SEMINAR - 'Re-connecting Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), Bird Flu, Swine Flu and the 1918 Global Influenza Pandemic with the Tradition of Chinese Medicine in Australia', Rey Tiquia [26.06.2009]
Next MELBOURNE CHINESE STUDIES GROUP seminar
Date: Friday 3 July 2009, 6pm
Admission $2 All Welcome
Venue: Jenny Florence Room, 3rd Floor, Ross House, 247 Flinders Lane, Melbourne (between Swanston and Elizabeth Sts)
Topic: Re-connecting Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), Bird Flu, Swine Flu and the 1918 Global Influenza Pandemic with the Tradition of Chinese Medicine in Australia: A Cultural and Linguistic Translation of Da Wen Bing (Severe Warm Factor Epidemics) as Seasonal Viral Influenza Epidemics.
Speaker: Dr. Rey Tiquia, PhD.
"When one is afflicted by a ‘severe warm factor illness’, one will have fever, giddiness, blurring of vision, dry teeth, parched lips, deliriousness, coma; a sudden change of colour in the face to greenish black or red and a very rapid pulse. For this clinical pattern, the formula 'Chinese Rhubarb-Cattail Pollen Decoction' is indicated. However, if the throat is congested and the patient has difficulty swallowing, it is recommended that acupuncture and blood letting be performed on Lung acupoint [4.13]." Treatise on Febrile Diseases Caused by Cold Meteorological Influences (Classical Guilin On-line Edition, p. 77, circa 217 AD)
The above is China’s Hippocrates, Zhang Zhong Jing’s, description of a typical clinical pattern recorded almost two millennia ago during a Severe Warm Factor Epidemic da wen. Contemporary Chinese medicine researchers in Taiwan translate da wen as being similar to SARS or of a viral influenza epidemic like that of the 1918 global influenza pandemic. In this paper Dr Tiquia will explore this cultural translation and propose how the tradition of Chinese medicine in Australia and New Zealand, in the Southern Hemisphere, can make a contribution to the current preparations for a possible global flu pandemic.
Dr. Rey Tiquia is a practitioner and scholar of traditional Chinese medicine in Melbourne. He completed a bachelor’s degree on traditional Chinese medicine at the Beijing TCM College in 1979. He came to Australia in 1982 and began his private practice in traditional Chinese medicine in Melbourne. He is author of the book Traditional Chinese Medicine A Guide to its Practice (Greenhouse, 1996) as well as of numerous academic papers and newspaper and health magazine articles on Chinese medicine and its various healing modalities. Rey commenced his postgraduate studies at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Melbourne in 1992. He completed his Masters of Science degree (by Coursework) in 1996 and wrote his Master thesis entitled "Connecting Traditional Chinese Medicine and Western Scientific Medicine". In the year 2005, Rey completed his PhD dissertation, which looked at traditional Chinese medicine as an Australian tradition of health care. Rey’s research focuses on how to achieve symmetry between the practice of traditional Chinese medicine, Western biomedicine and other complementary and alternative medical traditions. He is currently working on constructing a Chinese north-south hemispherical lunisolar calendar that reflects the 'continua of space-time' in the yuzhou (universe).
The talk is followed by an informal, inexpensive meal in a nearby Chinatown restaurant.