Herbs and Roots: A History of Chinese Doctors in the American Medical Marketplace by Tamara Venit Shelton (review)

In Herbs and Roots: A History of Chinese Doctors in the American Medical Marketplace, Tamara Venit Shelton provides a fascinating and gracefully-written account of social and cultural history of the United States through the Chinese herbal medicine's lens. The debate between modern biological medicine and traditional herbal medicine has been ongoing for centuries since modern science and technology began to transform human life and the two types of medicine competed in treating diseases and winning the hearts of patients. Given our current COVID-19 crisis, Shelton's book will no doubt attract a large audience interested in the history of medicine and immigration. But the book is actually about much more: racial constructions and relations, immigration politics, Asian American lived experiences, public health, the rise of modern medicine and environmental history.

The story starts from a "Chinese doctor, Dr. John Howard" (p. 21) who practiced medicine in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in 1799 and continues on to through today. The book argues that Chinese medicine played an important but often unacknowledged role in both facilitating and undermining the consolidation of medical authority among formally trained biomedical scientists in the United States. In fact, readers will find this is also the reason why the Chinese herbalist doctors could succeed in the United States. A social and cultural history of the United States, the book conversates with the scholarship on the biographies of Chinese herbalist doctors in the United States, American orientalism, the social and cultural construction of medical authority, public health, and the humannature relationship. Most importantly, the book fills an academic lacuna in the history of medicine by focusing on herbalism instead of acupuncture—the current dominant focus of research of Chinese medicine. The book rejects the idea that there was a deep chasm between Western "science-based" medicine and Chinese medicine and shows how they influenced and strengthened each other even before the integrative medicine of the 1970s. This is an American story, but it provokes thought and provides methods on the examination of the spread of Chinese immigration and Chinese herbal medicine around the globe.

Using a variety of sources, the book brings to life a variety of stories and characters that would otherwise be elusive in historical record. Chapter 1 examines the transmission of Chinese herbal knowledge from China to the United States in the colonial period and early republic. The Chinese materia medica came to the United States through a variety of channels: trade, missionaries, historical and philosophical text, etc. As part of the larger European world, colonial Americans were fascinated with Chinese things, including Chinese therapeutic practices.

Chapter 2 examines the complex role a Chinese herbalist doctor played in the Chinese community as the Chinese began to immigrate to the country in 1850s. They took care of the Chinese immigrants but the racial and economic reality also prompted them to take more responsibilities than a medical doctor. They were grocer, broker and translator. Their drugstores were sometimes recreational, religious centers and post offices as well. They were even part of smuggling networks that circumvented the Chinese Exclusion laws. The low threshold to enter medical practice and no government licensing enabled the Chinese doctors to blur the boundary between merchants and doctors.

Chapter 3 focuses on how the Chinese herbal doctors explored business opportunities outside the Chinese community. The passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act diminished the Chinese clientele and the mass distrust in modern medicine brought them many non-Chinese Americans. This chapter also argues that Chinese medical service to non-Chinese Americans was in many ways an extension of the service economy in which Chinese laborers were prevalent, especially in the American West.

Chapter 4 examines the rise of regular medicine and the legal and rhetorical campaign against Chinese medicine by Western-style medical doctors, and chapter 5 examines how Chinese doctors struck back in numerous public channels: lawsuits, press...