Dr Vivienne Lo

Dr Vivienne Lo specialises in the history of Chinese medical practice. She translates and analyses excavated and recovered manuscripts from the early imperial and mediaeval period concerned with the development of acupuncture, moxibustion and therapeutic exercise. Current projects include a history of food and medicine in China and the creation of an on-line database of Chinese medical imagery.

v.lo@ucl.ac.uk

Research

Early to Mediaeval Chinese Medicine
In recent decades there has been a revolution in the field of research into both early and mediaeval Chinese medicine partly driven by texts and artefacts recovered from tombs and other libraries. I am currently finishing a translation and introduction to texts excavated in Hubei (tomb sealed ca. 186 BC), that describe an early phase in the development of acupuncture, and therapeutic exercise. Manuscripts recovered from a Buddhist library on the Silk Road and archived mainly at the British Library and BNF Paris provide another vantage point from which to consider issues of continuity and change in both these subjects. Current projects also include the creation of an on-line database of early Chinese medical imagery, and a history of food and medicine in China.

Profile

1991	BA, SOAS, University of London
1998	PhD, SOAS, University of London
1998	Research, Fellow, Centre for the Study of Bamboo and Silk Books, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
2000	PATHE Programme, Institute of Education
2001	Research Fellow, SOAS, University of London
2002	Lecturer, The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine

Key Publications

‘The Legend of the Lady of Linshui’ Journal of Chinese Religions 21(1993), 69-96.

‘He Yin Yang: Xi Han yangsheng wenxian dui yixue sixiang fazhan de yinxiang’ (Western Han ‘Nurturing Life’ Literature and the Development of Medical Thought), Yin Yang wuxing yu Zhongguo gudai siwei moshi (Yin Yang, the Five Agents and Conceptual Models in Ancient China) ed. Sarah Allan and Wang Tao, (Jiangsu guji chubanshe - 1998), 401-23.

‘The Channels: A preliminary examination of a Lacquered Figurine from the Western Han Period’ in Early China 21 (1996) [written with He Zhiguo], 81-123.

‘Healing and Medicine’ in China: Land of the Heavenly Dragon, ed. E Shaughnessy (London: Duncan Baird Publishing, 2000), 148-62.

‘Tracking the Pain: Jue and the Formation of a Theory of Circulating Qi through the Channels’ in Sudhoffs Archiv (2000) 191 - 211. also published in Chinese in the 4th volume of Jianbo yanjiu (Research into Bamboo and Silk Manuscripts) vol. 4 by the China Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), Beijing. ed Li Xueqin,(2001), 275-288.

‘Crossing the "Inner Pass": An"Inner/Outer" Distinction in Early Chinese Medicine?’ in East Asian Science,Technology and Medicine 17 (2000), 15-65.

‘The Influence of Western Han Nurturing Life Literature on the Development of Acumoxa Therapy’ in Innovation in Chinese Medicine. Festschrift in Commemoration of Lu Gwei-djen, ed. Elisabeth Hsu (Cambridge, CUP, 2001), 19-51.

‘Spirit of Stone: Technical Considerations in the Treatment of the Jade Body’ Bulletin of SOAS 65/1 (2002), 99-128.

‘Lithic Therapy in Early China’ in New Approaches to Medical Anthropology and Archaeology ed. Carr (Oxford: Oxbow, forthcoming in 2002)

'Survey of Research into the History and Rationale of Acupuncture and Moxa since 1980' - A New Introduction to a new edition of Lu and Needham, Celestial Lancets (Curzon, 2002), xxv-li.

Mediaeval Chinese Medicine (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2005 edited with
Christopher Cullen).

''Self-Cultivation and the Popular Medical Traditions', in Lo and Cullen (eds), ibid.

'Quick and Easy Chinese Medicine', in Lo and Cullen (eds), ibid.

'The Yellow Emperor's Toad Manual' in a special edition of Asia Majo, 14, 2 (2001), edited by Nathan Sivin: Essays Contributed in Honour of Michael Loewe [published in Spring, 2004].

Launch of new journal of IASTAM: Asian Medicine: Tradition and Modernity, Brill. First edition Spring, 2005.

1,400 pre-modern Chinese medical images bought catalogued and translated by the Project Chinese Medicine: A Visual History for Wellcome's online medical iconographic collection. Search for 'Zhongguo' at http://medphoto.wellcome.ac.uk/

"Narratives of Deviance in 'Traditional' Chinese Medicine" In Asian Medicine and Globalization ed. Alter (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), 45-77. (written with Sylvia Schroer)

"Cooking up fine remedies: On the culinary aesthetic in a 16th century Chinese materia medica". In Medical History, 2005, 395-422 (with Penny Barrett).

"Pleasure, prohibition and pain: food and medicine in China". In Of Tripod and Palate, Roel Sterckx ed. London: Palgrave MacMillan   2005, 163-186.

Academic Conference on the Changsha Bamboo Documents Dating to Wu of the Three Kingdom To Celebrate One Hundred Years of New Discoveries and Research into Bamboo Strips and Silk Manuscripts, 15th - 19th August 2001 (5,200 words)
http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/earlychina/res/confrept/changsha.html

Imagining practice: sense and sensuality in early Chinese medical illustration." In The Warp and the Weft: Graphics and Text in the Production of Technical Knowledge in China, Bray, Metailie and Dorofeeva-Lichtmann eds. Leiden: Brill, 2007, 387 – 425.

‘Chinese Medicine’ in H. & W. Bynum (eds) Dictionary of Medical Biographies, London, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press; vol. 1., 33 – 50.

Area Editor for 23 biographies of Chinese physicians in H. & W. Bynum (eds) Dictionary of Medical Biographies, London, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

‘Chinese Medicine’ in 70 Wonders of China ed. Jonathon Fenby, 2007, 60-1.

Imagining Chinese Medicine . Beijing: Renmin weisheng, 2007 [edited with Wang Shumin]. 275 pp.

Edited Journals

Asian Medicine: Tradition and Modernity, Volume One, Issues One and Two 2005, 400pp.

Asian Medicine: Tradition and Modernity, Volume Two, Issues One and Two 2006, 358 pp.

Asian Medicine: Tradition and Modernity, Volume Three, Issues One and Two, 2007, 380 pp.