Title: Alluring Stimulant: Poison, the Body, and a Reinterpretation of Side Effects
Abstract: Patient experience has been an important topic in disability studies. How do we interpret varied sensations that reveal the condition of a patient’s body and suggest approach to healing? This talk tries to address the question by interrogating the concept of “side effects.” Going beyond the Western biomedical framework, the talk presents a case study of an arsenic drug named Five-Stone Powder (Wushi San), one of the most craved medicines in medieval China due to its perceived power to enhance the body and illuminate the mind. Mismanaged, however, the powder could trigger devastating effects on the body, even death. By examining the popular yet controversial drug and the debates surrounding it among physicians and scholars, this talk highlights the central role of bodily sensations in administering the stimulant and more broadly, the dynamic and processual characteristic of drug therapy in Chinese healing culture that challenges the prevailing view of “side effects” in biomedicine today.
Bio: Yan Liu is an associate professor in History at SUNY, Buffalo. He specializes in the history of medicine and healing in premodern China, with a focus on material practices of medicine, religious healing, the history of the senses, and the global circulation of medical knowledge. His first book, Healing with Poisons: Potent Medicines in Medieval China, was published by the University of Washington Press in 2021 (open access available). His second book project explores the circulation of aromatic medicines and olfactory knowledge along the Silk Roads from the 7th to 13th century.
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