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Herbs and Roots: The Long History of Chinese Medicine in The United States

This talk chronicles roughly two hundred years of Chinese medicine as a dynamic system of knowledge, therapies, and materia medica brought to the United States and transformed by immigrants, doctors, and patients, as well as missionaries, scientists, and merchants. Well before mass emigration from China to the United States began, Chinese materia medica crossed the oceans in both directions. Beginning in the 1850s, Chinese immigrants came to the United States and transplanted their health practices, establishing businesses that catered to both Chinese and non-Chinese patients. Although acupuncture is the modality most commonly associated with Chinese medicine today, up until the 1970s, Chinese healers in the United States typically specialized in diagnosis by pulse and prescriptions derived from mineral, zoological, and botanical sources. Over time, Chinese medicine both facilitated and undermined the consolidation of medical authority among formally trained western-style medical scientists.

Dr. Tamara Venit-Shelton is Associate Professor of History at Claremont McKenna College. She studies and teaches the social history of the American West, with a particular focus on race, labor, and the environment. Her recent book, Herbs and Roots: A History of Chinese Doctors in the American Medical Marketplace, is now available from Yale University Press.

Sponsored by the Long US-China Institute, Department of Asian American Studies, and UCI Center for Medical Humanities Questions? emily.baum@uci.edu