Dear Friends and Members of the T'ang Studies Society,
Society member, Yan Liu (SUNY, Buffalo), will deliver a Zoom talk on his new book, HEALING WITH POISONS on October 7 at 5 pm EDT. Everyone is welcome, and registration is required.
Asia in Depth
Healing with Poisons: The Circulation of Medical Knowledge in Medieval China
Dr. Yan Liu, SUNY, Buffalo, Oct. 7, 5:00-6:30pm EDT
During China’s formative era of pharmacy, poisons were strategically deployed as healing agents to cure everything from chills to pains to epidemics. Focusing on the early Tang period (7th and 8th centuries), this talk illustrates how the court regulated the use of poisons and commissioned new medical treatises to achieve effective governance. It further demonstrates how local people in Dunhuang in present-day Gansu Province in northwestern China adapted such texts, in both form and content, to meet their specific needs. By tracing the flow of medicinal substances in the Tang empire, this talk highlights the entwined processes of the rise of authoritative, standardized medical knowledge and its fluid transformations in local regions.
The lecture will be followed by Q&A and a meet-and-greet with the speaker. Please RSVP for the Zoom link:
Co-sponsored by the Asian Studies Program, the Department of History, the Georgetown Humanities Initiative, the Georgetown Medical Humanities Initiative, and the Global Medieval Studies Program.