ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the enormously rich and rewarding biomedical research into the antimalarial efficacy of artemisinin, contained in A. annua plant materials, might be useful for textual scholarship. Malaria, for instance, is a modern scientific nosological term for which there is no equivalent in the premodern Chinese medical texts. Focusing on a physiognomy of a malarial episode such as "intermittent fevers" as a lived experience emphasizes that its perception and recognition is inextricably related to the way in which it is enacted and acted upon. Paul Unschuld has argued that malaria has a biological reality, which cross-culturally can be recognized in the local terminology of intermittent fevers; that is, han re and nue in Chinese medicine. Malaria may also present yet another face, that of convulsions. P. falciparum can cause the, often lethal, cerebral malaria.
