Paul U. Unschuld

I am currently the founder and director of the Institute for the Theory, History, and Ethics of Chinese Life Sciences at Charité-Universitaetsmedizin in Berlin. My academic background is in Pharmacy, Chinese Studies and Political Sciences, and public health. Over the years, my academic research has focused on the history of medicine and related life sciences in China and Europe. I have published numerous articles and books on the history of Chinese medicine, pharmaceutics, and medical ethics, including a history of Chinese pharmaceutical literature. In 2017, I received the Special Book Award of China, awarded by the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television of The People’s Republic of China.

After discovering the lack of knowledge in Western countries of the historical foundations of Traditional Chinese Medicine, I created the first-time philological and annotated English translations of the ancient Chinese medical classics, as well as a first survey of handwritten Chinese texts on health care from the 16th through the 20th century. These efforts culminated in a first complete and annotated English translation of the Ben cao gang mu of 1593 published in ten volumes by University of California Press, 2021 – 2024. My increasing familiarity with historical Chinese medical responses to threats to individual health also led me to write The Fall and Rise of China:Healing the Trauma of History, an analysis of Chinese reactions to external threats. (available in German, English, Italian and Greek.)