About
“Vernacular Medicine and Modes of Knowing in China: Historical and Global Contexts” will use an innovative approach to uncover the theoretical foundations, practical application, and degree of transcultural integration of vernacular modes of healing.
Medicine is the only sphere of pre-modern Chinese natural knowledge that has remained a distinct discipline and withstood the introduction of modern scientific methods since the 16th century and scientific biomedicine since the late 19th century. Its ongoing global significance is indisputable: in 2015 a treatment based on a common herb that has been prescribed for over 2000 years won China a Nobel Prize, and “Traditional Chinese Medicine” (TCM) is currently one of the most widely consumed Chinese exports.
The overall goal of this partnership project is to illuminate the social, cultural, and epistemic dimensions of this remarkable historical phenomena. Led by Project Director Joan Judge, we will accomplish this goal by undertaking the first systematic investigation of Chinese vernacular medicine – the largest but least studied and most poorly understood realm of Chinese medicine.
Distinct from, while overlapping with, the more delimited arenas of learned or scientific medicine on the one hand, and popular or folk medicine on the other, vernacular medicine is defined here as accessible, practice-based but theoretically informed therapeutics.
Our approach will rely on three vast bodies of sources produced from the 16th through the 20th centuries which have never previously been brought together in the study of Chinese medicine, and which are particularly pertinent to the study of vernacular medicine: printed daily-use compendia, hand-written medical manuscripts, and serialized medical periodicals.
If you would like to get in touch about our project, please contact us at:
info [at] vcmed.org
We would like to thank Dr. Konrad Lawson for his assistance in setting up the website for this project.