April 18 Peiting C. Li (Cedars-Sinai)

“When Herbs Become Drugs: Late Natural History and Early Clinical Trials in China”

Zoom RSVP: https://ucla.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJwrce2vrDwuHtTE7HtTqJTG7iCo7vS39XWO

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This talk discusses investigations of a Chinese herbal tuberculosis treatment as a window onto shifts in the production of scientific
medical knowledge in 1920-1930s Shanghai. Once a remedy for consumption local to the mountains of southern China and known by a variety of names in gazetteers and botanical sources, by the 1920s it was sold in Shanghai as a trademarked tuberculosis treatment, advertised in newspapers, and tested by the state’s nascent public health institutions. Doctors sought to understand the herb in modes ranging from textual studies reminiscent of late imperial natural history to systematic evaluation of the effects of treatment in patients. Tracing changes in the ways doctors analyzed this herb reveals the increasing importance of quantification and experimentation in medical writing at this time.