Asian Medicine

The aim of this study was to evaluate predictor variables of race time in female ultra-endurance inliners in the longest inline race in Europe. We investigated the association between anthropometric and training characteristics and race time for 16 female ultra-endurance inline skaters, at the longest inline marathon in Europe, the 'Inline One-eleven' over 111 km in Switzerland, using bi- and multivariate analysis. The mean (SD) race time was 289.7 (54.6) min. The bivariate analysis showed that body height (r=0.61), length of leg (r=0.61), number of weekly inline skating training sessions (r=-0.51) and duration of each training unit (r=0.61) were significantly correlated with race time. Stepwise multiple regressions revealed that body height, duration of each training unit, and age were the best variables to predict race time. Race time in ultra-endurance inline races such as the 'Inline One-eleven' over 111 km might be predicted by the following equation (r(2)=0.65)...

Objective: This study was designed to determine the level of awareness and extent of use of computer shields among computer users in Owo, in South-West Nigeria. Material & Methods: The subjects were selected by a simple random sampling method. Data collection was through a combination of e-mail based on-line questionnaire using the survey monkey website, and the self administered semi structured hard copy questionnaire. The information obtained from the respondents with the questionnaire included their bio-data, extent of computer use, history of ocular symptoms, awareness and utilization of computer shields. The data obtained with the study instrument was collated and analyzed using the SPSS 15.0.1 statistical software, cross tabulation of attendants results were done with chi-square test and statistical significance was set at p ≤ 0.05. Results: 108 of 124 selected subjects filled their questionnaire to acceptable level. There were a large number of respondents who were aware of t...

Objective: To determine the basic demographic patterns of cardiovascular diseases, deaths, and the frequency of clinical causes of deaths in medical wards of a tertiary health centre in a rural area, south west Nigeria. Materials and methods: Retrospective analysis of patients’ records admitted into the medical wards of Federal Medical Centre IdoEkiti, Ekiti State, South west Nigeria were conducted. The study subjects were patients of 16 years and above who died of cardiovascular diseases from January 2009 to December 2012. Data analysis was done using SPSS Version 16. Results: A total of 681 patients with cardiovascular diseases were admitted in medical wards within the study period, of which 70 died with crude mortality rate of 10.3%. Male mortality were 30 (42.9%) and females 40 (57.1%) ratio 1:1.3. The age range was 25 – 100 years with mean of 66.4 + 16.3 years, with more deaths occurring in the elderly (72%). The most frequent cause of deaths was stroke (68.6%). Conclusion: Fem...

Knowledge and Context in Tibetan Medicine is a collection of ten essays in which a team of international scholars describe and interpret Tibetan medical knowledge. With subjects ranging from the relationship between Tibetan and Greco-Arab conceptions of the bodily humors, to the rebranding of Tibetan precious pills for cross-cultural consumption in the People’s Republic of China, each chapter explores representations and transformations of medical concepts across different historical, cultural, and/or intellectual contexts. Taken together this volume offers new perspectives on both well-known Tibetan medical texts and previously unstudied sources, blazing new trails and expanding the scope of the academic study of Tibetan medicine.
Contributors include: Henk W.A. Blezer, Yang Ga, Tony Chui, Katharina Sabernig, Tawni Tidwell, Tsering Samdrup, Carmen Simioli, William A. McGrath, Susannah Deane and Barbara Gerke

The three excerpts translated below were selected from two of the earliest sources depicting the origins of medicine in Tibet. Despite their differences in terms of detail, style, and genre, each narrative emphasizes the Buddhist origins of either the Tibetan medical tradition itself, the tradition of canonical Buddhist medicine that was transmitted from India to Tibet, or even the entire field of healing knowledge. Read separately, each narrative promotes a distinct account of the origin and transmission of medical knowledge among mythical, legendary, and historical figures in India and Tibet. Read together, however, these three accounts depict attempts at the reconciliation of several competing narratives that were developing in the medical schools of twelfth-and thirteenth-century Tibet, and that continue to affect the representation of the Tibetan medical tradition today.

The epidemic of COVID-19 caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has been in the headlines since December 2019. This Think Piece presents ethnographic vignettes from a recent (February 2020) field visit to Dharamsala, where the Fourteenth Dalai Lama and a Tibetan exile community reside in the northwestern Indian Himalayas. At that time there were no COVID-19 cases in India except in Kerala, South India, which had three confirmed cases. There were no cases in Tibetan communities in India, but they were considered vulnerable because of the influx of Buddhist pilgrims from China. My ethnographic focus is on traditional Tibetan medical responses of prevention and conceptions of contagion prior to any outbreak. I explore what counts as prevention, protection, and contagion in a Tibetan medical public outreach context during pre-epidemic days, and how politics and fear of ‘the other’ merge with the preventive aspects of traditional medicinal products and public health announcements in Dharamsala. Taken together, these ethnographic vignettes illustrate how local epidemic imaginaries draw on complex webs of potency. These combine, for example, substances and their smells with mantras, protective oils, and facemasks in varied ways, all in an effort to reduce anxiety and prevent contagion.

Tenisha Dandridge is a cofounder and the current president of the Black Acupuncturist Association (US). She advocates using Chinese medicine and acupuncture to address the racial health disparities afflicting African Americans. In June 2020 an editor of Asian Medicine interviewed her about her career and medical activism. The main themes of the interview include: how racial bias results in disproportionately high rates of morbidity and mortality among African Americans; how the theories and therapies of Chinese medicine are well suited for addressing the psychophysiological harms caused by racial discrimination; why it is important to increase Black representation in the acupuncture profession; and how community-based modes of healing can expand African Americans’ interest in, access to, and utilization of acupuncture and ear seed acupressure.

This article reveals an important, yet hidden, Korean response to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 that goes beyond the actions of the state. It focuses on the Korean medicine doctors who were excluded from any government-led public health or treatment plans for COVID-19. Bypassing the state, they used telehealth to provide herbal medicines to 20 percent of COVID-19 patients in South Korea. Traditional medicine doctors volunteered their services and financial resources to fill a gap in COVID-19 care. Most observers attribute Korean success in controlling COVID-19 to the leadership of the technocratic state with buy-in from the population. However, the case of Korea offers an example of bottom-up healthcare in a community where people chose their own native cultural resources and helps to explain how doctors were able to take the initiative to autonomously work with people in the community to help to stop the otherwise rapid transmission of the virus.

In medieval Japan, so-called “four boundary demarcation rituals” were believed to turn invisible epidemic disease-bringing “demons” into visible beings. Making the demons visible, at least to the ritual experts involved, was a way of controlling them. The demons had a dual nature in that they harmed humans but could also become powerful protectors against disease and other calamities. This essay introduces the elaborate ritual culture of yin-yang divination, esoteric Buddhism, and kami worship in Japan, all of which involve “demonic” and protective deities. It explores images of two epidemic demons that serve humans as guardians and protectors against epidemic disease: Tenkeisei 天刑星, the Star of Heavenly Punishment, and Gozutennō 牛頭天王, the Bull-Headed Divine King. Tenkeisei ultimately merged with Gozutennō, who is also conflated with the deity Susanoo 素戔嗚.

Unani Medicine in the Making examines the institutions and practices of Unani medicine, the Graeco-Islamic healing practice based on the humoral theory attributed
to Hippocrates and officially recognized as a system of medicine in India. Drawing on diverse materials, including Urdu sources, interviews with practitioners,
and observations in clinics, the book explores what Unani medicine is today by attending to its multiplicity, scrutinizing apparent tensions between the
understanding of Unani as a system of medicine and its multiple enactments as Islamic medicine, medical science, or alternative medicine. Ethnographic details
provide vivid descriptions of the current practice of Unani in India, and invite readers to rethink the idea that humoral medicine is incommensurable with modern medicine and science, and that the modernization of Asian medicines invariably leads to
their biomedicalization. Ultimately, the book also discusses the relationship of Unani with Muslim communities, examining the growing practice of Prophetic Medicine in Urban India and increasing representations of Unani as Islamic Medicine.

The Tibetan medical tradition contains multitudes; its diagnoses are at once empirical and ritual and its prognoses derive from both observation and intuition. The present chapter examines a genealogy of instructions for prasenā divination and channel examination, demonstrating their distinct instances of historical emergence but also tracing their intersections within the corpus of Tibetan medical literature. This study concludes where most studies begin-namely with the Four Tantras-arguing that the orthodox instructions for channel examination in Tibet are best understood as the synthetic product of diverse intellectual developments that took place primarily over the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries.

A review of Gai Jianmin's book Daojiao yixue 道教醫學. While acknowledging the breadth of material covered, I offer critiques about the conceptualization of the project. However, rather than this being a critique simply from the standpoint of Western epistemological history, I point out that many of the underlying concerns of the book rise from cultural drivers in the contemporary Chinese intellectual climate: the drive to legitimate religion through science, for example. I point out some elements of Daoism that this overlooks, and warn against the potential for gutting the religion of its earlier meanings through over-modernisation.