(Research) Projects

Past and Present

Sports Medicine and Immortality

This project began in the run up to the Beijing Olympics with the conference Sports, Medicine and Immortality convened in collaboration with the Centre for Health and Human Development, UEL at the British Museum. Historians, medics and sociologists explored how critical appraisal of the history of sports, body cultivation and sports medicine can contribute to our shared experience of health today.
 

The project culminated in an edited volume: Vivienne Lo (ed.) Perfect Bodies: Sports Medicine and Immortality (London: British Museum Research Publications,  2012). Chapters consider the health equation of games past, present and future, the perfection and healing of body and soul and the delivery of future legacies positive in cultural regeneration, societal cohesion, health and well-being.

 

Imagining Chinese Medicine

Between 2004 and 2006 a UCL/Academy of Chinese Medicine project, then named ‘Chinese Medicine: A Visual History’, collected, catalogued, described and placed online 1,400 medical illustrations from the history of Chinese medicine. http://images.wellcome.ac.uk (search on ‘Vivienne Lo’).

At the culmination of the first stage of the project, we convened an international conference in Beijing, which resulted in the Chinese publication Xingxiang Zhongyi 形象中醫 (Imagining Chinese Medicine), edited by Vivienne Lo and Wang Shumin and published in Beijing by Renmin Weisheng chubanshe. An edited and extensively supplemented English edition is now in preparation.

 

Plants with Historical or Modern Uses as Medicines in and around Mecklenburgh Square Garden

An online project curated by Michael Heinrich, Professor of Pharmacognosy (Medicinal Plant research), UCL School of Pharmacy, with monographs specially written by UCL postgraduate students of Pharmacognosy. Visit this webpage to learn more: Medicinal Plants - Mecklenburgh Square Garden

 

China and Covid-19 

Online debate (8 December 2020) and student-led research project

It is generally accepted that Wuhan, in central China, was at the beginning of the transmission of Covid 19, but what does this mean for public health and for our understanding of the causes and effects of the pandemic and how to control it? And what other issues does it bring into the spotlight?

The project fed into a live online debate hosted by Prof. Vivienne Lo, with speakers from academia and beyond who were discussing three parallel and overlapping themes, chosen by the students:

  1. Global Health and the Pandemic in UK and China 
  2. TCM: Dangerous pleasures from the wet market, or gentle home remedies?
  3. ‘China’s Covid’ and renewed racist attacks against East Asians.

Provisional Programme

The debate, organised by the UCL China Centre for Health and Humanity (CCHH) in collaboration with the UCL Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS), is the first of three online events exploring interdisciplinary responses to the Covid-19 pandemic. 

THE MAIN ISSUES

with thanks to Prof. Therese Hesketh

This summarises discussions with policy-makers, academics and students in China, about the main issues of importance regarding Covid-19.

Preventability at the start: was Covid-19 preventable? Students in particular criticised the delay in the response, probably resulting from the silencing of whistleblowers, and felt it may have been critical to the subsequent trajectory. But many people do not believe there is any evidence that the Wuhan wet market was the source, that it could have come from elsewhere (i.e. other countries) and that China should not be blamed.

Response: The subsequent speed of response was extraordinary and meant that the spread within China, outside Hubei was very limited: less than 25% of the total 92,000 cases and 10% of 4750 deaths. Medical teams from all over China were sent to Hubei to manage cases. “Wuhan Jiayou!” meaning “Come on Wuhan!” became a national slogan of support. If the outbreak had been more serious, it is acknowledged that the system would have had great difficulty managing.

The lockdown was enforced (affecting over half the total population), with massive mobilisation of people, including volunteers. The lockdown was very strict in many areas, and was arguably a disproportionate response in some. But it seems to have been almost universally accepted. The reasons for this are a combination of socio-cultural norms, fear of the virus and of breaking the rules. Throughout there has been an overwhelming sense of trust in the government’s handling of the epidemic.

Now there are mainly random cases (two this week in Shanghai and Tianjin, respectively) which have triggered a major response, with tracking and testing of large numbers of people. A small outbreak in Qingdao last month led to 9 million tests being carried-out. The director of the CDC has criticised this level of response, as disproportionate and wasteful of resources.

Science: A great success has been the very rapid sharing of scientific findings throughout the pandemic, starting with the genome described within 10 days of identification of the new virus. A handbook of case-management was published in early March in Chinese and English. The very efficient track-and-trace system allowed for controlled relaxation of lockdown measures.

Despite having not completed Phase 3 trials, a vaccine has been used in China since July, initially in the military, then given to health workers and now being taken-up more widely by individuals going overseas, including students. At least two other Chinese vaccines are close to being released.

Propaganda: the epidemic has been a propaganda success for the Chinese authorities, from the 10-day hospital, (shown on live feed television) to the rapid control of the outbreak, praise by WHO for the approach to control measures, and the fact that the economy is back on track. Opportunities for self-congratulation have not been wasted, but this has undoubtedly instilled patriotism and pride.

Politics: much discussion centres around the assumption that in democratic countries where people are accustomed to freedom, controlling a disease like Covid-19 is very difficult.

TCM: Dangerous pleasures, gentle home remedies?
Introduction to the issues

While there have been a variety of theories related to the transmission of Covid 19 to humans, some indicting laboratories studying viruses in Wuhan, the main zoonotic disease thread still seems to lead to the wet market in Wuhan. The wet market, like others of its kind, apparently was selling wild animals, typically bats and snakes, wild animal horns etc, to satisfy the Chinese market for animal stuffs as medicine. The trade certainly draws on 2000 years of Chinese history to underwrite its culinary and medical traditions.  But underlying this trade lie wider global changes that are driving the pandemic outbreaks: urbanisation and rapid development drive people further into underdeveloped areas, increasing encounters with animals. Those species that survive the human encounter such as rats and bats are more likely to host potentially dangerous pathogens that can make the jump to humans. 

Rhinoceros and deer horns, tiger bone, and bear gall are not implicated in the transmission of disease, but they are all animal products that carry with them the symbolism associated with the power of the animals themselves. Many of these products are destined for the aphrodisiacs market for elderly men with erectile dysfunction. It is believed that the more rare the species, the more potent it is likely to be.  These links to sympathetic magic persist in the popular imagination. Some of these products are also very likely to have a therapeutic effect that was established empirically over long periods. But times have changed and the uses, particularly of endangered species, are clearly outdated and inappropriate in these days when the planet’s biodiversity is dwindling so fast. 

But are all the myriad dietary prohibitions and recommendations the stuff of old wives’ tales, the vestiges of a vanishing and irrational past? To the modern eye, Chinese dietary traditions might seem over-burdened with a history of ritual, religion, sexual lore, and magic. To me there are many truths to be found within that history. Those who seek precedents for modern science in early Chinese empirical knowledge have reason to believe that the Chinese diet included remedies for beri beri, goitre, night blindness, and rickets, linking symptoms and specific remedies. Many people will be familiar with the story of qinghao 青蒿 (artemisia annua) transforming from a herb for ‘intermittent fever’ in the pre-modern materia medica to artemisinin, the magic bullet of choice for treating and preventing malaria – the Nobel Prize winning success story grounded in data mining the ancient texts for modern drugs.

Chinese dietary lore is not so much a fixed set of beliefs as a mobile set of shared social practices within which ordinary people can claim a certain expertise, and simultaneously consolidate individual and community identities. In an authoritarian state which has quite effective control over the everyday lives of its citizens, caring for those people that are inside the family and the friendship group is a very effective way to reclaim one’s autonomy from the sanitary police. It is working particularly well for elderly communities who share their gentle remedies and how to make them through smartphone-based short videos (duan shipin 短视频) , a selection of which we will make available online before the conference. This is not a marginal practice. By the end of 2017, there were 334.1 million active users of short video apps in a month. Common topics of the short videos shared among retired people include lifestyle guidance and tips and recipes for longevity and old age. These recipes rarely include exotic animal products, and are much more likely to give instructions for tonic soups and congees made, for example, of beans, herbs and goji berry. 

The state also has a vested interest in its traditions. It has really ‘never been modern’ (Latour 1991). Traditional Medicine is a matter of national pride (and important economically), promoted by Xi Jinping. According to the Chinese State Council 90% of the Covid-19 patients in mainland China have used TCM.  There are impressive claims made about efficacy and even if they are exaggerated, there is corollary evidence that there was a run on some of the remedies that the state was promoting and they completely sold out. Of those four or five most popular remedies for Covid, none contained animal ingredients except for the ox gall stones in Angong niuhuang wan. All the others were herbal and mineral remedies, and include powerful and potentially toxic ingredients such as mahuang 麻黃 – Ephedra spp. (containing ephedrine) which promotes sweating and expels fever,  ban xia 半夏, which is drying of cold and damp in the body, and others such as the aforementioned malaria remedy qinghao 青蒿 (artemisa annua) for clearing heat and damp. Others are directed towards expelling toxins etc. Expelling toxins, clearing heat, cold and damp are different strategies for treating Covid.

INTRODUCTION TO THE ISSUES

Many of the observations about China’s relationship with Covid-19 set out elsewhere in these pages have been used as the basis of racist attacks against East Asians, against restaurants, and against our students at UCL. The links made are profoundly ignorant and hark back to the racist attacks against Chinese restaurants of the mid twentieth century for supposedly cooking people’s cats and dogs.

While there is serious work to be done re-educating those who sustain the medical market for rare and wild animals, this is a wealthy and niche market. The everyday use of TCM and food as remedies is a powerful community practice and, when prescribed properly, much more effective than chicken soup. The larger circumstances that facilitate the emergence of zoonotic diseases are not peculiar to China, it is simply that urbanisation and development have been happening faster in China with larger populations involved. These are shared issues and responsibilities that require shared solutions.

Prof. Michael HEINRICH (UCL, Pharmacy)

Michael Heinrich is Professor of Ethnopharmacology and Medicinal Plant Research (Pharmacognosy) and was previously the head of the research cluster ‘Biodiversity and Medicines’ at the UCL School of Pharmacy. He currently serves as the joint Chair of UCL’s Research Ethics Committee (with Dr L. Ang, Institute of Education).

Prof. Therese HESKETH (UCL, IGH)

Therese Hesketh is a Professor of Global and Child Health in UCL's IGH/ICH. She also holds a professorship at Zhejiang University. She has published widely on numerous subjects in the public health of China. 

Prof. Dame  Anne JOHNSON (UCL, IGH)

Dame Anne Johnson is Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at UCL and Co-Director of UCL Health of the Public. Since 2011 she has been chair of  the UCL Population and Lifelong Health Domain and she was Vice-Dean for External and International Relations from 2015 to 2018.  From 2007 to 2014 she was Co-Director, UCL Institute for Global Health

 Luis Fernando Bernardi JUNQUEIRA 林友樂

 Luis Fernando Bernardi Junqueira earned his master’s degree in Chinese History at Fudan University and is currently a PhD candidate in History at UCL. Sponsored by the Wellcome Trust, his research explores the impact of transnational spiritualism and psychical research on China’s healthcare market during the first half of the twentieth century.

Prof. Vivienne LO 羅維前 (UCL, History)

Vivienne Lo is Professor of Chinese History and Director of the China Centre for Health and Humanity (CCHH).at UCL. She is well published in the history of medicine in China with a particular interest in visual culture and the cross-cultural transmission of technical knowledge.

Dr Lu GRAM (UCL, IGH)

Lu Gram is a Sir Henry Wellcome postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute for Global Health at UCL. He is co-founder of the End the Virus of Racism campaign and is contributor to a Lancet series on Racism, Xenophobia and Health. He has published work on community empowerment, collective action, and societal power dynamics.

Prof. Nicola MILLER (UCL, IAS)

Nicola Miller joined UCL in 1990.  She became Professor of Latin American History in 2007 and is currently Director of UCL’s IAS. Her research is focused on the intellectual, cultural, political and international history of the Americas, in comparative and transnational perspectives; and on nationalism and national identity, especially in the Americas. Her recent research has been on the history and politics of knowledge.

Amy PHUNG (besea.n)

Amy Phung is co-founder of besea.n, Britain’s East and South East Asian Network, which aims to address under- and misrepresentation of East and South-East Asians in UK media, as well as spotlighting prominent ESEAs. She uses her work as a graphic designer and illustrator to highlight issues faced by ESEAs and works closely with creatives in the community in her advocacy work.

Prof. Volker SCHEID (University of Westminster)

Volker Scheid is a Visiting Professor in the School of Humanities, University of Westminster, where he was previously Director of EASTmedicine (East Asian Science and Traditions in Medicine).  He is an experienced clinician and renowned academic researcher with a long-standing interest in finding ways of thinking about the historical development of Chinese medicine that transcend the tired frameworks of modernity.

Prof. SUN Ji Ming (Zhejiang Province, Centre for Disease Control)

Profile coming shortly.

Hau-Yu TAM 譚巧瑜 (SOAS)

Hau-Yu Tam is a community organiser and graduate student in International Studies & Diplomacy.

Dr WANG Xinyuan 王心遠 (UCL, Anthropology)

Xinyuan Wang is a postdoctoral researcher in UCL Anthropology where she received her PhD and MSc degrees. She worked on the 'Why We Post' global social media impact study. She is co-author and translator of the Chinese version of Digital Anthropology (Horst and Miller eds., 2013). Her most recent books are How the World Changed Social Media (co-author, UCL Press, 2016), and Social Media in Industrial China (UCL Press, 2016).

Karlie WU 胡嘉瑤

Karlie Wu is an artist exploring what it means to be British/Scottish-Chinese, its expectations and misconceptions, and the reality of this lived experience. Wu is also one of the six founding members of besea.n (Britain’s East and South East Asian Network), a non-profit, anti-racism grassroots organisation that tackles negative stereotypes and advocates positive media representation of ESEA people in the UK.

YANG Yi 楊頤 (UCL, History)

Yang Yi is currently a PhD candidate in History at UCL, working on a cross-cultural oral history of Five Element Acupuncture between Britain and China from the 1970s onward. She was previously  a researcher and practitioner of Chinese medicine and acupuncture in Capital Medical University (Beijing) where she received her MSc and PhD degrees in Medical Science of Internal Medicine.

Dr ZHOU Xun 周遜 (Essex University)

Zhou Xun is Reader of Modern History at the University of Essex. She is one of Europe’s most productive historians, media researchers and analysts specialising in modern China. She has also an outstanding track record in transcultural/global studies. The most recent of her many publications, The People’s Health, will be launched at this event.

End the Virus of Racism campaign

Dedicated to addressing racism towards people of East and Southeast Asian heritage in the UK.

This is a collaborative work in progress, so please suggest additions!

Stanley-Baker, Michael and Tanya Tierney. COVID medical humanities lesson, Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore: https://www.dropbox.com/s/a15pi80crfki0dc/Y2MH1%20slides%2020-21_Final.pdf?dl=0
Researchgate: COVID-19 research community page: https://www.researchgate.net/community/COVID-19
Responding to an Unfolding Pandemic: Asian Medicines and Covid-19
A wide-ranging collection of essays by scholars across disciplines working on Asian medicines.
Research Topic: Ethnopharmacological Responses to the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Pandemic,
Frontiers in Pharmacology:
https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/14125/ethnopharmacological-responses-to-the-coronavirus-disease-2019-covid-19-pandemic#articles
Liao, Fangpi. 2020. ‘Singapore’s Covid-19 Catastrophe: Authoritarian Bungling, an Infectious Election, and an International Humanitarian Crisis’, The Asia Pacific-Journal: Japan Focus, 18.15.7: 1-8 <https://apjjf.org/2020/15/Liao.html>

Ochs, Shelley and Thomas Avery Garran. 2020. Chinese Medicine and COVID-19: Results and Reflections from China. Passifloria Press [ebook] <Chinese-Medicine-and-COVID-19-Results-and-Reflections-from-China.epub>

Rowen, Ian. 2020. ‘Crafting the Taiwan Model for Covid-19: An Exceptional State in Pandemic Territory’, The Asia Pacific-Journal: Japan Focus,18.14.9: 1-13 <https://apjjf.org/2020/15/Liao.html>

Stevens, Hallam, and Monamie Bhadra Haines. 2020. ‘TraceTogether: Pandemic Response, Democracy, and Technology’, East Asian Science, Technology and Society, 14.3: 523–32 <https://doi.org/10.1215/18752160-8698301>

Tilley, Helen. 2020. ‘How to Make Sense of “Traditional (Chinese) Medicine” in a Time of Covid-19: Cold War Origin Stories and the WHO’s Role in Making Space for Polyglot Therapeutics’, Somatosphere: Science, Medicine and Anthropology (25 May) <http://somatosphere.net/2020/tcm-covid-19.html>

Wilson, Mark. 2020. ‘The Untold Origin Story of the N95 Mask: The Most Important Design Object of Our Time Was More Than a Century in the Making’, Fast Company [online] <https://www.fastcompany.com/90479846/the-untold-origin-story-of-the-n95-mask>

Chinese Medicine and COVID-19: Results and Reflections from China, edited and translated by Shelley Ochs and Thomas Avery Garran 
An essential sourcebook of responses to the pandemic from TCM professionals and government.
Download the free ebook and listen to a podcast about it here:
http://passiflora-press.com/product/chinese-medicine-and-covid-19/

IASTAM (International Association for the Study of Traditional Asian Medicine) webinars – world-class scholars of Asian medicines discuss the pandemic
Asian Medicines and COVID-19 (Oct 22, 2020) 
Featuring: Shelley Ochs, Thomas Avery Garran, Tawni Tidwell, Marta Hanson

The ‘pan’ of pandemics: Why and how do Asian approaches matter? (Jul 8 2020)
Featuring: Monica Green, Volker Scheid, David Napier

Responding to an Unfolding Pandemic: Asian Medicines and Covid-19
A wide-ranging collection of essays by scholars across disciplines working on Asian medicines.

COVID-19: Is There Evidence for the Use of Herbal Medicines as Adjuvant Symptomatic Therapy?

Authors: Dâmaris Silveira, Jose Maria Prieto-Garcia, Fa bio Boylan, Omar Estrada, Yris Maria Fonseca-Bazzo, Claudia Masrouah Jamal,Pérola Oliveira Magalhães, Edson Oliveira Pereira, Michal Tomczyk and Michael Heinrich
Frontiers in Pharmacology, 23 September 2020:
https://doi.org/10.3389/fphar.2020.581840

Part of the Research Topic:
Ethnopharmacological Responses to the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Pandemic

Long Time No See, Wuhan – Post-pandemic Wuhan through the lens of a Japanese Director
Japanese documentary director Takeuchi Ryo and his team went to Wuhan after the lockdown was lifted for the Covid-19 pandemic. Through the stories of 10 families, we get to see what it was like during the lockdown, what Wuhan is really like now and how life has been changed forever for the 11 million residents in Wuhan (Mandarin with Chinese and English subtitles).

A Record of 80 Days in Jinyintan Hospital / 中国抗疫纪录片: 金银潭实拍80天
A documentary recording the lives of doctors, patients and their families in Wuhan, providing a bottom-up, medical humanity view (Mandarin with Chinese and English subtitles).

CNTV interview with Dr Zhang Boli 张伯礼
Dr Zhang Boli, one of the leading TCM experts in Wuhan, shares his experiences of 3 months on the Covid-19 frontline (Mandarin, no subtitles).

Long Time No See, Wuhan

EMBED: Post-Pandemic Wuhan Through the Lens of a Japanese Director【Long Time No See, Wuhan】

TCM recipes and Covid-19 – by postgraduate students from UCL China Centre for Health and Humanity (CCHH)

Covid Recipe Book: covid_food_recipes.pdf

Debating Theme 2: Dangerous pleasures or gentle home remedies?

[SLIDE SHOW FROM A PRESENTATION]

Food-related Yangsheng short videos among the retired population in Shanghai 
by Xinyuan WANG 王心遠 and Vivienne LO 羅維前
(From V. Lo, C. Berry & Guo Liping eds 2020, Film and the Chinese Medical Humanities)

Millions of retired people in China have enthusiastically adopted social media video clips (duan shipin 短视频) as a way of (among other things) sharing information about healthy living and recipes for healthy eating. As part of a long-term research project among the retired population in Shanghai, ethnographer Xinyuan Wang and medical historian Vivienne Lo investigated this phenomenon, its current and potential influence on everyday health and self-care, and its significance for the self-care practices known as yangsheng 养生 as a living tradition.

In order to carry out participant observation, Dr Wang moved into an ordinary residential compound  in Shanghai called ForeverGood, where the average age is around 60.

Yangsheng 养生, variously translated as ‘nourishing life’, ‘nurturing life’, or ‘cultivating life’, refers to a broad range of ever-changing practices that have been taught and practised in domestic, religious, and educational contexts over more than two millennia.These practices aim to promote well-being in individuals and communities, and to generate strength and resilience, as well as an acuity of the sensory or spiritual faculties among practitioners.
Many activities are attributed with yangsheng qualities: martial arts, sexual regimens, singing, calligraphy, and even the keeping of song birds or other pet animals, as well as food and diet.

This essay was published shortly before the outbreak of the Covid-19 epidemic; it takes on additional relevance in the current climate.

Read on...
 

food-related_yangsheng_short_videos.pdf

How Buddhists in Asia, including China and Taiwan, are addressing Covid-19:
https://theconversation.com/how-do-buddhists-handle-coronavirus-the-answer-is-not-just-meditation-137966

See some of the things that you can do to help address racism towards people of East and Southeast Asian heritage in the UK: 
https://linktr.ee/EndRacismVirus

As part of his creative history practice, CCHH PhD candidate Luis Fernando Bernardi Junqueira created these talisman masks.

 

Door amulets (menpai 門牌) have for centuries been used in China to ward off evil (bixie 辟邪) in all its physical and spiritual forms. The artefacts above illustrate the wide array of wooden door amulets that circulated in late imperial China, whose forms varied not only according to times and larger regions (for example, northern and southern China) but even from one village to the next. Their variations are expressed in the multiple names they are known by, including bagua shoupai 八卦獸牌 (beast tablet with eight trigrams),[1] bagua jianshipai 八卦劍獅牌 (lion-biting-sword tablet with eight trigrams)[2] or simply shoupai 獸牌 (beast amulet).[3] Both the amulets above are preserved in the Wellcome Collection at the Science Museum, but they continue to circulate widely amongst Chinese communities worldwide.

Nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Christian missionaries recorded the pervasive use of household amulets among the Chinese, meant to drive away evil and avert epidemics.[4] Adam Grainger, a British missionary who lived in Chengdu from 1889 to 1921, listed some of these amulets – as well as the rationale behind them – in an article published in 1917:

A small mirror fixed above the door absorbs them [i.e., demons] into “Looking Glass-House.” A tablet, or mirror, in which is written “One Good” [一善] will foil their attempts because the proverb says, “One good deed annuls a hundred evil deeds.” [一善勝百惡] A tablet, or mirror, in which is drawn a conventional landscape [山海鏡], will allure them into bypass where they will be lost. A tablet of the Eight Diagrams quells all evil influences. A “Swallower” [吞口] or idol’s head, with a sword in its teeth, will slay them. This idol is the Daring One [敢當] of Mount Tai in Shantung who beheads demons. His head is sometimes painted on the back of a water-ladle, and sometimes carved out of a block of wood. The same figure is often carved on the top of a stone slab, on the front of which is written, “The Mount Tai stone Kan Tang,” which may also be translated, “The Mount Tai Stone dares to oppose.” [泰山石敢當] These stones are found in front of shops, public offices, cross roads, or river bends, and may be from three to ten feet high.[5]

Talismans (符) are artefacts composed of characters and symbols written in a certain fashion and used for healing or apotropaic purposes, including warding off plague demons like nüegui 瘧鬼 and yigui 疫鬼. They are typically drawn with cinnabar, black ink, herbal decoctions and even blood on strips of white or yellow paper, objects – like ritual vases or behind the amulets presented above – or directly onto the body. After being activated by mudras and verbal spells, talismans can be burned to ashes and mixed with water to be taken as a decoction, pasted on walls or carried about with the individual in order to avert any harm plague demons might cause. The talisman above (in red), used against wenyi 瘟疫, comes from a seventeenth-century manuscript held in the Library of Ancient Books at Fudan University.

Talismans can assume multiple forms and are not supposed to be read by humans; rather, they serve as a writ through which humans communicate with, or give commands to, the spirit world.[6] Recent archaeological discoveries have shown that talismans and spells–the verbal aspect of talismans–have been used in China for, at least, the past two millennia.[7] When the first Chinese imperial medical institutions emerged around the 6th century CE, talismans and spells were soon incorporated as an officially-sponsored medical discipline alongside drugs (herbs, animals and minerals) and massage, a status enjoyed until the late 16th century. Despite the fierce debates around the legitimacy of talismanic healing and its place vis-à-vis orthodox medical traditions, talismans and spells remained pervasive among both scholarly and folk healers in pre-Communist China, being hailed as one of the main treatments to  cure or prevent epidemics.

 --------------------------------------------

[1] https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co122685/amuletic-board-china-1801-1900-amulet

[2] https://wellcomecollection.org/works/cyjsfzwt

[3] https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co125325/wooden-sign-painted-with-a-demons-face-china-shield

[4] Henri Doré, Researches into Chinese Superstitions, 13 vols (Shanghai: Túsewei Printing Press, 1916), vol. 3.

[5] Adam Grainger, “Various Superstitions,” West China Missionary News 19, no. 11 (1917): 10–16.

[6] Stephan P. Bumbacher, Empowered Writing: Exorcistic and Apotropaic Rituals in Medieval China (St. Petersburg: Three Pines Press, 2014).

[7] Donald Harper, Early Chinese Medical Literature: The Mawangdui Medical Manuscripts (New York: Routledge, 2015).