"Feeling lighter": Why the patient's treatment evaluation matters to the health scientist.

"Feeling lighter" is a cross-culturally found subjective patient experience, but it may well contain a comment on intersubjectively recognisable physical, neuro-chemical and bio-electro-magnetic processes that natural scientific research can identify. The health scientist is advised to take the patient's experiences seriuosly, and regard them as a possible source of for future research topics.

Ancient Chinese methods are remarkably effective for the preparation of artemisinin-rich extracts of Qing Hao with potent antimalarial activity.

Ancient Chinese herbal texts as far back as the 4th Century Zhou hou bei ji fang describe methods for the use of Qing Hao (Artemisia annua) for the treatment of intermittent fevers. Today, the A. annua constituent artemisinin is an important antimalarial drug and the herb itself is being grown and used locally for malaria treatment although this practice is controversial.

Diverse biologies and experiential continuities: did the ancient Chinese know that qinghao had anti-malarial properties?

This article treats Chinese medical theories and concepts as cultural constructs that arose as much from practice-oriented concerns as from socio-political negotiations within the medical field. It further explores the interface of the biological and cultural. It is often futile to investigate how Chinese medical descriptions relate to biological processes, because the local biologies that the Chinese physicians recognized in the past and continue to describe in the present, are contested by mainstream medicine, but recent bioscientific research on the anti-malarial properties of the Chinese medical drug qinghao opens up new avenues for the historian.

Chinese propriety medicines: an "alternative modernity?" The case of the anti-malarial substance artemisinin in East Africa.

This article discusses various modes of "modernizing" traditional Chinese medical drugs (zhongyao [image: see text]) and transforming them into so-called Chinese propriety medicines (zhongchengyao [image: see text]) that are flooding the current neoliberal wellness markets. This article argues that the chemical procedures used in the manufacture of Chinese propriety medicines are highly culture-specific and deserve being considered as instantiations of an "alternative modernity" (e.g.

A hybrid body technique: does the pulse diagnostic cun guan chi method have Chinese-Tibetan origins?

This article investigates the medieval origins of the main pulse diagnostic method in contemporary Chinese medicine, sometimes known as san bu (three sectors) method, which requires physicians to examine the mai (vessels, vessel movements or pulse) on the wrist at the three locations cun guan chi (inch, gate, foot). The article provides evidence to suggest that this body technique grew out of an earlier Chinese one, the cun chi (inch-foot) method, which appears to have aimed at investigating the qualities of yin and yang in order to determine the condition of a patient by means of exploring fairly large areas of the patient's body surface with the palms. The article furthermore posits that the cun chi method was decisively transformed in medieval times, presumably due to the impact of early Tibetan pulse diagnostic practices: it became framed in a numerology of three and started advocating the use of the fingertips for sensing the pulse beats.

Reflections on the 'discovery' of the antimalarial qinghao.

Artemisinin, qinghaosu, was extracted from the traditional Chinese medical drug qinghao (the blue-green herb) in the early 1970s. Its 'discovery' can thus be hailed as an achievement of research groups who were paradoxically successful, working as they were at the height of a political mass movement in communist China, known in the West as the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), a period that was marked by chaos, cruelty and enormous suffering, particularly, but by no means only, among the intelligentsia. On the one hand, China's cultural heritage was seen as a hindrance to progress and Mao set out to destroy it, but on the other hand he praised it as a 'treasure house', full of gems that, if adjusted to the demands of contemporary society, could be used 'for serving the people' (wei renmin fuwu).

The history of qing hao in the Chinese materia medica.

Artemisinin is currently used for treating drug-resistant malaria. It is found in Artemisia annua and also in A. apiacea and A.

Tactility and the body in early Chinese medicine.

If visual inspection of corpses was central to the development of anatomy in modern Europe, one may ask which of the senses was important for the emergence of the predominant currents of scholarly medical knowledge and practice in third- and second-century B.C.E.

"The medicine from China has rapid effects": Chinese medicine patients in Tanzania.

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) involves both biomedical and traditional medical training, which makes well-trained TCM doctors inexpensive health care providers for primary health care. The Tanzanian Ministry of Health and Ministry of Commerce recognised this potential, and in the mid-1990s issued short-term licences for private TCM enterprises. In Dar es Salaam, some of these practices experienced a period of considerable growth, but by the year 2000 a degree of ambivalence if not resentment existed against Chinese medical doctors who were accused of unlawfully using biomedical medication, and the government refused to issue further licences.