Neurology in the People’s Republic of China – An Update

Neurology, 2015

Go to Neurology.org for full disclosures. Funding information and disclosures deemed relevant by the authors, if any, are provided at the end of the article.

In the health care professions today, research guides best clinical practice. Yet, the methodological constraints required by the two main branches of research into Chinese medicine-bio-scientific and socio-historical-rarely assist Chinese medicine students, practitioners, or clinical researchers with treatment and practice issues. A great deal of bio-scientific research assumes that it must be possible to utilise and test Chinese medicine from within a biomedical framework. However, by isolating therapeutic techniques and substances and standardising treatment protocols, bio-scientific research removes Chinese medicine's inbuilt flexibility and responsiveness to clinical instances and changes. While researchers in the historical and social sciences can reveal the sophisticated discourses built around Chinese medicine's distinctive approach to knowing the world and the body-person, they normally do not discuss the implications of their work for contemporary clinical practice. The paper advocates a synthetic approach using multidisciplinary sources within and adjacent to the field of Chinese medicine. Multidisciplinary researchers contest the simplified and biomedicalised version of Chinese medicine generally available in English speaking countries today. They can assist English speakers to approach Chinese medicine's traditional perspectives, demonstrate their relevance for contemporary clinical practice and help restore the traditional connectedness between Chinese medicine's theoretical concepts and its treatment methods.

Routledge eBooks, 2022

This article reproduces an exchange between academics and practitioners at the Sixth International Congress on Traditional Asian Medicine (ICTAM VI) meeting in Austin about how the history of Chinese medicine could be more meaningful, interesting, and valuable to clinicians. It provides a brief history of exchanges, the panel proposal, the abstracts of the panelists, an edited transcript of the conversation, and some concluding remarks from the participants. As more and more practitioners of Chinese medicine outside of China spend time in China, learn Chinese, become culturally and linguistically bilingual or multilingual, they seek more knowledge about what they practise than they can get in current publications in English or other European languages. The panel and this article are intended to encourage further exchange, conversations, and cooperation that will lead to new histories of Chinese medicine relevant for practitioners as much as for other academics.

Chinese Journal of Integrative Medicine, 2013

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 2014

Asian Medicine, 2016

This course surveys Chinese medical history from antiquity to the present. It starts with a look at Chinese medicine in the contemporary world, exploring its unique features, diverse practices, and debated efficacy. It then goes back to history, studying the foundational ideas in Chinese medicine and their evolution over time. Particular attention will be directed to the perception of illness, the body, and medicinal substances. Furthermore, it explores the diverse and miscellaneous practices of Chinese medicine in society through the lens of religious healing, state regulation, medical practitioners, gender and sexuality, and its interplay with the world. Finally, it examines in the more recent past how Chinese medicine interacted with Western medicine and how it reinvented itself during this contested process. Overall, this course seeks to not only enrich our understanding of Chinese medicine in the past, but also utilize historical knowledge to illuminate our ways of living today.