Enhancing the practitioner's sense of time, place, and practice: The history of Chinese medicine for practitioners workshop

Abstract

This article reproduces an exchange between academics and practitioners at the Sixth International Congress on Traditional Asian Medicine (ICTAM VI) meeting in Austin about how the history of Chinese medicine could be more meaningful, interesting, and valuable to clinicians. It provides a brief history of exchanges, the panel proposal, the abstracts of the panelists, an edited transcript of the conversation, and some concluding remarks from the participants. As more and more practitioners of Chinese medicine outside of China spend time in China, learn Chinese, become culturally and linguistically bilingual or multilingual, they seek more knowledge about what they practise than they can get in current publications in English or other European languages. The panel and this article are intended to encourage further exchange, conversations, and cooperation that will lead to new histories of Chinese medicine relevant for practitioners as much as for other academics.