As a traditional healing art that has established a contemporary global presence, Chinese medicine defies categories and raises many interesting questions. If Chinese medicine is "traditional," why has it not disappeared with the rest of traditional Chinese society? If, as some claim, it is a science, what does that imply about what we call science? What is the secret of Chinese medicine's remarkable adaptability that has allowed it to prosper for more than 2,000 years? In Chinese Medicine in Contemporary China Volker Scheid presents an ethnography of Chinese medicine that seeks to answer these questions, but his ethnography is informed by some atypical approaches. Scheid, a medical anthropologist and practitioner of Chinese medicine in practice since 1983, has produced an ethnography that accepts plurality as an intrinsic and nonreducible aspect of medical practice. It has been widely noted that a patient visiting ten different practitioners of Chinese medicine may receive ten different prescriptions for the same complaint, yet many of these various treatments may be effective. In attempting to illuminate the plurality in Chinese medical practice, Scheid redefines-and in some cases abandons-traditional anthropological concepts such as tradition, culture, and practice in favor of approaches from disciplines such as science and technology studies, social psychology, and Chinese philosophy. As a result, his book sheds light not only on Chinese medicine but also on the Western academic traditions used to examine it and presents us with new perspectives from which to deliberate the future of Chinese medicine in a global context. Chinese Medicine in Contemporary China is the product of two decades of research including numerous interviews and case studies. It will appeal to a western academic audience as well as practitioners of Chinese medicine and other interested medical professionals, including those from western biomedicine.

Chinese medicine approaches emotions and emotional disorders differently than the Western biomedical model. Transforming Emotions with Chinese Medicine offers an ethnographic account of emotion-related disorders as they are conceived, talked about, experienced, and treated in clinics of Chinese medicine in contemporary China. While Chinese medicine (zhongyi) has been predominantly categorized as herbal therapy that treats physical disorders, it is also well known that Chinese patients routinely go to zhongyi clinics for treatment of illness that might be diagnosed as psychological or emotional in the West. Through participant observation, interviews, case studies, and zhongyi publications, both classic and modern, the author explores the Chinese notion of "body-person," unravels cultural constructions of emotion, and examines the way Chinese medicine manipulates body-mind connections.

This ethnography of contemporary Chinese medicine that covers both Chinese medical education and practice.

The English edition of Liu Lihong’s milestone work is a sublime beacon for the profession of Chinese medicine in the 21st century. Classical Chinese Medicine delivers a straightforward critique of the politically motivated “integration” of traditional Chinese wisdom with Western science during the last sixty years, and represents an ardent appeal for the recognition of Chinese medicine as a science in its own right. Professor Liu’s candid presentation has made this book a bestseller in China, treasured not only by medical students and doctors, but by vast numbers of non-professionals who long for a state of health and well-being that is founded in a deeper sense of cultural identity. Oriental medicine education has made great strides in the West since the 1970s, but clear guidelines regarding the “traditional” nature of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) remain undefined. Classical Chinese Medicine not only delineates the educational and clinical problems faced by the profession in both East and West, but transmits concrete and inspiring guidance on how to effectively engage with ancient texts and designs in the postmodern age. Using the example of the Shanghanlun (Treatise on Cold Damage), one of the most important Chinese medicine classics, Liu Lihong develops a compelling roadmap for holistic medical thinking that links the human body to nature and the universe at large.

Cochran reconsiders the nature and role of consumer culture in the spread of globalization and illuminates enduring features of the Chinese experience of consumer culture. The history of Chinese medicine men in pre-socialist China, he suggests, has relevance for the 21st century because they achieved goals that resonate with their successors today.