This article examines a transnational network of advocates for Kampō (traditional) medicine in Japan, occupied China, and Manchukuo during the Sino-Japanese War (1931–1945), shedding new light on collaborationism, Asianism, and the modernization of traditional medicine in East Asia. In the 1930s, despite deteriorating Sino-Japanese relations, the Kampō revival movement in Japan joined forces with the struggle to preserve traditional medicine in China. In 1938, the Association of East Asian Medicine was founded in Japan, gathering together Chinese, Korean, and Japanese advocates under the banner of ‘East Asian medicine’. This article delineates the evolution of what I call ‘medical Asianism’ and how it was institutionalized in different parts of the Japanese empire. Participants in this network differed in their priorities and ideological commitments, yet they tactfully utilized the Japanese imperial infrastructure and wartime circumstances to promote traditional medicine. Their work laid important intellectual and institutional foundations for the postwar development of traditional medicine across East Asia. This study also contributes to a more nuanced understandings of collaborationism. The type of collaboration examined in this article was preceded by a long history of intellectual exchange, based on a shared body of knowledge and morals, motivated by mutual empathy, and for a cause that was much valued in postwar Asia. As a result, unlike most Chinese collaborators who were prosecuted as ‘traitors’, protagonists in this study continued to prosper professionally and became valuable assets in the postwar rebuilding of Sino-Japanese relations.

This article deals with a Sogdian medical text in the German Turfan collection obtained from Toyoq. The recto of the document appears to contain two prescriptions for treating irregular fever and a disease involving the urinary bladder. The names of both diseases, and several ingredients used, suggest the text is closely linked to Indian medicine, especially Āyurveda. In contrast, the verso is a translation of a passage discussing dropsy in a seventh-century Chinese medical work, the first so far identified Sogdian text translated from a Chinese classical text. Despite its short content, this Sogdian medical text offers intriguing insight into the multi-cultural background of Sogdian medicine in Turfan.

This paper analyses the shifting images of Chinese medicine and rural doctors in the narratives of literature and film from 1949 to 2009 in order to explore the persisting tensions within rural medicine and health issues in China. Popular anxiety about health services and the government’s concern that it be seen to be meeting the medical needs of China’s most vulnerable citizens – its rural dwellers – has led to the production of a continuous body of literary and film works discussing these issues, such as Medical Practice Incident, Spring Comes to the Withered Tree, Chunmiao, and Barefoot Doctor Wan Quanhe. The article moves chronologically from the early years of the Chinese Communist Party’s new rural health strategies through to the twenty-first century – over these decades, both health politics and arts policy underwent dramatic transformations. It argues that despite the huge political investment on the part of the Chinese Communist Party government in promoting the virtues of Chinese medicine and barefoot doctors, film and literature narratives reveal that this rustic nationalistic vision was a problematic ideological message. The article shows that two main tensions persisted prior to and during the Cultural Revolution, the economic reform era of the 1980s, and the medical marketisation era that began in the late 1990s. First, the tension between Chinese and Western medicine and, second, the tension between formally trained medical practitioners and paraprofessional practitioners like barefoot doctors. Each carried shifting ideological valences during the decades explored, and these shifts complicated their portrayal and shaped their specific styles in the creative works discussed. These reflected the main dilemmas around the solutions to rural medicine and health care, namely the integration of Chinese and Western medicines and blurring of boundaries between the work of medical paraprofessionals and professionals.

This paper aims to critically appraise the incorporation of opium poppy into medical practice in Song-dynasty China. By analysing materia medica and formularies, along with non-medical sources from the Song period, this study sheds light on the role of Chinese Buddhist monasteries in the process of incorporation of foreign plants into Chinese medicine. It argues that Buddhist monasteries played a significant role in the evolution of the use of opium poppy in Song dynasty medicine. This is because the consumption practices in Buddhist monasteries inspired substantial changes in the medical application of the flower during the Southern Song dynasty. While, at the beginning of Song dynasty, court scholars incorporated opium poppy into official materia medica in order to treat disorders such as huangdan  and xiaoke, as well as cinnabar poisoning, this study of the later Song medical treatises shows how opium poppy was repurposed to treat symptoms such as diarrhoea, coughing and spasms. Such a shift in the medical use of the poppy occurred after Chinese literati and doctors became acquainted with the role of the flower in the diet and medical practices of Buddhist monks across China. Therefore, the case study of the medical application of opium poppy during the Song dynasty provides us with insights into how the spread of certain practices in Buddhist monasteries might have contributed to the change in both professional medical practices and daily-life healthcare in local communities in that period.

Issues concerning the past and future development of medicinal herbs from Chinese medicine (CM) are addressed in this paper. In the Western world, medicinal herbs are becoming increasingly popular and important in the public and scientific communities. In contrast to their regulated status in China and other countries, herbal medicines are regarded as dietary supplements in the US. Accordingly, research must continue worldwide to identify and improve the efficacy of the active principals of herbs both singly and in combination – from active ingredients, active fractions, and active herbal formulations. While Western medicine currently employs pure, single compounds, either natural or synthetic, CM has long used multiple combinations of compounds in the form of processed natural products, primarily medicinal herbs, to treat and relieve the symptoms of many different human diseases. CM may have fewer and less severe side effects than single pure drugs, making CM especially attractive to the consumer. In effect, CM's focus on combination therapy does serve both ancient and modern theories. However, research using modern analytical and chemical techniques is needed to ensure efficacy and safety, to provide qualitative and quantitative analyses for dietary supplements, and to develop new, effective and safe world-class drugs. Drug design is an iterative process. Bioactivity-directed fractionation and isolation identify active natural compounds from single herbs or formulations. These lead structures can be chemically modified and improved through knowledge of structure–activity relationship, mechanism of action, drug metabolism, molecular modelling and combinatorial chemistry studies. Finally, efficacy and toxicity determination as well as clinical trials can contribute to the generation of new drugs from CM. To continue the legacy of CM, as well as the worldwide uses of other medicinal herbs, continued investigation of active formulations, bioactive fractions, and isolated compounds is critical to drug development in the 21st century.

The carotenoid zeaxanthin is concentrated within the macula. Increased macular zeaxanthin is suggested to lower the risk of age-related macular degeneration. The small red berry, wolfberry (Fructus barbarum L.; Gou Qi Zi and Kei Tze), is one of the richest natural sources of zeaxanthin. However, carotenoid bioavailability is low, and food-based products with enhanced bioavailability are of interest. The present study investigated zeaxanthin bioavailability from three wolfberry formulations. Berries were homogenised in hot (80°C) water, warm (40°C) skimmed milk and hot (80°C) skimmed milk, with freeze drying of each preparation into a powdered form. A zeaxanthin-standardised dose (15mg) of each was consumed, in randomised order, together with a standardised breakfast by twelve healthy, consenting subjects in a cross-over trial, with a 3–5-week washout period between treatments. Blood samples were taken via a venous cannula immediately before (fasting) and 2, 4, 6, 7, 8 and 10h post-ingestion. Zeaxanthin concentration in the triacylglycerol-rich lipoprotein fraction of plasma was measured by HPLC. Results showed that triacylglycerol-rich lipoprotein zeaxanthin peaked at 6h post-ingestion for all formulations. Zeaxanthin bioavailability from the hot milk formulation was significantly higher (p<0·001) than from the others. Mean area under the curve (n 12) results were 9·73 (sem 2·45), 3·24 (sem 0·72) and 3·14 (sem 1·09) nmol×h/l for the hot milk, warm milk and hot water formulations, respectively. Results showed clearly that homogenisation of wolfberry in hot skimmed milk results in a formulation that has a 3-fold enhanced bioavailability of zeaxanthin compared with both the ‘classical’ hot water and warm skimmed milk treatment of the berries.

The beneficial effects of a traditional Chinese medicine, Cordyceps sinensis (Cs), on mice with hypoferric anaemia were evaluated by NMR spectroscopy. Experimental hypoferric anaemia was induced in mice by feeding with an Fe-free diet for 6 weeks. They were then given extract from cultured Cs (200 mg/kg body weight daily, orally) and were placed on an Fe-containing recovery diet (35 mg Fe/kg diet) for 4 weeks. In vivo31P and 2H NMR spectra acquired noninvasively and quantitatively at weekly intervals were used to evaluate hepatic energy metabolism and blood flow in the mice. During the 4-week Cs-extract treatment, consistent increases were observed in liver β-ATP: inorganic phosphate value by liver 31P NMR spectroscopy, representing the high energy state, and in blood-flow rate as determined by 2H NMR spectroscopy of deuterated water (D2O) uptake after intravenous injection of D2O. The haematological variables (the packed cell volume and the haemoglobin level) and the hepatic intracellular pH, which was determined from the NMR chemical shift difference between the inorganic phosphate peak and the α-phosphate peak of ATP, were not significantly different between Cs-extract-treated and control mice. As blood flow and energy metabolism are thought to be linked, the Cs-extract-increased hepatic energy metabolism in the dietary hypoferric anaemic mice was concluded to be due to increased hepatic blood flow.