This presentation will present a range of collaborative research into the history and culture of Chinese medicine that has been undertaken in the last five years at the Wellcome Trust Centre for History of Medicine, UCL. Most of my personal research involves the translation, analysis and access to medical manuscripts that date from the 2nd to 11th C. CE. To this end I work with archaeologists, palaeographers, philologists, and medical historians all over China. Apart from books and article some of the fruits of one Wellcome Trust sponsored collaboration with the Academy of Chinese medicine can be seen online at the International Dunhuang Project site at the British Library. That project spawned a number joint ventures concerned with the transmission of medical knowledge and practice, particularly along the Silk Roads. More recently the first draft of a collection of Chinese medical illustrations is online in the Wellcome Images collection. These ca 1300 images dating from 2nd C. BCE to 20th C. come complete with catalogue details and descriptions of content.

While these projects are mostly concerned with historical text and illustration they have contemporary relevance. Practitioners of traditional medicines in the modern have a different relationship to their history when compared with doctors of so-called modern medicine. They often, for example, call on the antiquity of their heritage as one form of legitimacy. Yet despite the overwhelming quantity of primary sources that history is poorly understood. As Secretary General of the International Association for the Study of Traditional Asian Medicine I established an academic journal dedicated to giving academics and practitioners a platform for the expression of their views, privileging the free exchange of knowledge over involvement in any particular commercial interest or therapeutic regime. Now in its third year we publish many articles by Chinese authors.

Given the interdisciplinary nature of my research I work with a lively set of Phd and researchers whose research necessitates having a good understanding of many scripts and languages including Chinese, Tibetan, Arabic, Sanskrit etc and who are philologists, historians and anthropologists and film makers. Our output includes books, articles, and film. We have also recently run an outreach and arts project that engaged Asians living in London in the exploration of the everyday practice of Asian medicine in the home.