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Traditional Chinese Medicine

Traditional Chinese Medicine is a two-thousand-year clinical literature that remains in daily use for a fifth of humanity. The index runs from the classical compilers of the materia medica to modern researchers who mined those texts for pharmacology, including the Nobel-recognised isolation of artemisinin.

11 indexed lives · 0 Nobel laureates · 6 countries

Where to start

Zhang Xichun

1860 – 1933

First great synthesiser of Chinese and Western medicine; his case records still teach clinicians.

China·Traditional Chinese Medicine · Medicine

Georges Soulié de Morant

1878 – 1955

French consul in China whose L'Acuponcture Chinoise opened the practice to Europe.

France·Traditional Chinese Medicine

Cheng Dan'an

1899 – 1957

Rescued acupuncture from abolition and rebuilt it on anatomical terms with filiform needles.

China·Traditional Chinese Medicine

Traditional Chinese Medicine across the centuries

19th century · 4

  • Zhang Xichun1860 – 1933
  • Georges Soulié de Morant1878 – 1955
  • Cheng Dan'an1899 – 1957
  • Keisetsu Otsuka1900 – 1980

20th century · 7

  • Zhu Lian1909 – 1978
  • Yoshio Manaka1911 – 1989
  • Deng Tietao1916 – 2019
  • J. R. Worsley1923 – 2003
  • Miriam Lee1926 – 2009
  • Giovanni Maciocia1945 – 2018
  • Ted Kaptchukb. 1947
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Related disciplines

MedicinePublic HealthNutritionPsychologyIntegrative MedicineFunctional MedicineAyurveda

The Annals

A working reference, not a finished one.

Curated entries are hand-researched; the research desk drafts new profiles on demand and flags what is uncertain rather than inventing it.

Method

Dates and lineages follow mainstream scholarship. Where a family line is undocumented, we say so — and cite what stands behind every claim.