Chinese Medicine in Contemporary China

“Volker Scheid reveals the dynamic context of Chinese medicine and its continuous process of encounter, interpretation, negotiation, and synthesis. This study’s depth of detail and breathtaking interdisciplinary scope provide a multidimensional understanding of Chinese medicine and the forces that nourish, constrain, and transform it. Any serious scholar or practitioner will want to read and reread this groundbreaking volume.”—Ted J. Kaptchuk, author of The Web That Has No Weaver: Understanding Chinese Medicine

“Volker Scheid’s book is a seriously original work. One of its great strengths is Scheid’s refusal to see Chinese medicine as either unitary or centred. He insists on its plurality, with incursions of Western biomedicine as just more elements within an already multiple field of medical practices. The other great strength is Scheid’s refusal to see medicine as static. He brings to the fore the creative interplay between Chinese and Western traditions, the dynamism that can emerge in the intersection of radically disparate techniques, remedies, and conceptual schemes. Along the way, Scheid develops a fascinating epistemology and ontology of agency, human and nonhuman, that makes sense of the plurality and syntheses that he confronts us with. This is a path-breaking book—one that could be a model for future work in the history of medicine and in cultural studies at large.”—Andrew Pickering, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign