Members of the Local Practices Working Group use various sources to trace the lived experience of particular diseases, the implementation of specific therapeutics, and the actualization of pharmaceutical practices from the late imperial through the Republican eras. They investigate the role of household healers, medical amateurs and local experts, and probe the sources these individuals relied on to diagnose illnesses, decoct cures, and manage self-treatment in the home. Members of the working group are attentive to shifting pharmacopeias. They track the number and nature of prescriptions that were reprised across recipe collections, hand-written commonplace books, and periodicals over time, and with what changes to ingredients and method. They record the various herbs, minerals, foodstuffs, and household ingredients that were integral to a range of healing practices.
Working group members: Nalini Kirk, Hugh Shapiro, Angela Leung, Marta Hanson, Ying Zhang, He Bian, Ruixuan Du, Daisy Liang Joan Judge
Please note: there is an overlap between the topics covered in the different working groups and in working group members. While we will continue to debate and interrogate these divisions, they are a way of organizing the different facets of work we will undertake in the project.
Image: “Carrying Medicine,” Sidney D. Gamble Collection, Photograph 28B-286,
Courtesy of David M. Rubenstein Manuscript & Rare Book Library, Duke University.