Tag: Chinese Medicine
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Ancient remedies for modern times
Vicky LiDallas, Texas, United States “To a synthetic chemist, the complex molecules of nature are as beautiful as any of her other creations.”– Elias James Corey (Nobel Lecture, 1990)1 As the Vietnam War raged through the 1960s, the Northern Vietnamese army faced its greatest foe to date: drug-resistant malaria. Malaria typically causes cyclical waves of…
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American ginseng as an herbal emissary influencing Qing-American trade relations
Richard ZhangPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania, United States On February 22, 1784, the Empress of China set sail from New York Harbor.1 Destined for the eponymous country, the American ship carried thirty tons of a wild root—ginseng. The vessel reached Guangzhou via the Cape of Good Hope and returned to New York one year later, laden with Chinese…
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A brief history of kidney transplantation
Laura Carreras-PlanellaMarcella FranquesaRicardo LauzuricaFrancesc E. BorràsBarcelona, Spain We may think of renal transplantation as routine therapy today, but this procedure has taken centuries to develop and is marked by important events in the history of science. An ancient description of the kidneys is found in the Egyptian Ebers Papyrus, dated to 1550 BC and discovered…
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Tu Youyou, discoverer of artemisinin for resistant malaria
The Chinese scientist Tu Youyou received the 2011 Lasker–DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award and the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for isolating a chemical agent to be used in the treatment of resistant malaria. Born in 1930, Tu came from a distinguished family of scholars; studied at the University of Beijing; and early…
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There is power in the blood
Mark TanNorthwest Deanery, UK “Carne fa carne e vino fa sango” [Meat makes flesh and wine makes blood]—Italian proverb Laura was covered in blood when the paramedics arrived at her house. Her husband, in a state of shock, had gathered every available towel in the vicinity, but it seemed too little and too late. Blood…