Session 3b: Doctors, Bodies and Medicine

Thomas Acton and Jiang Xue-Quing - Mainstream & Alternative Marketing Strategies for Traditional Chinese Medicine in London
Both presenters are at the University of Greenwich

Throughout much of the developed world a determined push is being made to back up the export of traditional Chinese Remedies or Materia Medica by establishing clinics where Traditional Chinese Medicine is practised. This export drive depends on co-operation between the authorities of the Chinese Peoples' Republic (and to some extent those of Taiwan and Singapore) and overseas Chinese entrepreneurs, who actually market the medicines and medical services. The Chinese state is the major certifier of the quality and authenticity of the medicines, and of the accreditation of the medical practitioners; it cannot, however, directly control the operation of all clinics overseas, or prevent competition from other centres of Chinese medicine. The institutional practices of Traditional Chinese Medicine overseas have, within the grand export stategy of the Chinese state, to reconcile both the commercial interests of the entrepreneurs who run the export businesses, and the professional interests of the Chinese doctors who staff the clinics.

During 1998-9 Jiang Xue-Qing carried out participant observation and interviews of staff and patients in Traditional Chinese Medicine clinics in London.. Her research suggests that although the "sickness behaviour" of clients is similar to that for clients of institutions of mainstream medical institutions in the West, the entrepreneurs running the Traditional Chinese Medicine clinics adopt a conscious strategy of presenting them as an "alternative" to the Western Scientific tradition. This clashes to some extent with the self-image of the professionals running the clinics who tend to see Chinese medicine as also scientific, which is in line with Chinese government policy of co-operation between Western and Chinese Medicine. The authors speculate that this cognitive dissonance might present more acute problems if it were not true that most patients at the point of seeking treatment are more interested in magical efficacy than scientific credentials from any medical practitioners.

Margie Pignataro - PHARMAKON and Past, Present, and Future Doctors
Carbondale, Illinois 62901

Throughout my research in the history of medicine for an English graduate class entitled "Science and Technology in Drama", and observing how the subject is treated in drama, I have discovered an underlying conflict and complex relationship between doctors and their patients. Patients both fear and revere their doctors, especially when a fatal illness is present; doctors, in turn, attempt to keep a professional and emotionally safe distance from their patients while simultaneously attempting to remain and appear sympathetic.

Dissatisfied with the treatment and characterizations of doctors in drama, as well as illness and patients, I wrote as my final project for the class a full length play in three "stages" or acts, entitled PHARMAKON. The play explores these facets of the doctor patient relationship, as well as other medicinal issues. The play takes place 200 years in the future, when medicine has become divided; this division is geographically located in areas referred to as Uptown and Downtown.
Uptown is where the elite live. Medical care is superior to anything imaginable today, with Medics available at minutes notice for instant and complete cure. This medical care is available only to those available to pay-which has caused the creation of Downtown medicine. The culture Downtown has developed "alternative" therapies that mix our contemporary methods (such as surgery) with ancient remedies (such as using arsenic to cure syphilis).

In my paper I will discuss and demonstrate how, in my play, I addressed the issues of the doctor-patient conflict, and how other issues such as Illness and Cure impact that conflict. I will also show how I pursued a fair characterization of doctors which is grossly lacking in contemporary drama.

Eeva Sointu - Glowing Health is Flowing Health: Exploring Ideas of Well-being in Alternative and Complementary Health Practices
Department of Sociology, Lancaster University

This paper is part of an ongoing PhD research project addressing the appeal and legitimacy of perceptions of the self, the body, health, and illness within complementary health practices. It appears that people involved in complementary therapies tend to view health as a fluid and individual-specific choice to self-define the meaning of an illness experience. A healthy person tends to be characterised as aware and in control, whereas an ill individual is seen as neither aware of the wider context of his or her situation, nor in control of it. The role of the practitioner tends to be that of a facilitator of well-being: A skilled practitioner is the midwife in the drawing of a self-developmental map towards empowerment and regained mastery over an out-of-control illness experience. The individual-specific therapeutic relationship also tends to be one in which the practitioner and the client experience being caring, and being cared for, in a unconditional manner momentarily and often without further responsibilities. This paper traces the values emphasised and reproduced in complementary health practices to their wider contemporary social contexts and to normative ideals of the self as aware, flexible and mobile. In the context of health being defined as a self-responsible choice, being cured involves an individual-specific re-definition of one's situation, and the re-location of both health and illness beyond solely physiological notions of the body and the self. Thus, the appeal and legitimacy of complementary health practices lies partly in their ability to help the client to re-define his or her situation according to the ideals of the aware and flexible self that is capable of remaining in control in the face of the uncertainties of contemporary living.