Michael Stanley-Baker 徐源
Nanyang Technological University, History, Faculty Member
- University College London, China Centre for Health & Humanity, Department Memberadd
- Daoist Healing, Six Dynasties, Daoism, Sinology, Chinese Medicine, History of Medicine in China, and 36 moreCelestial Masters, Shangqing, Daoism and Medicine, History of Medicine, East Asia, History Of Medicine In South Asia, Cultural History, Anthropology, Ethnomedicine, Medical Anthropology, Post-Colonialism, Phenomenology of the body, Folk Medicine, Apotropaic Devices, Bodies and Culture, Body (Religion), Lingbao, Yang Sheng and Healing, History, History of Medicine, Material Culture Studies, Anthropology of Religion, Taoism, Chinese Religions, Buddhism, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Daoist studies, Historical network analysis, Digital Humanities, Ancient Networks, Acupuncture, Chinese medicine (History), Chinese history (History), Chinese Buddhism, Chinese Philosophy, and Public Healthedit
- People have developed many kinds of knowledge to understand and respond to bodily experience - how do they choose amo... morePeople have developed many kinds of knowledge to understand and respond to bodily experience - how do they choose among them?My work concerns medical practice and healing by Daoists throughout the history of Daoism, and is informed by my clinical experience as a practitioner of Chinese medicine, and by fieldwork in modern temples. I understand healing systems to be created first through individuals' habitual choices from among a multiplicity of systems. This is where the rubber of individual experience meets the road of culture, and the two shape each other. Insofar as these choices are consistently negotiated, adopted, and ratified by other individuals and communities, those systems survive. I try to avoid longue durée claims about Daoism in toto, and approach case-studies in specific periods. I am most interested in individuals' epistemic priorities as they choose from existing medical strategies to form their own repertoire(s).My current monograph concerns the division of labour between medicine and religion in China that occurs over the first 600 years CE, as seen in diverse media: esoteric oral transmissions, scriptures, biographies, medical texts, recipe collections, pharmacopœia, divine revelations, encyclopædias and imperial bibliographies. It contains close readings of therapeutic practices in the Zhen'gao 真誥 HY 1010, a collection of 4th century spirit-revelations. Using this text as a basis for social history, I then track the institutionalised convergence or divergence of concepts of medicine and religion in different Daoist thinkers’ writings, imperial bibliographies and different textual layers of the Daoist canon. This enables me to draw larger conclusions about sea-changes in Chinese medieval thought about selfhood, salvation and the body.I am interested more broadly in religious studies, medical anthropology, medical history, Chinese medicine, phenomenology of the body, Chinese history, and Chinese historical geography.edit
This article uses GIS mapping to plot the historical locations known for producing Chinese material medica recorded in a text with three historical layers. On the basis of these plots, it argues that: early Chinese pharmacology emerged... more
This article uses GIS mapping to plot the historical locations known for producing Chinese material medica recorded in a text with three historical layers. On the basis of these plots, it argues that: early Chinese pharmacology emerged not from the central plains but along the Yellow River Corridor, from the Bohai Sea through to Chang'an and then beyond, into the Sichuan Plain, and that the drug exchange network may have emerged through stepwise local trading between these sites, as along the Silk Road; these sites are not necessarily biotopes specific to where the drugs grow, but sites of "drug production," which enter these natural products into circulation; the activity at these sites consists of sociotechnical operations that translate these materials across diverse technical domains, facilitated by drug names as a key marker; and, finally, that comparing these geolocated drug names to terms within excavated recipe literature may indicate a likelihood of the regional origin of certain texts. The Tianhui recipes from Laoguanshan appear to be representative of local drug cultures from northeast China.
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為了分析宗教材料而廣闊「醫學」史的資料，需要廣泛我們對「宗教」概念和研究方法。 最初步的問題就是因為早起索引和目錄沒挑取早期治療行為，加上現代區別醫療和宗教概念的·習慣引起研究員不認同宗教文獻裡的療術。 那第一個挑戰就是早期療術躲在宗教文獻的哪裡？ 因此，我們依賴一些數字人文方法進行了巨大容量宗教文獻的重新建立新的資料索引。 其實，可以利用該方法建立注重各種題目的索引，但因為徐源的研究，建立的索引註重中國歷史最發達的宗教醫療的階段，六朝時代。... more
為了分析宗教材料而廣闊「醫學」史的資料，需要廣泛我們對「宗教」概念和研究方法。 最初步的問題就是因為早起索引和目錄沒挑取早期治療行為，加上現代區別醫療和宗教概念的·習慣引起研究員不認同宗教文獻裡的療術。 那第一個挑戰就是早期療術躲在宗教文獻的哪裡？
因此，我們依賴一些數字人文方法進行了巨大容量宗教文獻的重新建立新的資料索引。 其實，可以利用該方法建立注重各種題目的索引，但因為徐源的研究，建立的索引註重中國歷史最發達的宗教醫療的階段，六朝時代。 在第一個階段時間裡一個跨所有六朝的醫學，道教，和佛教文獻的文本資料庫。 建立該庫過程中，需要建構很仔細的目錄資料，包含每文獻的細節，就是台灣大學的DocuSky系統艘所允許的。 有了配對文獻和目錄學這樣的數據庫，就能進行從來無法做到的搜尋，譬如輸入超萬項，然好列出它們的分佈於文類，派別和時代。 這就是DocuSky裡所謂「後分類」的厲害。
在此文章介紹一些我們發現需要注意的事項，還有數字人文引進的新研究機會。 我們搜尋了超萬藥名與我們建立的佛道醫六朝文獻庫，名叫“DAOBUDMED6D”，也展示一些搜尋結果，讓世界的研究員進行更美好的中國宗教醫療的研究。
(Materia Medica in Chinese Religious Texts—Using Critical Digital Philology to Establish a Knowledge Distribution Model of Early Chinese Texts)
This article introduces new digital humanities to the history of religion and of medicine in China. The bibliographic habits of earlier bibliographers and categorical habits of modern researchers have meant that religious healing practices are invisible to modern researhers, and distributed widely across early textual corpora.
DocuSky allows researchers to re-index massive textual corpuses according to detailed researcher interests. We describe how we catalogued 7 centuries of Buddhist, Daoist and medical texts into a massive text corpus, DAOBUDMED6D which included professional, scholastic indeces for each canon, and performed a massive search across the corpus for over 10,000 drug terms. Using DocuSky's "post-search classification" we could identify broad-scale and very finely-detailed patterns of drug use in different textual genres, communites and time periods.
因此，我們依賴一些數字人文方法進行了巨大容量宗教文獻的重新建立新的資料索引。 其實，可以利用該方法建立注重各種題目的索引，但因為徐源的研究，建立的索引註重中國歷史最發達的宗教醫療的階段，六朝時代。 在第一個階段時間裡一個跨所有六朝的醫學，道教，和佛教文獻的文本資料庫。 建立該庫過程中，需要建構很仔細的目錄資料，包含每文獻的細節，就是台灣大學的DocuSky系統艘所允許的。 有了配對文獻和目錄學這樣的數據庫，就能進行從來無法做到的搜尋，譬如輸入超萬項，然好列出它們的分佈於文類，派別和時代。 這就是DocuSky裡所謂「後分類」的厲害。
在此文章介紹一些我們發現需要注意的事項，還有數字人文引進的新研究機會。 我們搜尋了超萬藥名與我們建立的佛道醫六朝文獻庫，名叫“DAOBUDMED6D”，也展示一些搜尋結果，讓世界的研究員進行更美好的中國宗教醫療的研究。
(Materia Medica in Chinese Religious Texts—Using Critical Digital Philology to Establish a Knowledge Distribution Model of Early Chinese Texts)
This article introduces new digital humanities to the history of religion and of medicine in China. The bibliographic habits of earlier bibliographers and categorical habits of modern researchers have meant that religious healing practices are invisible to modern researhers, and distributed widely across early textual corpora.
DocuSky allows researchers to re-index massive textual corpuses according to detailed researcher interests. We describe how we catalogued 7 centuries of Buddhist, Daoist and medical texts into a massive text corpus, DAOBUDMED6D which included professional, scholastic indeces for each canon, and performed a massive search across the corpus for over 10,000 drug terms. Using DocuSky's "post-search classification" we could identify broad-scale and very finely-detailed patterns of drug use in different textual genres, communites and time periods.
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The Polyglot Asian Medicine system hosts a research database of Asian traditional and herbal medicines, represented as a knowledge graph and implemented in a Neo4j graph database system. The current coverage of the database is mainly... more
The Polyglot Asian Medicine system hosts a research database of Asian traditional and herbal medicines, represented as a knowledge graph and implemented in a Neo4j graph database system. The current coverage of the database is mainly traditional Chinese medicines with some Malay and Indonesian data, with plans to extend to other Southeast Asian communities. The knowledge graph currently links the medicine names in the original and English languages, to alternate names and scientific names, to plant/animal parts they are made from, to literary and historical sources they were mentioned in, to geographic areas they were associated with, and to external database records. A novel graph visualization interface supports user searching, browsing and visual analysis. This is an example of representing a digital humanities research dataset as a knowledge graph for reference and research purposes. The paper describes how the knowledge graph was derived based on a dataset comprising over 25 Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, and how the spreadsheet data were processed and mapped to the graph database using upload scripts in the Neo4j Cypher graph query language. The advantages of using a knowledge graph system to support user browsing and analysis using a graph visualization interface are illustrated. The paper describes issues encountered, solutions adopted, and lessons learned that can be applied to other digital humanities data.
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This article preprint examines the intersection of religion, science, medicine and historical geography in China through a study of the Taiqing jinye shendan jing 太清金液神丹經 (Grand Clarity Scripture of Divine Elixir Made from Liquid Gold),... more
This article preprint examines the intersection of religion, science, medicine and historical geography in China through a study of the Taiqing jinye shendan jing 太清金液神丹經 (Grand Clarity Scripture of Divine Elixir Made from Liquid Gold), attributed to Ge Hong 葛洪 (283-343 CE). The text provides a gaze which contravenes standard narratives of foreign medical migration that vector into China via Buddhist channels. Passages from the Scripture describe the healing powers of non-Chinese drugs, and highlight ways medieval writers imagined the transmission of medical knowledge, as well as the specific places producing potent substances. As such, we argue that it provides a novel view on medical migration in its time period. As one of the early sources on physical geography and trade goods from Southeast Asia, it is an important resource for early knowledge of the region, and is one of the earliest examples of possible Daoist religio-technical continuities between the regions.
Research Interests: Religion, Geography, Historical Geography, Philosophy of Science, Southeast Asian Studies, and 9 moreHistory of Medicine, Interdisciplinarity, Chinese Medicine, Religion and medicine, Cultural Historical Geography, Herbal Medicine, Traditional Chinese Medicine, South East Asian Studies, and History of alchemy
The terms ‘medicine’, ‘religion’ and ‘Asia’ influence our understanding of the world in important ways. They organise intellectual, social, institutional and economic priorities and orient selves and bodies within the world. Studying the... more
The terms ‘medicine’, ‘religion’ and ‘Asia’ influence our understanding of the world in important ways. They organise intellectual, social, institutional and economic priorities and orient selves and bodies within the world. Studying the confluence of these three topics, as we suggest in this volume, speaks to larger orders of the ways in which individuals, bodies, and things come into relation with each other, with institutions, states and with the world around us. These three carry broad implications about other terms, such as rationality, faith and self. Even while they have shaped the study of Asia for centuries, recent years have seen a new confluence of these interests. People of diverse ethnic, national and political orientations seek individual and collective self-definition through bodily treatments, practices and cultivation techniques that are labelled, in some way, ‘Asian’. Attention in the public sphere ranges from the multi-billion dollar ‘wellness’ industry, to the geopolitical negotiations and national policies of China, and India’s national medical institutions, to the ways in which those markets and policies are shaping anew the status, practice and self-understanding of practitioners from those regions. At the same time, humanistic research in the academy has also seen a burgeoning of individual studies, collective works and statefunded research projects. This volume takes stock of recent developments in the field, outlines some theoretical frameworks and ways to understand these issues, and suggests methods and directions for future research.
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Qi has played a role in military arts, calligraphy and many other pre-modern scientific and cultural domains, in contemporary practitioner’s descriptions of the theory and practical knowledge of Chinese medicine, and even in modern... more
Qi has played a role in military arts, calligraphy and many other pre-modern scientific and cultural domains, in contemporary practitioner’s descriptions of the theory and practical knowledge of Chinese medicine, and even in modern Chinese translations of scientific terms which accord no validity to the concept of qi. As such, the chapter argues that qi in the past, and still today, plays a significant cohering role by drawing together broad domains of culture, language and technical practice.
This chapter investigates the early origins, shifts in meaning and broad applications of the term qi. Beginning with the multi-linear etymology of its early written and spoken forms, and grammatical arguments that qi takes a mass noun form, the chapter outlines its shifting applications in the pre- and early imperial period, tracing an arc through its emergence as an embodied, cosmic substrate, a politically salient concept regarding states’ succession to the Heavenly Mandate, and its expanding role in medical and divination theories of the Han dynasty. Early medical literature shows a shifting emphasis from first-person experiences of embodied yangsheng practice to third-person topologies of the channel-mapped body and astro-calendrical circulatory rhythms. The Appendix details the varieties of qi in the Yellow Emperor’s Inner Classic.
This chapter investigates the early origins, shifts in meaning and broad applications of the term qi. Beginning with the multi-linear etymology of its early written and spoken forms, and grammatical arguments that qi takes a mass noun form, the chapter outlines its shifting applications in the pre- and early imperial period, tracing an arc through its emergence as an embodied, cosmic substrate, a politically salient concept regarding states’ succession to the Heavenly Mandate, and its expanding role in medical and divination theories of the Han dynasty. Early medical literature shows a shifting emphasis from first-person experiences of embodied yangsheng practice to third-person topologies of the channel-mapped body and astro-calendrical circulatory rhythms. The Appendix details the varieties of qi in the Yellow Emperor’s Inner Classic.
Research Interests: Medical Anthropology, History of Medicine, Sinology, History of Science, Chinese Medicine, and 8 moreAnthropology of China, History of Human Sciences, Social History of Medicine, Chinese medicine (History), Chinese history (History), History of Medicine and the Body, Traditional Chinese Medicine, and Medical History
The Routledge Handbook of Chinese Medicine is an extensive, interdisciplinary guide to the nature of traditional medicine and healing in the Chinese cultural region, and its plural epistemologies. Established experts and the next... more
The Routledge Handbook of Chinese Medicine is an extensive, interdisciplinary guide to the nature of traditional medicine and healing in the Chinese cultural region, and its plural epistemologies. Established experts and the next generation of scholars interpret the ways in which Chinese medicine has been understood and portrayed from the beginning of the empire (third century BCE) to the globalisation of Chinese products and practices in the present day, taking in subjects from ancient medical writings to therapeutic movement, to talismans for healing and traditional medicines that have inspired global solutions to contemporary epidemics. The volume is divided into seven parts:
Hanson contributed ch 16 “Late Imperial Epidemiology, Part 1: From retrospective diagnoses to epidemics as diagnostic lens for other ends, 1870s to 1970s.” and ch. 17 “Late Imperial Epidemiology, Part 2: New material and conceptual methods, 1980s to 2010s.”
Hanson contributed ch 16 “Late Imperial Epidemiology, Part 1: From retrospective diagnoses to epidemics as diagnostic lens for other ends, 1870s to 1970s.” and ch. 17 “Late Imperial Epidemiology, Part 2: New material and conceptual methods, 1980s to 2010s.”
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2021 “Ge xianweng zhouhou beiji fang 葛仙翁肘後備急方” in Lai Chi-tim 黎志添ed. Daozang jiyao – Tiyao 道藏輯要 提要 [Companion to the Essentials of the Daoist Canon], Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong Press. 809-819 ******** A bibliographic... more
2021 “Ge xianweng zhouhou beiji fang 葛仙翁肘後備急方” in Lai Chi-tim 黎志添ed. Daozang jiyao – Tiyao 道藏輯要 提要 [Companion to the Essentials of the Daoist Canon], Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong Press. 809-819
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A bibliographic study of the surviving textual editions of the Zhouhou beiji fang, an influential recipe text dating to the fourth-century, compiled by the Daoist Ge Hong. It argues that the date for this text can be placed as early as 306, and discusses the various editions and influences on the subsequent text. An entry in the Companion to the Daozang jiyao. Entry is in Chinese.
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A bibliographic study of the surviving textual editions of the Zhouhou beiji fang, an influential recipe text dating to the fourth-century, compiled by the Daoist Ge Hong. It argues that the date for this text can be placed as early as 306, and discusses the various editions and influences on the subsequent text. An entry in the Companion to the Daozang jiyao. Entry is in Chinese.
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In order to track the emergence of drug lore in religious communities in early medieval China, this Digital Humanities project produces new digital tools for analysing the Daoist and Buddhist Canons. Big term list searches will be... more
In order to track the emergence of drug lore in religious communities in early medieval China, this Digital Humanities project produces new digital tools for analysing the Daoist and Buddhist Canons. Big term list searches will be performed across Six Dynasties (220-589) corpuses, identifying hits by authors, date, genre and geographic location of production. Detailed analyses of texts will be speeded up with semi-automatic text marking. Results can be plotted on time-space maps using GIS points from CHGIS, resulting in broad-scale depictions of drug lore in the canon.
Research Interests: Buddhism, History, Humanities Computing (Digital Humanities), Digital Humanities, History of Medicine, and 15 moreDaoism, Buddhist Studies, Chinese Medicine, History of Medicine in China, Daoism and Medicine, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Social and Cultural History of Medicine, History of Chinese Medicine, Classical Chinese Medicine, Buddhist medicine, Daoist studies, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), Daoist Medicine, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), and History of Traditional Chinese Medicine
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Highlights •Natural products are an important source of therapeutic compounds. •Natural product research can benefit greatly from advances in AI. •Knowledge integration is a limiting step for natural-product-based drug discovery.... more
Highlights
•Natural products are an important source of therapeutic compounds.
•Natural product research can benefit greatly from advances in AI.
•Knowledge integration is a limiting step for natural-product-based drug discovery.
Natural products (NPs) constitute a large reserve of bioactive compounds useful for drug development. Recent advances in high-throughput technologies facilitate functional analysis of therapeutic effects and NP-based drug discovery. However, the large amount of generated data is complex and difficult to analyze effectively. This limitation is increasingly surmounted by artificial intelligence (AI) techniques but more needs to be done. Here, we present and discuss two crucial issues limiting NP-AI drug discovery: the first is on knowledge and resource development (data integration) to bridge the gap between NPs and functional or therapeutic effects. The second issue is on NP-AI modeling considerations, limitations and challenges.
•Natural products are an important source of therapeutic compounds.
•Natural product research can benefit greatly from advances in AI.
•Knowledge integration is a limiting step for natural-product-based drug discovery.
Natural products (NPs) constitute a large reserve of bioactive compounds useful for drug development. Recent advances in high-throughput technologies facilitate functional analysis of therapeutic effects and NP-based drug discovery. However, the large amount of generated data is complex and difficult to analyze effectively. This limitation is increasingly surmounted by artificial intelligence (AI) techniques but more needs to be done. Here, we present and discuss two crucial issues limiting NP-AI drug discovery: the first is on knowledge and resource development (data integration) to bridge the gap between NPs and functional or therapeutic effects. The second issue is on NP-AI modeling considerations, limitations and challenges.
Research Interests: Data Mining, Natural Products, Database Systems, Natural Products Chemistry, Biological Activity Of Natural Products, and 10 moreDrug Discovery, Knowledge Discovery in Databases, Ethnopharmacology, Databases, Artifical Intelligence, Data Integration, Medicinal plants and natural products, Deep Learning, Natural Products and drug discovery, and Therapetic Actevites of Natural Products
This article discusses past epidemics and their influence on the spread of Daoism and Buddhism in China. The article details the response of both Buddhism and Daoism to the COVID-19 pandemic. The article discusses the relationship between... more
This article discusses past epidemics and their influence on the spread of Daoism and Buddhism in China. The article details the response of both Buddhism and Daoism to the COVID-19 pandemic. The article discusses the relationship between Chinese religions and modern medicine
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The proliferation of online databases and digital tools in recent decades has offered exciting opportunities for historians of science to perform large-scale textual analysis and identify new questions. The use of these databases,... more
The proliferation of online databases and digital tools in recent decades has offered exciting opportunities for historians of science to perform large-scale textual analysis and identify new questions. The use of these databases, however, takes time and effort, as one is often overwhelmed by themassive amounts of information yielded by keyword searches. To facilitate scholarly inquiries, it is necessary to have platforms that provide historical and philological tools that allow for targeted investigation of a sea of data. The digital project Drugs across Asia, led by Michael Stanley-Baker with the help of a group of collaborators, has created an excellent model for this type of analysis that will be useful for historians of medicine in Asia and beyond. Drugs across Asia collects and organizes a large number of digitalized texts to analyze the pharmacological data therein. The core issue that motivates the project, as Stanley-Baker conceives of it, is the problem of boundaries. How ...
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In the fifteen year period from 1964–1979, The People’s Republic of China engaged in an unprecedented number of domestic and international health campaigns that were utilized for China’s entrance onto the world stage. From Mao Zedong’s... more
In the fifteen year period from 1964–1979, The People’s Republic of China engaged in an unprecedented number of domestic and international health campaigns that were utilized for China’s entrance onto the world stage. From Mao Zedong’s vision of a new form of medicine via the unification of Chinese medicines and biomedicine to the adoption of a Chinese model of healthcare integration and primary healthcare by the World Health Organization in the Declaration of Alma Ata, the PRC entered the world stage through its health exports and its distinctive adaptation of modernity to serve domestic, and often foreign policy goals. These exports include Sino-African health diplomacy; the globalization of Traditional Chinese Medicine, and in particular the global utilization and scientific recognition of the antimalarial artemisinin derived from the Chinese herb Qinghao; and a model of primary and rural universal healthcare utilizing community health workers that garnered multilateral support. ...
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In the fifteen year period from 1964–1979, The People’s Republic of China engaged in an unprecedented number of domestic and international health campaigns that were utilized for China’s entrance onto the world stage. From Mao Zedong’s... more
In the fifteen year period from 1964–1979, The People’s Republic of China engaged in an unprecedented number of domestic and international health campaigns that were utilized for China’s entrance onto the world stage. From Mao Zedong’s vision of a new form of medicine via the unification of Chinese medicines and biomedicine to the adoption of a Chinese model of healthcare integration and primary healthcare by the World Health Organization in the Declaration of Alma Ata, the PRC entered the world stage through its health exports and its distinctive adaptation of modernity to serve domestic, and often foreign policy goals. These exports include Sino-African health diplomacy; the globalization of Traditional Chinese Medicine, and in particular the global utilization and scientific recognition of the antimalarial artemisinin derived from the Chinese herb Qinghao ; and a model of primary and rural universal healthcare utilizing community health workers that garnered multilateral support. However, the face of benevolence displayed on the world stage was often contradicted by what was occurring domestically, behind the scenes, with the marked state enforcement of many of these same health campaigns in front of the backdrop of the cultural revolution. This paper examines if, and how, the West may have orientalized and romanticized China’s healthcare exports. Furthermore, we analyze the World Health Organization’s adoption and global promotion of a model for universal healthcare using healthcare integration that was only able to be achieved through the often brutal enforcement of the state, whilst rejecting grass-roots movements enacted during the same period, such as the practitioner-led integration of Ayurvedic medicine in India.
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Introduction to special issue of Asian Medicine on COVID-19 and epidemics throughout history.
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An overview of responses to the COVID-19 pandemic by Daoists within China and in diaspora in Singapore, Malaysia and in New York state.
Research Interests: Religion, Medical Anthropology, Chinese Studies, Daoism, Sinology, and 12 moreComplementary and Alternative Medicine, Critical Medical Anthropology, Singapore, Religion and medicine, China, Chinese Diaspora (Migration and Ethnicity), Medical Anthropology/ antropología médica, Religious Studies, Anthropology of Religion, Daoist studies, Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia, and COVID-19 PANDEMIC
This article is a critique of the neologism “Daoist medicine” (daojiao yixue 道教醫學) that has recently entered scholarly discourse in China. It provides evidence that this expression is an anachronism which found its way into scholarly... more
This article is a critique of the neologism “Daoist medicine” (daojiao yixue 道教醫學) that has recently entered scholarly discourse in China. It provides evidence that this expression is an anachronism which found its way into scholarly discourse in 1995 and has now become so widely used that it is seen as representing an undisputed “historical fact.” It demonstrates that the term has no precursor in the pre-modern record, and critiques two substantive attempts to set up “Daoist medicine” as an analytical term. It reviews earlier scholarship on Daoism and medicine, or healing, within the larger context of religion and medicine, and shows how attention has shifted, particularly in relation to the notion of overlap or intersection of these historical fields of study. It proposes that earlier frameworks grounded in epistemology or simple social identity do not effectively represent the complexity of these therapies. Practice theory, on the other hand, provides a useful analytic for unpacking the organisation and transmission of curing knowledge. Such an approach foregrounds the processes and dynamics of assemblage, rather than theoretical abstractions. The article concludes by proposing a focus on the Daoing of medicine, that is, the variety of processes by which therapies come to be known as Daoist, rather than imposing an anachronistic concept like Daoist medicine.
Research Interests: Practice theory, History of Medicine, Daoism, Sinology, Historiography, and 15 moreHistory of Science, Chinese Medicine, Religious Syncretism, Bruno Latour, Social History of Medicine, Chinese history (History), Traditional Chinese Medicine, Medical History, Assemblage Theory, Ludwik Fleck, Classical Chinese Intellectual History, Daoist studies, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), Daoist Medicine, and helen verran
The history of science focuses our view on how early practitioners observed, recorded and understood the natural world. As such, it has long excluded or deprioritised the religious—the realm of gods, ghosts and divine beings, the search... more
The history of science focuses our view on how early practitioners observed, recorded and understood the natural world. As such, it has long excluded or deprioritised the religious—the realm of gods, ghosts and divine beings, the search for salvation, and speculation about divine origins and structures of the universe. This despite the fact that, in pre-modern times, these domains were rarely if ever purely separated, or where they were, this occurred in inconsistent ways, with such varied contours, that it is problematic to talk of any kind of universally applied, consistent demarcation criteria. Recently, new approaches from the history of knowledge, and the Multiple Secularities project (https://www.multiplesecularities. de/), have opened the way for synoptic comparisons which do not prejudice or privilege the epistemic standing, or even the strict demarcation between science and religion from outside the European region. This question has occupied sinologists in successive waves.
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The circulation of medical knowledge extends far beyond recognized "medical" fields in all cultures, but can be difficult to trace outside of canonical sources. This paper models the distribution of medical knowledge in Buddhist, Daoist... more
The circulation of medical knowledge extends far beyond recognized "medical" fields in all cultures, but can be difficult to trace outside of canonical sources. This paper models the distribution of medical knowledge in Buddhist, Daoist and medical source from the early medieval period (Six Dynasties-up to the year 589) by charting the distribution of materia medica terminology. Surviving Shangqing Daoist records appear to contain the most materia medica vocabulary, and indicate the relatively higher use of drugs within the sect. The paper argues that such search results and visualisations constitute "qualified historical hypotheses" about the distribution of medical knowledge across religious sects in the period, and the relative saturation of medical knowledge in each genre of writing and sect. It details how search results for the terms are grounded in philologically rich meta-data about the textual corpora. The paper describes how, using post-search classification, a key function of DocuSky's TermStatsTools, how search results were produced using the enriched metadata, and then further refined to generate a readable graph and reliable statistics. These refinements are the "qualifications" of the hypothesis, and the analysis of how they impact the search results constitute what the paper refers to as a "critical digital philology." The digital visualisations of DocuSky outputs allows researchers to model the distribution of knowledge and generate new research questions. Greater accuracy can be produced through semi-automatic markup and synonymy tables, i.e. name authority databases. The authors describe their current processes for producing a synonymy for Chinese materia medica, to account for the use of alternate names for specific materia medica. The relevant open access databases, metadata, term lists and name authority tables for the study of medicine across Daoist Buddhist and medical sources that the authors have published are all hyper-linked from the paper. The hypotheses of the paper can thus be reproduced, and the paper constitutes a full working model and links to datasets for the development of similar projects.
Research Interests:
IASTAM aims at achieving a fuller understanding of Asian medicines in historical and contemporary contexts by integrating diverse forms of knowledge and ways of practice. It provides an epistemological framework for scholarly exchanges... more
IASTAM aims at achieving a fuller understanding of Asian medicines in historical and contemporary contexts by integrating diverse forms of knowledge and ways of practice. It provides an epistemological framework for scholarly exchanges between medical anthropologists, practitioners of Asian medical traditions, specialists in life sciences, ethnobotanists, ethnopharmacologists, ethnopharmacognosists, herbalists, historians, economists, political scientists, conservationists, translators, and more. IASTAM includes the major scholarly medical traditions and various vernacular healing traditions of East Asia (China, Korea, Japan, Vietnam), South Asia (Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha, Yoga, Homeopathy, and others), Central Asia and the Himalayas (Tibet, Mongolia, etc.), along with Greco-Arabic traditions (as practiced in Asia, as well as North Africa). In light of this diversity, the ICTAMs provide opportunities to develop new networks of collaboration and exchange and to consider how both our association and the field as a whole can move forward.
Research Interests: Asian Studies, Southeast Asian Studies, Ethnobotany, History of Medicine, South Asian Studies, and 10 moreEast Asian Studies, Ayurveda, Ethnopharmacology, Social History of Medicine, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Medical History, Traditional East Asian medicine, Buddhist medicine, Sowa Rigpa - The Buddhist Science of Healing, and IASTAM
Attempts to describe qi in English-language literature have inevitably been thin, focussing primarily on the ways in which it speaks to perceived mind-body dualism in Anglophone culture. The following discussion touches upon the broad... more
Attempts to describe qi in English-language literature have inevitably been thin, focussing primarily on the ways in which it speaks to perceived mind-body dualism in Anglophone culture. The following discussion touches upon the broad diversity of epistemes in which qi has been entangled, and a few ways in which it has acted as a touch-stone for comparing Chinese culture with Western modernity. It then considers three different ways for approaching qi as a topic-rather than attempting to define qi itself as a critical term, or attempting to define it, I experiment with three different modes of reading about and thinking with qi. Beginning with palaeography, I introduce an uncommon narrative about qi and fire. I then discuss genealogical/period-based approach versus one of epistemological comparison. Finally, the paper takes a departure from textual based studies to consider an informal discussion of the constraints of individualist notions of subject formation, and how qi plays an important role in informing intersubjectivity, mourning rites and social continuity. The paper then concludes by suggesting two terms as useful for thinking about qi: coherence, and consubstantiality.
Research Interests:
In Singapore, digital humanities (DH) is inclusive of the larger spectrum of the humanities, including not only its traditional disciplines (e.g., languages and literature, philosophy, law, geography, history, art history, musicology) but... more
In Singapore, digital humanities (DH) is inclusive of the larger spectrum of the humanities, including not only its traditional disciplines (e.g., languages and literature, philosophy, law, geography, history, art history, musicology) but also anthropology, heritage studies, museum studies, performing arts, and visual arts. Multilingual, interdisciplinary, and audiovisual projects are particularly prominent. A community is growing around an emergent concept of DH, and it is developing results mainly in society-driven research projects. Although the DH label is relatively new, and DH dialogue across Singapore institutions is at its early stages, Singapore-based researchers have carried out digital research for decades. An increasing number of projects are home-grown, but several projects have also migrated to Singapore recently due to the high degree of mobility at Singaporean institutions. Current trends suggest that the next stage of DH history in Singapore will include the development of more formal institutions and more participation in global DH conversations.
Research Interests: Humanities Computing (Digital Humanities), Digital Humanities, Cultural Heritage, Heritage Studies, Cultural Heritage Conservation, and 9 moreSouth-East Asia, Heritage Conservation, Singapore, Cultural Heritage Management, Intangible Cultural Heritage (Culture), Heritage, Singapore History, Singapore Studies, and South East Asian Studies
Freedom from disease, physiological signs of well- being, and avoidance of death appear as consistent themes in many writings from preimperial and imperial China, but there were no direct analogues to a conceptual category like the... more
Freedom from disease, physiological signs of well- being, and avoidance
of death appear as consistent themes in many writings from preimperial
and imperial China, but there were no direct analogues to a
conceptual category like the English term “health.” These themes do
not appear under a universally consistent term or bounded theoretical
formulation. Instead they appear as common technical terms or
practical foci across different literary genres. Chinese writers refer to
material forces like breath (qi 氣), the force of life (sheng 生), and inner
nature (xing 性), which are cultivated or nourished (yang 養) in the
body, to lengthen one’s life (ming 命). Engagement with health was as
a quantitative object that could be stored in the body, as a processual
goal rather than a conceptual object. While the term “nourishing life”
(yangsheng 養生) only came to refer to a common, recognizable set of
practices after the first century CE, the practices and goals themselves
were understood to be coherent in sources as early as 400 BCE.
In this chapter I argue that three major periods of writing in preand
early imperial China produced dominant modes of writing on
bodily ideals that have continued until the present day. These writings
include philosophical works, self- cultivation manuals, canonical medical
writings, transcendence writings, and formal Daoist texts.
of death appear as consistent themes in many writings from preimperial
and imperial China, but there were no direct analogues to a
conceptual category like the English term “health.” These themes do
not appear under a universally consistent term or bounded theoretical
formulation. Instead they appear as common technical terms or
practical foci across different literary genres. Chinese writers refer to
material forces like breath (qi 氣), the force of life (sheng 生), and inner
nature (xing 性), which are cultivated or nourished (yang 養) in the
body, to lengthen one’s life (ming 命). Engagement with health was as
a quantitative object that could be stored in the body, as a processual
goal rather than a conceptual object. While the term “nourishing life”
(yangsheng 養生) only came to refer to a common, recognizable set of
practices after the first century CE, the practices and goals themselves
were understood to be coherent in sources as early as 400 BCE.
In this chapter I argue that three major periods of writing in preand
early imperial China produced dominant modes of writing on
bodily ideals that have continued until the present day. These writings
include philosophical works, self- cultivation manuals, canonical medical
writings, transcendence writings, and formal Daoist texts.
Research Interests: Chinese Philosophy, Daoist Philosophy, History of Medicine, Daoism, Chinese Religions, and 12 moreChinese Medicine, History of Public Health, Health, Public Health, Daoist Alchemy, Daoism and Medicine, Social History of Medicine, Chinese history (History), History of Medicine and the Body, Classical Chinese Philosophy, Traditional Chinese Medicine, and Daoist studies
Research Interests:
An analysis of the Longmen Cave Recipes, carved into the rock wall of the Longmen Buddhist Caves between 650 and 653. Comprised of simple ingredients and preparations, the recipes treat a variety of topical ailments, fevers, internal... more
An analysis of the Longmen Cave Recipes, carved into the rock wall of the Longmen Buddhist Caves between 650 and 653. Comprised of simple ingredients and preparations, the recipes treat a variety of topical ailments, fevers, internal diseases, injuries, pulmonary and throat problems and different kinds of fits and madness. Their location in the Longmen caves suggest a charitable intent to spread medical knowledge in the manner of merit-bestowing monumental carvings, possibly to travellers and monks passing through. The recipes enjoyed some wide circulation, having been copied into various surviving texts, suggesting they were well-known. As such, they provide an informative window into Tang Dynasty extra-canonical medicine.
Co-authored with Zhang Ruixian and Wang Jiakui
Co-authored with Zhang Ruixian and Wang Jiakui
Research Interests:
Critical Translation of over 150 recipes carved into the walls of a cave in Longmen Cave, near Loyang in the 7th century. These likely represent Buddhist transmitted recipes, and were certainly presented in a context of Buddhist... more
Critical Translation of over 150 recipes carved into the walls of a cave in Longmen Cave, near Loyang in the 7th century. These likely represent Buddhist transmitted recipes, and were certainly presented in a context of Buddhist merit-building monuments. Some identical recipes also appear in other received and excavated texts, indicating that these recipes, or their source(s), were more widely spread as part of the Buddhist diaspora into China.
The recipes are simple and straightforward, presented in a regularised, organised fashion, and use commonly available materials.
The recipes are simple and straightforward, presented in a regularised, organised fashion, and use commonly available materials.
Research Interests: History of Medicine, Chinese Buddhism, Chinese Medicine, Manuscript Studies, History of Medicine in China, and 25 moreReligion and medicine, Social History of Medicine, Chinese medicine (History), History of Medicine and the Body, Religion and Medicine (Anthropology), Chinese Buddhism (Buddhist Studies), Traditional Chinese Medicine, Medieval Medicine, Chinese and Classical Medicine, Social and Cultural History of Medicine, Tibetan medicine, Tibetan materia medica, Tibetan traditional plant knowledge., Medieval Chinese Buddhism, The History of Ancient and Medieval Pharmacy/materia Medica, Chinese Medicine, Taoism, Buddhism, Medieval Medicine and Herbals, Taoism, Chinese Medicine, Chinese Herbal Medicine, History of Chinese Medicine, Buddhist medicine, Medieval Manuscripts; Food History; Medieval Medicine, Materia Medica, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), Religion, Art and Medicine, Ethno medicine and Materia Medica, and Longmen
In medieval China, massage or anmo (literally, " pressing and rubbing ") was catalogued among a kind of stretching exercise called daoyin (literally, " guiding and pulling "), which is sometimes referred to in modern times as Chinese... more
In medieval China, massage or anmo (literally, " pressing and rubbing ") was catalogued among a kind of stretching exercise called daoyin (literally, " guiding and pulling "), which is sometimes referred to in modern times as Chinese yoga. Guiding and pulling was a broad term, referring to a host of stretching exercises, sometimes quite vigorous and dynamic in tempo, or sometimes simple meditative breathing practices to circulate the breath, or qi, around the body. Chinese sources from this period predominantly do not refer to massaging other people, but to self-massage and stretching exercises contiguous with breathing and visualization practices. A simple, practicable technique that was easy to perform, massage required no special training or technical materials. Massage practices were more accessible to the wider public than theory-bound medical arts, and circulated among a broad repertoire of methods for nourishing vitality that enabled simple self-treatment. Massage treatments for specific ailments appear as early as the second century BCE, in the Writings on Pulling. This text was excavated from a tomb in Mawangdui (in modern-day Hunan Province) which also contained the Guiding and Pulling Chart, a color chart portraying 44 different exercises. Daoyin exercises later appear in Chinese medical literature, in biographies of transcendents, Buddhist texts, and in nourishing vitality texts favoured by the elite as well as by debaters and intellectuals of the early medieval " Mystery School " philosophical movement. The eighteen exercises translated here are given the titles " Massage techniques from India " and " Brahmanic techniques " when they first appear, in the medical encyclopedia, Prescriptions Worth a Thousand in Gold. Widely recognized as one of the major medical works of the Tang dynasty, by the fifteenth century it also came to be included in the Daoist Canon among other major medical works. Compiled by the polymath Sun Simiao (541/581-682), and submitted to the Tang court in 652, this work displays the great influence of Indian medical ideas, from Four Element theory, to a compassion-based medical ethics, to numerous foreign drugs and treatment methods. Sun's wide-ranging repertoire further includes local Chinese drug recipes, acupuncture and moxibustion formulas, meditation and incantations, and stretching and breathing exercises, as well as sexual cultivation. All eighteen passages from Sun's text are quoted in Tanba no Yasunori's Recipes at the Heart of Medicine, completed in 984. My endnotes below reflect variances between this version and Sun's original. Twelve of these exercises also appear elsewhere under another title, " Brahmanic Guiding and Pulling " in a text which records various other nourishing vitality methods, including guiding and pulling, breathing techniques, geomancy, and lucky days. These twelve exercises are quoted yet again in a text attributed to the name Daolin. It is unclear whether this refers to the stylename of the historical Buddhist monk Zhi Dun (314–366 CE), as has been suggested, given that this text is primarily a sex manual and Buddhist monks in China were usually supposed to be celibate.
Research Interests: Chinese Buddhism, Buddhist Studies, Ayurvedic Medicine, Chinese Medicine, Ayurveda (Sanskrit language and literature), and 14 moreAyurveda, Religion and medicine, Chinese medicine (History), Traditional Chinese Medicine, Ayurveda, traditional medicine, ethnobotany, Chinese and Classical Medicine, Chinese Medicine, Taoism, Buddhism, History of Chinese Medicine, Traditional East Asian medicine, Classical Chinese Medicine, Buddhist medicine, Basic Principles of Ayurveda, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), and Ancient Indian Medicine
This paper examines the therapeutic use of drugs and ritual as recorded in a 4th-century scripture and the ways different notions of destiny affected treatment. It also offers methodological considerations of the ways contemporary... more
This paper examines the therapeutic use of drugs and ritual as recorded in a 4th-century scripture and the ways different notions of destiny affected treatment. It also offers methodological considerations of the ways contemporary scholarship has separated medicine and religion as discrete fields in early imperial China, and proposes methods for closer engagement with these early materials. A standing theory in the field argues that because rituals of confession and therapeutic drugs were understood to operate on different principles, these two interventions were mutually exclusive. Confessional rituals relied on a moral accounting system and manipulated one’s “count” of allotted life, whereas drugs simply worked empirically, and therefore disrupted the ritual accounting system.
The author investigates this theory by reading the Zhen’gao 真誥 (DZ1016), as an ethnographic source, one of the best of the period. It was also an important source used by proponents of the argument outlined above. Comparison of different revelations indicates that, contrary to the above findings, drugs and ritual were used together over time to treat the same people with the same complaints in what appears to have been a regular protocol. The paper further describes an etiological theory in the text that connects a causal chain that crosses various domains, including ritual and drug therapy. This section of the paper concludes that the hard separation of religion and medicine imagined in earlier scholarship deserves to be reexamined on the basis of actor categories.
How did the protagonists of the Zhen’gao actually organize their knowledge in practice? Looking beyond theoretical models of disease and cure, this organization is visible in the ways social and institutional practice structured the flow and hierarchy of knowledge. Rather than distinguishing between the ritual and the empirical, the protagonists of the text placed much more emphasis on differentiating the esoteric from the exoteric, secret knowledge intended only for initiates versus that circulated to the laity. Very clear distinctions mark these as two different methods of transmission, treatment styles, medical cultures and notions of disease. A concluding methodological reflection argues that attention to the situatedness of knowledge is useful for tracing the emergence of stable systems, whether religious or medical. It argues that this method reveals a two-level notion of destiny as a critical distinguishing feature of Shangqing knowledge.
The author investigates this theory by reading the Zhen’gao 真誥 (DZ1016), as an ethnographic source, one of the best of the period. It was also an important source used by proponents of the argument outlined above. Comparison of different revelations indicates that, contrary to the above findings, drugs and ritual were used together over time to treat the same people with the same complaints in what appears to have been a regular protocol. The paper further describes an etiological theory in the text that connects a causal chain that crosses various domains, including ritual and drug therapy. This section of the paper concludes that the hard separation of religion and medicine imagined in earlier scholarship deserves to be reexamined on the basis of actor categories.
How did the protagonists of the Zhen’gao actually organize their knowledge in practice? Looking beyond theoretical models of disease and cure, this organization is visible in the ways social and institutional practice structured the flow and hierarchy of knowledge. Rather than distinguishing between the ritual and the empirical, the protagonists of the text placed much more emphasis on differentiating the esoteric from the exoteric, secret knowledge intended only for initiates versus that circulated to the laity. Very clear distinctions mark these as two different methods of transmission, treatment styles, medical cultures and notions of disease. A concluding methodological reflection argues that attention to the situatedness of knowledge is useful for tracing the emergence of stable systems, whether religious or medical. It argues that this method reveals a two-level notion of destiny as a critical distinguishing feature of Shangqing knowledge.
Research Interests: Practice theory, Chinese Studies, History of Medicine, Daoism, Chinese Religions, and 12 moreActor Network Theory, Chinese Medicine, History of Medicine in China, Religion and medicine, Daoist Alchemy, Daoism and Medicine, Daoist Healing, Social History of Medicine, Chinese history (History), Traditional Chinese Medicine, History of Science, Technology and Medicine, and Daoist Medicine
""This paper examines convergent discourses of cure, health and transcendence in fourth century Daoist scriptures. The therapeutic massages, inner awareness and visualisation practices described here are from a collection of revelations... more
""This paper examines convergent discourses of cure, health and transcendence in fourth century Daoist scriptures. The therapeutic massages, inner awareness and visualisation practices described here are from a collection of revelations which became the founding documents for Shangqing (Upper Clarity) Daoism, one of the most influential sects of its time. Although formal theories organised these practices so that salvation superseded curing, in practice they were used together. This blending was achieved through a series of textual features and synæsthesic practices intended to address existential and bodily crises simultaneously. This paper shows how therapeutic interests were fundamental to soteriology, and how salvation informed therapy, thus drawing attention to the entanglements of religion and medicine in early medieval China.""
Research Interests:
An overivew of the major literature on the history of Chinese medicine.
Research Interests:
In press, forthcoming 2023... Although Asian practices for health, healing and spiritual cultivation have survived today, they circulate in new forms, whether within a burgeoning global marketplace, in the imaginaries of national... more
In press, forthcoming 2023...
Although Asian practices for health, healing and spiritual cultivation have survived today, they circulate in new forms, whether within a burgeoning global marketplace, in the imaginaries of national health bureaus, as the focus of major scholarly grant initiatives, or as subjects of neurological study. These modern understandings are contoured by the European history of science and do not represent how they were mobilised in their originary times and places. Categories like ‘alternative’, ‘complementary’, and ‘wellness’ privilege medical authority and a distance from religion writ large, implying a distance between ‘medicine’ and ‘religion’ not reflected in the originary contexts of these practices.
Situating Medicine and Religion in Asia makes a critical intervention in the scholarship on East, South and Southeast Asia and the Himalayas. Case studies show how practices from divination and demonography, to anatomy, massage, plant medicine and homeopathy were situated within the contours of medicine and religion of their time, in contrast to modern formations of ‘medicine’ and' ‘religion’. The chapters follow a common structure that allows for easy comparison across a broad geographic, temporal and conceptual range, presenting a set of methodological tools for the study of medicine and religion. Taken together, they assemble empirical data about the construction of medicine and religion as social categories of practice, from which more general claims can be made. The volume thus makes a critical intervention in the histories of medicine, religion and science in the region, while providing readers with a set of methodological approaches for future study.
Although Asian practices for health, healing and spiritual cultivation have survived today, they circulate in new forms, whether within a burgeoning global marketplace, in the imaginaries of national health bureaus, as the focus of major scholarly grant initiatives, or as subjects of neurological study. These modern understandings are contoured by the European history of science and do not represent how they were mobilised in their originary times and places. Categories like ‘alternative’, ‘complementary’, and ‘wellness’ privilege medical authority and a distance from religion writ large, implying a distance between ‘medicine’ and ‘religion’ not reflected in the originary contexts of these practices.
Situating Medicine and Religion in Asia makes a critical intervention in the scholarship on East, South and Southeast Asia and the Himalayas. Case studies show how practices from divination and demonography, to anatomy, massage, plant medicine and homeopathy were situated within the contours of medicine and religion of their time, in contrast to modern formations of ‘medicine’ and' ‘religion’. The chapters follow a common structure that allows for easy comparison across a broad geographic, temporal and conceptual range, presenting a set of methodological tools for the study of medicine and religion. Taken together, they assemble empirical data about the construction of medicine and religion as social categories of practice, from which more general claims can be made. The volume thus makes a critical intervention in the histories of medicine, religion and science in the region, while providing readers with a set of methodological approaches for future study.
Research Interests: Cultural Studies, History of Medicine, Homeopathy, Chinese Medicine, Ayurveda (Sanskrit language and literature), and 12 moreReligion and medicine, Daoist Alchemy, Social History of Medicine, History of Colonial India, Religious Studies, Tibetan Medicine, Myanmar, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Medical History, Bengali Language & Literature, History of alchemy, and Post Colonial Theory
The Routledge Handbook of Chinese Medicine is an extensive, interdisciplinary guide to the nature of traditional medicine and healing in the Chinese cultural region, and its plural epistemologies. Established experts and the next... more
The Routledge Handbook of Chinese Medicine is an extensive, interdisciplinary guide to the nature of traditional medicine and healing in the Chinese cultural region, and its plural epistemologies. Established experts and the next generation of scholars interpret the ways in which Chinese medicine has been understood and portrayed from the beginning of the empire (third century BCE) to the globalisation of Chinese products and practices in the present day, taking in subjects from ancient medical writings to therapeutic movement, to talismans for healing and traditional medicines that have inspired global solutions to contemporary epidemics. The volume is divided into seven parts:
● Longue Durée and Formation of Institutions and Traditions
● Sickness and Healing
● Food and Sex
● Spiritual and Orthodox Religious Practices
● The World of Sinographic Medicine
● Wider Diasporas
● Negotiating Modernity
This handbook therefore introduces the broad range of ideas and techniques that comprise pre-modern medicine in China, and the historiographical and ethnographic approaches that have illuminated them. It will prove a useful resource to students and scholars of Chinese studies, and the history of medicine and anthropology. It will also be of interest to practitioners, patients, and specialists wishing to refresh their knowledge with the latest developments in the field.
● Longue Durée and Formation of Institutions and Traditions
● Sickness and Healing
● Food and Sex
● Spiritual and Orthodox Religious Practices
● The World of Sinographic Medicine
● Wider Diasporas
● Negotiating Modernity
This handbook therefore introduces the broad range of ideas and techniques that comprise pre-modern medicine in China, and the historiographical and ethnographic approaches that have illuminated them. It will prove a useful resource to students and scholars of Chinese studies, and the history of medicine and anthropology. It will also be of interest to practitioners, patients, and specialists wishing to refresh their knowledge with the latest developments in the field.
Research Interests: Cultural Studies, Medical Sociology, Asian Studies, Medical Anthropology, Chinese Studies, and 15 moreSocial and Cultural Anthropology, Traditional Medicine, Chinese Medicine, Medical Humanities, Asian History, East Asian Studies, Globalisation and Development, Chinese Language and Culture, China, Modern Chinese History, Medical Anthropology/ antropología médica, Chinese medicine (History), Chinese history (History), Traditional Chinese Medicine, and Medical History
Special issue of Asian Medicine with a focus on COVID-19 and epidemics in Asian Medicine. The issue is Open Access in response to the pandemic, and all the papers can be downloaded from the URL below or from the link in this page.... more
Special issue of Asian Medicine with a focus on COVID-19 and epidemics in Asian Medicine. The issue is Open Access in response to the pandemic, and all the papers can be downloaded from the URL below or from the link in this page.
https://brill.com/view/journals/asme/16/1/asme.16.issue-1.xml
Articles are both contemporary and historical, and discuss the following themes:
Early COVID pandemic in Wuhan and TCM responses-presenting the research studies done on herbal remedies and public health response.
Institutional difference in Traditional Korean medicine in Korea.
Responses in Tibetan communities in North America and nosological definitions amid global Sowa Rigpa research networks.
A literary reflection from an ICU ward in Singapore.
A preliminary history of Zoonotic Theory in China.
Epidemics in Seventeenth-Century Siam.
Buddist perceptions of and ritual responses to epidemic in early modern China, Japan and Tibet.
https://brill.com/view/journals/asme/16/1/asme.16.issue-1.xml
Articles are both contemporary and historical, and discuss the following themes:
Early COVID pandemic in Wuhan and TCM responses-presenting the research studies done on herbal remedies and public health response.
Institutional difference in Traditional Korean medicine in Korea.
Responses in Tibetan communities in North America and nosological definitions amid global Sowa Rigpa research networks.
A literary reflection from an ICU ward in Singapore.
A preliminary history of Zoonotic Theory in China.
Epidemics in Seventeenth-Century Siam.
Buddist perceptions of and ritual responses to epidemic in early modern China, Japan and Tibet.
Research Interests: Infectious disease epidemiology, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Global Health, Religion and medicine, Public Health, and 10 moreMedicine, Tibetan Medicine, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Medical History, Thai Medicine, Emerging Zoonotic Disease, Epidemiology and Public Health, Korean Medicine, Coronavirus COVID-19, and COVID-19 PANDEMIC
Palgrave Encyclopedia of the Health Humanities provides a critical resource for understanding and debating the interdisciplinary research and practices in the health humanities. A seminal and international volume for students, scholars,... more
Palgrave Encyclopedia of the Health Humanities provides a critical resource for understanding and debating the interdisciplinary research and practices in the health humanities. A seminal and international volume for students, scholars, and practitioners, this volume draws on the fields that link health and social care with the arts and humanities. The entries provide particular emphasis on the history of the field and the praxis, functions, and applications of the health humanities for public, international, and global health. Also explored are aspects of healthcare not previously considered in relation to a humanities perspective such as paramedical and allied health staff and informal carers. Suitable for undergraduates and graduates and scholars in the health humanities, humanities, arts, social sciences, public health, and medicine as well as health and social care practitioners, the major focus of the volume is to highlight the role of the health humanities in enriching the social, cultural, and phenomenological experience and understanding of illness, health, and wellbeing.
Michael Stanley-Baker serves as contributing editor for 56 entries.
Michael Stanley-Baker serves as contributing editor for 56 entries.
Research Interests:
Special Issue of East Asian Science Technology and Medicine, examining intersections of Medicine, Geography and Divination with Religion in early imperial China. Taking stock of how these were categorised by historical actors, the... more
Special Issue of East Asian Science Technology and Medicine, examining intersections of Medicine, Geography and Divination with Religion in early imperial China. Taking stock of how these were categorised by historical actors, the authors compare these to the categories of modern scholarship - science, medicine and religion - and how our modern notions skew our view of the past.
Follow the link where it says "File" above to read on JSTOR, or copy this into your browser: https://www.jstor.org/stable/e26892155 .
My article and introduction can be found in the "papers" section of my profile, or via these links:
https://www.academia.edu/41701182/Religion_and_Science_in_China_Moving_Beyond_the_Two_Cultures_Problem_
https://www.academia.edu/41701612/Daoing_Medicine_Practice_Theory_for_Considering_Religion_and_Medicine_in_Early_Imperial_China
Follow the link where it says "File" above to read on JSTOR, or copy this into your browser: https://www.jstor.org/stable/e26892155 .
My article and introduction can be found in the "papers" section of my profile, or via these links:
https://www.academia.edu/41701182/Religion_and_Science_in_China_Moving_Beyond_the_Two_Cultures_Problem_
https://www.academia.edu/41701612/Daoing_Medicine_Practice_Theory_for_Considering_Religion_and_Medicine_in_Early_Imperial_China
Research Interests:
The PNC 2019 Annual Conference and Joint Meetings is jointly hosted by Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and PNC, co-hosted and sponsored by Academia Sinica, Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative (ECAI), Ministry of Education, Taiwan... more
The PNC 2019 Annual Conference and Joint Meetings is jointly hosted by Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and PNC, co-hosted and sponsored by Academia Sinica, Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative (ECAI), Ministry of Education, Taiwan and Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD). PNC 2019 is technically sponsored by the IEEE Singapore Section. Proceedings will be submitted to the Xplore Digital Library.
Research Interests: Humanities Computing (Digital Humanities), Library Science, Digital Humanities, Library and Information Science, History of Library and Information Science, and 5 moreInformation Science & Library Management, Digital Arts and Humanities, Archaeology/Digital Humanities, Digital Environmental Humanities, and Digital Tools for Humanities
This system was planned and built by Professor Michael Stanley-Baker of Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, and is part of the "Drugs Across Asia project." The system collects 392 Chinese medical manuscripts from the Tang Dynasty... more
This system was planned and built by Professor Michael Stanley-Baker of Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, and is part of the "Drugs Across Asia project." The system collects 392 Chinese medical manuscripts from the Tang Dynasty to the Republic of China period. It contains a wealth of metadata, including electronic full-text transcriptions of the manuscripts, tagged information and detailed bibliographic data on the sources. Use of these has been generously authorized by Professor Liu Changhua 柳長華 of the China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences.
This system is technically supported by the Digital Humanities Research Center of National Taiwan University. It is released publicly with the context analysis system. This is currently the first edition. In addition to providing metadata, full-text browsing and full-text retrieval, it also provides multiple exploration features such as post-classification, tag analysis, and classification trees.
The potential to conduct research using systematic information represents a major shift in the current ability to study traditional medicine. Through post-classification analysis combined with rich metadata and tags, it is possible to track changing patterns such as authors, text types, and recipe styles across time and regions. Going beyond history to clinical application, future follow-up versions will link traditional drug names with online databases for medicinal chemistry and metabolic activity, as well as modern biodiversity distribution and historical ethnobotany. It is expected that these historical documents of traditional Chinese medicine can be used not only to benefit historical research but also for the discovery of new drugs, the development of natural products, or in traditional medicine research. In this way, by combining medical manuscript studies and modern data technology, this system may serve as a basis for an improved dialogue between recipe formulation principles and modern network pharmacology.
This system is technically supported by the Digital Humanities Research Center of National Taiwan University. It is released publicly with the context analysis system. This is currently the first edition. In addition to providing metadata, full-text browsing and full-text retrieval, it also provides multiple exploration features such as post-classification, tag analysis, and classification trees.
The potential to conduct research using systematic information represents a major shift in the current ability to study traditional medicine. Through post-classification analysis combined with rich metadata and tags, it is possible to track changing patterns such as authors, text types, and recipe styles across time and regions. Going beyond history to clinical application, future follow-up versions will link traditional drug names with online databases for medicinal chemistry and metabolic activity, as well as modern biodiversity distribution and historical ethnobotany. It is expected that these historical documents of traditional Chinese medicine can be used not only to benefit historical research but also for the discovery of new drugs, the development of natural products, or in traditional medicine research. In this way, by combining medical manuscript studies and modern data technology, this system may serve as a basis for an improved dialogue between recipe formulation principles and modern network pharmacology.
Research Interests:
The Ge xianweng zhouhou beiji fang 葛仙翁肘後備急⽅, or Transcendent Master Ge's Emergency-Preparedness Recipes to Keep Close at Hand, is a collection of hundreds of recipes assembled by the scholar-official, and alchemist Ge Hong 葛洪 (283-343).... more
The Ge xianweng zhouhou beiji fang 葛仙翁肘後備急⽅, or Transcendent Master Ge's Emergency-Preparedness Recipes to Keep Close at Hand, is a collection of hundreds of recipes assembled by the scholar-official, and alchemist Ge Hong 葛洪 (283-343). It is the most influential and largest surviving collection of medical recipes for emergency care and critical or acute diseases among Six Dynasty Daoist texts. Compiled by the author Ge Hong 葛洪, who was well-known for his other writings on transcendence and external alchemy, it is considered emblematic of the relationship between Daoism and Chinese medicine. It contains the earliest mention of "foot qi" zuqi ⾜氣, an important disease in medieval medical works (not to be confused with the modern term); the earliest description of smallpox in the world (wendu faban dayi 温毒發斑⼤疫), and more recently served as the inspiration to China's first Nobel Laureate, Tu Youyou 屠呦呦in her work of successfully extracting the anti-malarial substance artemenisin (qinghaosu 青蒿素) from the plant qinghao 青蒿 (Artemisia annua L.). This transcription comes from the Daoist Canon DZ1306 Hanfenlou 涵芬楼 edition, was transcribed by Monica Esposito's project and is hosted on the the Kanripo website at https://www.kanripo.org/text/KR5g0115/, which is managed by Christofer Wittern. The source files are located on Github at https://github.com/kanripo/KR5g0115. The Kanripo files were first marked up in MARKUS for drug terms, disease names and related vocabulary by Chang Chao-jan and Wu Ruei-Ming of Fu-jen University, and then was reviewed, edited and converted into DocuSky format by Xu Duoduo
許多多of Nanyang Technological University. The project was supervised by Dr. Michael Stanley-Baker 徐源 of Nanyang Technological University. Initially posted at Nanyang Technological University at https://doi.org/10.21979/N9/JU.
許多多of Nanyang Technological University. The project was supervised by Dr. Michael Stanley-Baker 徐源 of Nanyang Technological University. Initially posted at Nanyang Technological University at https://doi.org/10.21979/N9/JU.
Research Interests:
This corpus is the markup of the "Collated Annotations to the Materia Medica" edited by Tao Hongjing of the Liang dynasty. It uses DocuSky to build a cloud database for open use. The tags consist of 20 kinds of tagged attributes such as... more
This corpus is the markup of the "Collated Annotations to the Materia Medica" edited by Tao Hongjing of the Liang dynasty. It uses DocuSky to build a cloud database for open use. The tags consist of 20 kinds of tagged attributes such as drug name, drug function, disease terms, person's name, place of origin, natural environment, etc. Database functions include full-text search, browse, tagged classification, peronal names and places are tagged with linked ID, mapped visual display of drug origins, statistical analysis, visualisation of word clouds, and text export in multiple formats.
You can link to Nanyang Technological University "DR-NTU" through this complete file DOI, which contains the DocuXML file of the annotated collection of Materia Medica, the MARKUS file of the original mark, the vocabulary (EXCEL) file for the tags (the geographic tags are converted into a GIS code). Geotagging was analyzed and separated into three different visualizations of the historical text layers in the work.
本庫是將梁陶弘景所編之《本草經集注》進行文本標記，並運用DocuSky建置雲端資料庫，提供開放利用。標記包含有藥物名稱、藥物屬性、病症、人名、產地地名、生長環境…等計二十種標籤屬性。資料庫功能有檢索、瀏覽、全文檢索、標記後分類、人名地名ID連結、統計分析、視覺化觀察，及文本多元格式匯出。
可透過此完整檔DOI連結南洋理工大學《DR-NTU》，內含本草經集注DocuXML檔、原標記的MARKUS檔、標記用的詞彙(EXCEL)檔（地理標記被轉成GIS碼），及含有地理標記被分析與文獻的三個不同的數據視覺化圖層。
You can link to Nanyang Technological University "DR-NTU" through this complete file DOI, which contains the DocuXML file of the annotated collection of Materia Medica, the MARKUS file of the original mark, the vocabulary (EXCEL) file for the tags (the geographic tags are converted into a GIS code). Geotagging was analyzed and separated into three different visualizations of the historical text layers in the work.
本庫是將梁陶弘景所編之《本草經集注》進行文本標記，並運用DocuSky建置雲端資料庫，提供開放利用。標記包含有藥物名稱、藥物屬性、病症、人名、產地地名、生長環境…等計二十種標籤屬性。資料庫功能有檢索、瀏覽、全文檢索、標記後分類、人名地名ID連結、統計分析、視覺化觀察，及文本多元格式匯出。
可透過此完整檔DOI連結南洋理工大學《DR-NTU》，內含本草經集注DocuXML檔、原標記的MARKUS檔、標記用的詞彙(EXCEL)檔（地理標記被轉成GIS碼），及含有地理標記被分析與文獻的三個不同的數據視覺化圖層。
Research Interests:
Overview of Drugs Across Eurasia project - project goals and methods.
Research Interests: History of Science and Technology, Botany, Humanities Computing (Digital Humanities), Digital Humanities, Ethnobotany, and 13 moreHistory of Medicine, History of Science, Chinese Medicine, History Of Medicine In South Asia, Ethnopharmacology, Social History of Medicine, Chinese medicine (History), Traditional Chinese Medicine, History of Medicine in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, The History of Ancient and Medieval Pharmacy/materia Medica, History of Biological Sciences, History of Science and Medicine In Medieval and Renaissance Europe, and DocuSky
Full-text database of 3830 chapters (卷) of Buddhist, Daoist and medical sources up to 589, the end of the Six Dynasties 六朝 period in China. This was the most intense period of medical pluralism and syncretism in Chinese history. Search... more
Full-text database of 3830 chapters (卷) of Buddhist, Daoist and medical sources up to 589, the end of the Six Dynasties 六朝 period in China. This was the most intense period of medical pluralism and syncretism in Chinese history.
Search results corpus can be filtered (後分類) according to bibliographic criteria, like date range, sect, genre, time, and geographic site of production (the latter can be visualised on the search results page against dynastic maps). Metadata is based on traditional Buddhist ascriptions, as in CBETA, Kristofer Schipper's Daoist Canon 道藏統考, and a curated set of medical texts.
Daoist and Buddhist texts come from Https://Kanripo.org, medical texts from a variety of sources, including rare unpublished transcriptions of Han and pre-Han excavated texts.
The corpus can be examined in full-text through the Docusky Viewer at
http://docusky.org.tw/DocuSky/webApi/webpage-open-3in1.php?db=DaoBudMed6D&corpus=%5BALL%5D&queryBase=.all&spType=search&snippets=auto
You can perform term distribution analysis using TermStatsTools at:
http://docusky.org.tw/DocuSky/docuTools/TagStatsTool/index.html
Instructions for term distribution analysis, as well as the Daoist and Buddhist metadata, can be downloaded from here:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/w4ugdyyttyx5dha/AABVQoQR9QNHsSB7iZOGrgrya?dl=1
For more information about the project and links to blogs, papers and datasets, see
https://michaelstanley-baker.com/digital-humanities/
Search results corpus can be filtered (後分類) according to bibliographic criteria, like date range, sect, genre, time, and geographic site of production (the latter can be visualised on the search results page against dynastic maps). Metadata is based on traditional Buddhist ascriptions, as in CBETA, Kristofer Schipper's Daoist Canon 道藏統考, and a curated set of medical texts.
Daoist and Buddhist texts come from Https://Kanripo.org, medical texts from a variety of sources, including rare unpublished transcriptions of Han and pre-Han excavated texts.
The corpus can be examined in full-text through the Docusky Viewer at
http://docusky.org.tw/DocuSky/webApi/webpage-open-3in1.php?db=DaoBudMed6D&corpus=%5BALL%5D&queryBase=.all&spType=search&snippets=auto
You can perform term distribution analysis using TermStatsTools at:
http://docusky.org.tw/DocuSky/docuTools/TagStatsTool/index.html
Instructions for term distribution analysis, as well as the Daoist and Buddhist metadata, can be downloaded from here:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/w4ugdyyttyx5dha/AABVQoQR9QNHsSB7iZOGrgrya?dl=1
For more information about the project and links to blogs, papers and datasets, see
https://michaelstanley-baker.com/digital-humanities/
Research Interests: Buddhism, Historical Geography, Humanities Computing (Digital Humanities), Digital Humanities, History of Medicine, and 15 moreDaoism, Buddhist Studies, Chinese Medicine, History of Medicine in China, Cultural Historical Geography, Daoism and Medicine, Social History of Medicine, Chinese medicine (History), History of Medicine and the Body, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Medical History, History of Science, Technology and Medicine, Digital Humanites, Daoist studies, and History of Ancient Medicine
In order to track the emergence of drug lore in religious communities in early medieval China, this Digital Humanities project produces new digital tools for analysing the Daoist and Buddhist Canons. Big term list searches will be... more
In order to track the emergence of drug lore in religious communities in early medieval China, this Digital Humanities project produces new digital tools for analysing the Daoist and Buddhist Canons. Big term list searches will be performed across Six Dynasties (220-589) corpuses, identifying hits by authors, date, genre and geographic location of production. Detailed analyses of texts will be speeded up with semi-automatic text marking. Results can be plotted on time-space maps using GIS points from CHGIS, resulting in broad-scale depictions of drug lore in the canon.
Research Interests: Buddhism, Humanities Computing (Digital Humanities), Digital Humanities, Daoism, Chinese Buddhism, and 22 moreBuddhist Studies, Chinese Medicine, Daoism and Medicine, Daoist Healing, Chinese medicine (History), Chinese Buddhism (Buddhist Studies), Traditional Chinese Medicine, Chinese Medical History, early Buddhism, Chinese Medicine, Taoism, Buddhism, Chinese medicine, Sinology, Medieval Chinese Culture, Taoism, Chinese Medicine, History of Chinese Medicine, Classical Chinese Medicine, Buddhist medicine, Han dynasty culture, Confucian apocrypha (chenwei), formation of medieval Daoism, Digital Humanites, Daoist studies, Digital Humaniities, Daoist Medicine, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), and Tradicional Chinese Medicine
This thesis contains a critical addition and annotated translation of an eighth century Chinese health manual, as well as a philological history of all materials cited in it. The diversity of these sources provides a bird’s eye view into... more
This thesis contains a critical addition and annotated translation of an eighth century Chinese health manual, as well as a philological history of all materials cited in it. The diversity of these sources provides a bird’s eye view into a broad array of earlier material, mainly from the Han to the Eastern Jin periods, enabling readers to get a sense of its scope and relationship to the larger fields of Daoist and medical literature.
It also problematizes the modern distinctions between Chinese medicine, philosophy and religion as discrete genres both in modern scholarship and imperial histories. It suggest phenomenology and embodiment studies as better critical tools for explaining their interrelations. Cosmological and spiritual mappings of inner nature and the body found in all three genres give rise to the fluidity of yangsheng 養生(cultivating life) practices across these categorical boundaries.
This thesis also contains reflections on the distinction in modern scholarly literature between yangsheng and xian 仙 as one between “longevity” and “immortality.” Although there is a loose and general sense of difference between the two (which is rarely made explicit in the literature), it is not made along lines of “never dying” as the immortality translation implies. It is better understood as one between normative claims and those which describe an “other” kind of reality, better translated as “transcendence.”
It also problematizes the modern distinctions between Chinese medicine, philosophy and religion as discrete genres both in modern scholarship and imperial histories. It suggest phenomenology and embodiment studies as better critical tools for explaining their interrelations. Cosmological and spiritual mappings of inner nature and the body found in all three genres give rise to the fluidity of yangsheng 養生(cultivating life) practices across these categorical boundaries.
This thesis also contains reflections on the distinction in modern scholarly literature between yangsheng and xian 仙 as one between “longevity” and “immortality.” Although there is a loose and general sense of difference between the two (which is rarely made explicit in the literature), it is not made along lines of “never dying” as the immortality translation implies. It is better understood as one between normative claims and those which describe an “other” kind of reality, better translated as “transcendence.”
This dissertation examines the salvific and therapeutic practices of medieval Chinese Daoist organisations. Drawing on the most detailed ethnographic record of medical treatment in early medieval China, the Zhen’gao 真誥 [Declarations of... more
This dissertation examines the salvific and therapeutic practices of medieval Chinese
Daoist organisations. Drawing on the most detailed ethnographic record of medical
treatment in early medieval China, the Zhen’gao 真誥 [Declarations of the Perfected], this study examines the work of Yang Xi and the Xus of Jiankang, early members of the Shangqing (Highest Clarity) School. It argues that many of the family’s activities were ultimately concerned with promoting health and curing disease: from tomb-quelling, to divination, to reports on the affairs of deceased relatives. Three main practices form the foci of the analysis: an account of how acupuncture, massage and drugs were entangled with notions of salvation, and how related therapeutic concepts shaped some of the ultimate goals of Shangqing practice. The two research questions addressed are a) how did Shangqing practices function to both cure disease and to grant salvation, and what implications does this question have for modern histories that address religion and medicine as discrete enterprises?
By situating the formation of the Shangqing repertoire within the broader context of
the religio-medical market, this study maintains that therapeutic competition had formative effects on Chinese religions generally. The artificial and modern division of Medicine and Religion emerge as modern categories with limited value for texturing a history of the healing arts of medieval China. In place of this epistemological cast, this study suggests attention to practice repertoires and the formation of thought-styles as a methodology.
Comparing ‘religious’ and ‘medical’ actors in this way allows the uneven contours of local
social, geographic and epidemiological conditions to more readily be taken into account in the formation of sectarian identities.
Daoist organisations. Drawing on the most detailed ethnographic record of medical
treatment in early medieval China, the Zhen’gao 真誥 [Declarations of the Perfected], this study examines the work of Yang Xi and the Xus of Jiankang, early members of the Shangqing (Highest Clarity) School. It argues that many of the family’s activities were ultimately concerned with promoting health and curing disease: from tomb-quelling, to divination, to reports on the affairs of deceased relatives. Three main practices form the foci of the analysis: an account of how acupuncture, massage and drugs were entangled with notions of salvation, and how related therapeutic concepts shaped some of the ultimate goals of Shangqing practice. The two research questions addressed are a) how did Shangqing practices function to both cure disease and to grant salvation, and what implications does this question have for modern histories that address religion and medicine as discrete enterprises?
By situating the formation of the Shangqing repertoire within the broader context of
the religio-medical market, this study maintains that therapeutic competition had formative effects on Chinese religions generally. The artificial and modern division of Medicine and Religion emerge as modern categories with limited value for texturing a history of the healing arts of medieval China. In place of this epistemological cast, this study suggests attention to practice repertoires and the formation of thought-styles as a methodology.
Comparing ‘religious’ and ‘medical’ actors in this way allows the uneven contours of local
social, geographic and epidemiological conditions to more readily be taken into account in the formation of sectarian identities.
Research Interests: Religion, Chinese Studies, Daoism, Chinese Religions, Daoist Monasticism, and 25 moreHistory of Science, Chinese Medicine, Chinese Language and Culture, Religion and medicine, China, Daoism and Medicine, Daoist Healing, Chinese medicine (History), Religion and Medicine (Anthropology), Religious Studies, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Taoism, Chinese Medicine, Taoism, Buddhism, Taoism, Chinese Medicine, Chinese Herbal Medicine, History of Chinese Medicine, Classical Chinese Medicine, Daoist studies, Chinese Religion, Chinese religion: Daoism, Daoist Medicine, History of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Medicine and Religion, Chinese Religions and Culture, and Shangqing Daoism
Research Interests: Daoism, Chinese Religions, Chinese Medicine, Religion and medicine, Daoism and Medicine, and 9 moreTaoism (History), Religion and Medicine (Anthropology), Traditional Chinese Medicine, Taoism, Chinese Medicine, Taoism, Buddhism, Chinese medicine, Sinology, Medieval Chinese Culture, Taoism, Chinese Medicine, History of Chinese Medicine, and traditional Chinese medicine (TCM)
Research Interests: History of Science and Technology, History of Medicine, Daoism, History of Science, Chinese Medicine, and 8 moreReligion and medicine, STS (Anthropology), Daoism and Medicine, History of Planning, Social History of Medicine, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Social and Cultural History of Medicine, and Chinese History of Science
Learning Objective: This is a thematic survey in the history of science and technology. Students are expected to explore diverse historical problems in science and technology in the global and local contexts. Through this course, students... more
Learning Objective: This is a thematic survey in the history of science and technology. Students are expected to explore diverse historical problems in science and technology in the global and local contexts. Through this course, students will be able to understand the importance of science and technology in creating modernity. They are also expected to learn how science and technology are located in the cultural landscape of our society, which shapes and is shaped by knowledge and practice in laboratories, factories, and fields. Students will thus find that science and technology are closely associated with what we do not usually think in related terms, such as religion, political ideologies, morality, gender, entertainment, and even magic.
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Research Interests:
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A review of Embodying the Way: Bio-spiritual Practices and Ritual Theories in Early and Medieval China, by Ori Tavor.
Follow link above to review.
Follow link above to review.
A review of the Chinese Medical dictionary for the Huangdi Neijing. Written for an educated popular audience, much of the review is geared towards explaining the uses of a concordance dictionary. Some discussion of the digital elements of... more
A review of the Chinese Medical dictionary for the Huangdi Neijing. Written for an educated popular audience, much of the review is geared towards explaining the uses of a concordance dictionary. Some discussion of the digital elements of the publication at the end.
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A review of Gai Jianmin's book Daojiao yixue 道教醫學. While acknowledging the breadth of material covered, I offer critiques about the conceptualization of the project. However, rather than this being a critique simply from the standpoint of... more
A review of Gai Jianmin's book Daojiao yixue 道教醫學. While acknowledging the breadth of material covered, I offer critiques about the conceptualization of the project. However, rather than this being a critique simply from the standpoint of Western epistemological history, I point out that many of the underlying concerns of the book rise from cultural drivers in the contemporary Chinese intellectual climate: the drive to legitimate religion through science, for example. I point out some elements of Daoism that this overlooks, and warn against the potential for gutting the religion of its earlier meanings through over-modernisation.
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Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Drugs, be they plant, animal or mineral, were important objects for trade, cure and even spiritual salvation throughout Chinese history even until today. This project trials a method for data-mining information about drug names,... more
Drugs, be they plant, animal or mineral, were important objects for trade, cure and even spiritual salvation throughout Chinese history even until today. This project trials a method for data-mining information about drug names, functions and geographic locations across heterogeneous sources
Research Interests: Buddhism, Digital Humanities, Daoism, Sinology, Buddhist Studies, and 16 moreChinese Medicine, Daoist Healing, Manuscripts (Medieval Studies), Traditional Chinese Medicine, Medical History, Medieval Medicine, History of Pharmacology, Chinese Medicine, Taoism, Buddhism, Medieval Medical History, Medieval Medicine and Herbals, Chinese medicine, Sinology, Medieval Chinese Culture, Chinese Herbal Medicine, Daoist studies, Daoist Medicine, Taoist Medicine, and Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
Atractylodes is prescribed for both salvation and cure in early Daoist scripture.
Research Interests: Daoism, Chinese Religions, Religion and medicine, Daoism and Medicine, Daoist Healing, and 10 moreHealing and Religion, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Medical History, Chinese and Classical Medicine, Healing with herbs and meditation, Chinese Medicine, Taoism, Buddhism, Chinese Herbal Medicine, History of Chinese Medicine, Daoist studies, and Daoist Medicine
A review of the Drugs Across Asia digital project by Liu Yan of SUNY Buffalo... I am not a co-author, Liu Yan is sole author. The proliferation of online databases and digital tools in recent decades has offered exciting opportunities... more
A review of the Drugs Across Asia digital project by Liu Yan of SUNY Buffalo... I am not a co-author, Liu Yan is sole author.
The proliferation of online databases and digital tools in recent decades has offered exciting opportunities for historians of science to perform large-scale textual analysis and identify new questions. The use of these databases, however, takes time and effort, as one is often overwhelmed
by the massive amounts of information yielded by keyword searches. To facilitate scholarly inquiries, it is necessary to have platforms that provide historical and philological tools that allow for targeted investigation of a sea of data. The digital project Drugs across Asia, led by Michael Stanley-Baker with the help of a group of collaborators, has created an excellent model for this type of analysis that will be useful for historians of medicine in Asia and beyond.
The proliferation of online databases and digital tools in recent decades has offered exciting opportunities for historians of science to perform large-scale textual analysis and identify new questions. The use of these databases, however, takes time and effort, as one is often overwhelmed
by the massive amounts of information yielded by keyword searches. To facilitate scholarly inquiries, it is necessary to have platforms that provide historical and philological tools that allow for targeted investigation of a sea of data. The digital project Drugs across Asia, led by Michael Stanley-Baker with the help of a group of collaborators, has created an excellent model for this type of analysis that will be useful for historians of medicine in Asia and beyond.
Research Interests: History of Science and Technology, Humanities Computing (Digital Humanities), Digital Humanities, Ethnobotany, Historical GIS, and 9 moreHistory of Science, Chinese Medicine, Ethnopharmacology, Geo-spatial analysis with GIS and GPS, Chinese medicine (History), Chinese history (History), Traditional Chinese Medicine, Medical History, and Classical Chinese Intellectual History
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Chinese households under lockdown have lacked food, company, and access to medical care. But they’ve had an almost endless supply of a traditional Chinese medicine treatment called Lianhua Qingwen, made by Yiling Pharmaceuticals. Chinese... more
Chinese households under lockdown have lacked food, company, and access to medical care. But they’ve had an almost endless supply of a traditional Chinese medicine treatment called Lianhua Qingwen, made by Yiling Pharmaceuticals. Chinese students abroad even have this drug delivered to their doorsteps in healthcare packages, and demand for it among diaspora communities has seen panic-buying and hugely inflated prices. In this episode, we explore why the Chinese state has invested huge sums in promoting such traditional remedies that have not been subject to rigorous clinical testing. To unpack the history and the politics, Louisa and Graeme are joined by Michael Stanley-Baker, historian of Chinese medicine and religion at Nanyang Technological University and Altman Yuzhu Peng, researcher of intercultural communications at the University of Warwick.
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Research Interests:
This workshop brings together leading experts in the history of medicine and in digital humanities, to develop a digital corpus of sources for the history of medicine from around the world, in Chinese, Sanskrit, Arabic, Hebrew, Greek and... more
This workshop brings together leading experts in the history of medicine and in digital humanities, to develop a digital corpus of sources for the history of medicine from around the world, in Chinese, Sanskrit, Arabic, Hebrew, Greek and Latin.
Research Interests: Humanities Computing (Digital Humanities), Digital Humanities, History of Medicine, Chinese Medicine, Ayurveda (Sanskrit language and literature), and 12 moreEurasia, Ayurveda, Social History of Medicine, History of Medicine and the Body, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Medical History, History of Medicine in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, Roman Medicine, Herbal & Unani Medicines, The History of Ancient and Medieval Pharmacy/materia Medica, Ancient Greek Medicine, and Medieval Jewish-Islamic science (Medicine); medieval Arabic-Hebrew medical terminology
This workshop is the substance for a forthcoming edited volume on Religion and Medicine Across Asia. This workshop brought together specialists in the intersection of religion and medicine in the Himalayas and East, South, and Southeast... more
This workshop is the substance for a forthcoming edited volume on Religion and Medicine Across Asia.
This workshop brought together specialists in the intersection of religion and medicine in the Himalayas and East, South, and Southeast Asia, from the classical to the contemporary. We will examine what work has been done by the terms medicine/religion, or related binaries such as medicine/healing or classical/vernacular. What is clarified or distorted when these categories are mapped onto other languages, periods and regions? How do scholars and cultural actors alike produce " medicine " and " religion " as fields and as methods?
This workshop brought together specialists in the intersection of religion and medicine in the Himalayas and East, South, and Southeast Asia, from the classical to the contemporary. We will examine what work has been done by the terms medicine/religion, or related binaries such as medicine/healing or classical/vernacular. What is clarified or distorted when these categories are mapped onto other languages, periods and regions? How do scholars and cultural actors alike produce " medicine " and " religion " as fields and as methods?
Research Interests: Asian Studies, Southeast Asian Studies, History of Medicine, Tibetan Studies, South Asian Studies, and 19 moreHistory of Science, Ayurvedic Medicine, Chinese Medicine, History Of Medicine In South Asia, Asian History, South Asian History, East Asian Studies, Ayurveda, History of Medicine in China, Tibetan Buddhism, Social History of Medicine, Southeast Asian history, History of Medicine and the Body, Tibetan Medicine, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Social and Cultural History of Medicine, History of Medicine in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, Tibetan History, and History of Science and Medicine In Medieval and Renaissance Europe
Research Interests: Southeast Asian Studies, History of Medicine, History Of Medicine In South Asia, Southeast Asia, East Asian Studies, and 9 moreSocial History of Medicine, Southeast Asian Politics, Southeast Asian history, Medical History, Post colonial studies, History of Pharmacology, Colonial Studies, Traditional East Asian medicine, and History of pharmacy
Asian Medicines: Encounters, Translations and Transformations Asian medicines are engaged in complex global networks of actors: conservators who watch the changing supplies of wild plants in Asian mountains, medical botanists who study... more
Asian Medicines: Encounters, Translations and Transformations
Asian medicines are engaged in complex global networks of actors: conservators who watch the changing supplies of wild plants in Asian mountains, medical botanists who study the substitution practices of collectors and marketers in Asia, policy makers who control or prevent the entry of drugs into European countries, corporations who seek to exploit drugs based on Asian medical knowledge, professional associations who seek to regulate Asian medical practice. ICTAMs VII and VIII both took place in Asia (2009 in Bhutan, 2013 in Korea). The European location of ICTAM IX will allow us to take stock of the current state of Asian medicine and to examine the global flows of medical knowledge, practice and materials from a different but equally significant vantage point.
Traditional Asian medicines play a significant role in improving the wellbeing of people worldwide, both as a health care system in their own right, and as a resource for bio-discovery projects. Their applications will only grow, and to reach a full understanding of traditional Asian medicine, it is crucial to integrate professionals from many disciplines, including medical anthropologists, traditional medicine practitioners, clinical trial specialists, ethnobotanists, ethnopharmacologists, ethnopharmacognosists, ethnochemists, herbalists, businessmen, historians, economists, political scientists, conservationists, botanists, translators and more. ICTAM IX will bring together these professionals to share their experience, findings and knowledge, and work out appropriate strategies and networking to enhance research on traditional medicines.
Asian medicines are engaged in complex global networks of actors: conservators who watch the changing supplies of wild plants in Asian mountains, medical botanists who study the substitution practices of collectors and marketers in Asia, policy makers who control or prevent the entry of drugs into European countries, corporations who seek to exploit drugs based on Asian medical knowledge, professional associations who seek to regulate Asian medical practice. ICTAMs VII and VIII both took place in Asia (2009 in Bhutan, 2013 in Korea). The European location of ICTAM IX will allow us to take stock of the current state of Asian medicine and to examine the global flows of medical knowledge, practice and materials from a different but equally significant vantage point.
Traditional Asian medicines play a significant role in improving the wellbeing of people worldwide, both as a health care system in their own right, and as a resource for bio-discovery projects. Their applications will only grow, and to reach a full understanding of traditional Asian medicine, it is crucial to integrate professionals from many disciplines, including medical anthropologists, traditional medicine practitioners, clinical trial specialists, ethnobotanists, ethnopharmacologists, ethnopharmacognosists, ethnochemists, herbalists, businessmen, historians, economists, political scientists, conservationists, botanists, translators and more. ICTAM IX will bring together these professionals to share their experience, findings and knowledge, and work out appropriate strategies and networking to enhance research on traditional medicines.
Research Interests: Medical Anthropology, Ethnobotany, Integrative Ayurveda, Chinese Medicine, Ayurveda (Sanskrit language and literature), and 36 moreCritical Medical Anthropology, Ayurveda, Ethnobotany in South Asia, History of Unani Medicine, Chinese medicine (History), Tibetan Medicine, East Asian medicine, Medical Anthropology, Social Anthropology applied to health and sickness, Medical Sociology / Anthropology, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Medical History, Ayurveda, traditional medicine, ethnobotany, Clinical trial on Ayurveda medicine, UNANI MEDICINE, World Health Organisation, Ethnobotany and medicinal herbs of Himalaya, Tibetan medicine, Tibetan materia medica, Tibetan traditional plant knowledge., Herbal & Unani Medicines, Ethnobotany, Ethnobiology, Ethnoecology, Chinese Medicine, Taoism, Buddhism, ETHNOBOTANY OF SOME GRASSES OF WEST BENGAL (INDIA), Historical ethnobotany, .Medical Anthropology, Tibetan medicine, Buddhisim, medical anthropology and public health, Medical Anthropology, History of Medicine, Tibetan Studies, Traditional East Asian medicine, Researches in Fundamentals of Ayurveda, Basic Principles of Ayurveda, Ayurveda and Tamil Siddha Medicine, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), Asian Medicine, Japanese Medicine, South Asian Medicine, History of Asian Medicine, Kampo, and History of Medical Technology
This workshop brings together specialists working on the intersection of religion and medicine in East, South, and Southeast Asia and the Himalayas. We will ask what work has been done by the terms medicine/religion, or related binaries... more
This workshop brings together specialists working on the intersection of religion and medicine in East, South, and Southeast Asia and the Himalayas.
We will ask what work has been done by the terms medicine/religion, or related binaries such as medicine/healing or classical/vernacular. What is clarified or distorted when they are mapped onto other languages, periods and regions? We will explore commonalities across these regions and across time, working from the classical to the contemporary.
Taking stock of recent gains in the field, we will discuss remaining areas for study, and compare and refine the tools and terms used in that endeavour, reflecting on how scholars and cultural actors alike, produce “medicine” and “religion” as fields. Participants have been invited to addressing the following areas:
1. Historiography: How the religion/medicine question has been framed by different academic communities.
2. Materials: What primary sources or archives are available for the given historical periods and/or cultural contexts, and how these afford different kinds of analysis of the question.
3. Means: What moments, encounters, processes, practices, and relationships produce or reveal significant (re)structurings of medicine and religion.
We will ask what work has been done by the terms medicine/religion, or related binaries such as medicine/healing or classical/vernacular. What is clarified or distorted when they are mapped onto other languages, periods and regions? We will explore commonalities across these regions and across time, working from the classical to the contemporary.
Taking stock of recent gains in the field, we will discuss remaining areas for study, and compare and refine the tools and terms used in that endeavour, reflecting on how scholars and cultural actors alike, produce “medicine” and “religion” as fields. Participants have been invited to addressing the following areas:
1. Historiography: How the religion/medicine question has been framed by different academic communities.
2. Materials: What primary sources or archives are available for the given historical periods and/or cultural contexts, and how these afford different kinds of analysis of the question.
3. Means: What moments, encounters, processes, practices, and relationships produce or reveal significant (re)structurings of medicine and religion.
What are the boundaries that distinguish the living from the non-living? How is life itself—and the properties that are perceived as shared by all living things—best understood, manipulated, and used? Life seems to be one of the most... more
What are the boundaries that distinguish the living from the non-living? How is life itself—and the properties that are perceived as shared by all living things—best understood, manipulated, and used? Life seems to be one of the most enduring self-evident categories—it appears obvious and timeless. And yet, the distinctly contingent features of life (nonhuman as well as human) have increasingly come to draw the attention of anthropologists, sociologists, historians of science, and critical theorists. Scholarly engagement with the politics of life has become fundamental to debates concerning global issues ranging from copyrights to climate change, from artificial intelligence to animal rights, from abortion to euthanasia. This workshop simultaneously draws upon and speaks to these discussions, and in doing so situates the theme of “life” as a central problematic within the history of knowledge. Thus, rather than internalizing conceptions about life as a priori and given, this workshop inquires into the multiple and varied histories of efforts to understand, delimit, and master life. It focuses on the surprises, exclusions, and conflicts generated by the diverse historical processes which have shaped life as a ready made phenomenon at distinct moments in time and space.
Research Interests:
http://114.108.177.141/sub07/ictam_about.html
BEYOND INTEGRATION: REFLECTIONS ON ASIAN MEDICINES IN THE 21st CENTURY
BEYOND INTEGRATION: REFLECTIONS ON ASIAN MEDICINES IN THE 21st CENTURY
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Thursday 19th and Friday 20th June 2008
Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine Centre at UCL
Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine Centre at UCL
Research Interests:
Instead of implementing a universal policy on AI in education, our history department drafted a document on AI at present - a working document which can be adapted as the state of AI changes. Faculty can then refer students to this when... more
Instead of implementing a universal policy on AI in education, our history department drafted a document on AI at present - a working document which can be adapted as the state of AI changes. Faculty can then refer students to this when discussing their policies about AI for their own courses. I wrote this working document as a base text for the department to edit as they see fit. Please make any comments you feel would benefit us and other readers.