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Date： 2024/05/28
Time： 14:00~16:00
Venue： Archives 3rd Conference Hall
Host： Prof. Fu Jia-Chen ( Associate research fellow ,IMH, AS)
Speaker：Mrs. Jennifer J. Reynolds-Strange (威斯康辛大學麥迪遜分校博士候選人)
Organizer： Western Learning and China Research Group
Abstract: With many of the first Chinese chemists in the publishing business, their long campaign to build infrastructure supporting chemical research was underway by the 1920s. One sector, pharmaceuticals, came under the eye of chemists, and pharmaceutical chemists began cultivating a space where their research interests aligned with the popular notion of science as a universal force for progress. A topic that received significant attention in popular and academic circles was chemical research and investigation of traditional Chinese medicine. The goal of this research was to prove, chemically, that this practice, so tied up in Chinese national identity, was, in fact, biochemically viable. Thus, standardizing traditional Chinese medicine using chemical terms was vital to the national project of modernizing China through scientific endeavors. 1926 was a seminal year for this community when K.K. Chen 陳克恢 and Bernard E. Read published a paper in the Journal of American Medical Association detailing ephedrine’s biochemical mechanism to treat asthma. This allopathic drug derived from mahuang 麻黃 sparked a community of pharmacists and chemists who began to use their expertise to chemically transform TCM from herbs to drugs. This research was done hoping that the medicines derived and sold internationally would retain their national identity as Chinese and the money made would fund further research. One community, the Yaobao Society 藥報社, became a hub for those interested in the intersection of chemical research, the pharmaceutical industry, and the promotion of the chemicalization of TCM.