived to better characterise shifting relations of power among professional and vernacular therapeutic forms. It concludes that concerns over the decline of subaltern medical traditions, seen in government pol...

The uprisings for racial justice that followed the brutal murder of George Floyd on May 28, 2020 in Minneapolis, Minnesota damaged the physical building where a family medicine residency is situated. We discuss the emotions that follow that event and reflect on ways that family medicine should address racism and discrimination. We also call on those in family medicine to work more in the communities that we serve, and to make advocacy a core part of the identity of family medicine.

This article offers the first overview of the recent emergence of Tibetan Sign Language (TibSL) in Lhasa, capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), China. Drawing on short anthropological fieldwork, in 2007 and 2014, with people and organisations involved in the formalisation and promotion of TibSL, the author discusses her findings within the nine-fold UNESCO model for assessing linguistic vitality and endangerment. She follows the adaptation of this model to assess signed languages by the Institute of Sign Languages and Deaf Studies (iSLanDS) at the University of Central Lancashire. The appraisal shows that TibSL appears to be between "severely" and "definitely" endangered, adding to the extant studies on the widespread phenomenon of sign language endangerment. Possible future influences and developments regarding the vitality and use of TibSL in Central Tibet and across the Tibetan plateau are then discussed and certain additions, not considered within the existing assessment model, suggested. In concluding, the article places the situation of TibSL within the wider circumstances of minority (sign) languages in China, Chinese Sign Language (CSL), and the post-2008 movement to promote and use "pure Tibetan language".

Th is article investigates some of the socioeconomic dimensions of contemporary Tibetan medical practices in the rural areas of the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), China. Th e article is divided into two parts. Part One, printed in the last issue of the journal, deals with traditional medical practitioners and their medical practices within the governmental health care system in the TAR. It sheds light on the workings and the eff ects that the commodification of the offi cial health care system have had on its Tibetan medical practitioners, most of whom now work as hybrid practitioners and incorporate Chinese-style biomedicine into their practice. I argue that several historical, social and political factors have brought about unequal access and availability of Tibetan medicine as compared to Chinese style biomedical care in the rural areas. Special attention is given to the role of the re-introduction of the Cooperative Medical Services (CMS) scheme in the sidelining of Tibetan medical practices in the rural areas. Part Two describes the work of private Tibetan medical practitioners and explores some of the social dynamics and ethical dilemmas that have arisen for them due to the commodifi cation of the offi cial system and the re-introduction of the CMS. Both parts focus on the situation in the Tsang or Shigatse region of the western and central TAR, hence enabling there to be useful comparisons with medical practices in the capital Lhasa, where most of the anthropological literature has focused on so far. Both contributions are based on extensive anthropological fieldwork in Lhasa and the Tsang region of Tibet.

The mobilization of Chinese medicine resources in the 2020 COVID-19 epidemic in Hubei, China, was part of the larger mobilization of society and multiple tiers of the healthcare system. In this article we describe how Chinese medicine teams organized treatment and prevention, how they conceptualized this treatment and evaluated the results, and what this may contribute to our understanding of how traditional medical traditions can be safely and effectively integrated into modern epidemic treatment and control.