An "ethno-archaeology" of the antimalarial herb qinghao (Artemisia annua L.)
There is a wealth of articles on the chemical structure of Artemisinin (qinghaosu), its pharmacology and its clinical efficacy, but hardly any research has been conducted on the Chinese medical herb, qinghao. The compound word qinghao appears already on manuscript texts, unearthed from a tomb that was closed in 168 BCE near Mawangdui in Hunan province, PR China. In this manuscript text, qinghao is recommended, in combination with other materia medica, for the treatment of so-called 'female haemorrhoids' which are said to ooze blood (like a menstruating woman). This is much in line with the early materia medica literature of the received tradition which recommends it for treating wounds, warts, cuts, lice, and the like. The materia medica literature recommended it, in combination with other materia medica, for a wide variety of disorders. It is only in the Song dynasty, that intermittent fevers were indications for its use, according to the materia medica literature. This was presumably due to the increased incidences of malaria, as wet rice started to be cultivated on a large scale then, particularly along the lower Yangtze. A long article on how the recommended usages of qinghao changed over time, hand in hand with changed preparation methods, from the early 2nd to the late 16th century has recently been published in a book straddling the interface of medical anthropology and ethnobotany, Plants, Health and Healing.
The earliest indication to use qinghao for treating acute episodes of an intermittent fever is in a book by Ge Hong called Emergency Prescriptions kept in one's Sleeve (Zhou hou bei ji fang, chapter 3.16, ca 340 CE). The recommendation for treating so-called 'intermittent fevers' is: "Take a bunch of qing hao and two sheng (2 x 0.2 litres) of water for soaking it, wring it out to obtain the juice and ingest it in its entirety." In other words, now that the antimalarial efficacy of Artemisinin has been scientifically researched and demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt, one can impute into this ancient text, with hindsight, that Ge Hong recommended preparing a fresh juice of qinghao to combat acute malarial fever episodes (rather than a herbal tea, as currently recommended by Anamed).
In all awareness that the identification of qinghao, known to the Chinese medical historian through textual evidence, with the plant known by the Latin name Artemisia annua L. is fraught with difficulties (as is indeed any identification of a locally known plant with any botanical species), Professor Elisabeth Hsu has undertaken research with pharmacognocist Dr Colin Wright, at the University of Bradford, on an "ethno-archaeology" of qinghao. To be sure, the motivation for this project is not of a nationalistic kind nor is it meant to be part of a programme that sets out to empirically demonstrate the accuracy of the "discoveries" of the ancient Chinese (although preliminary results have done so). Rather, as outlined in the introduction to the above mentioned book on Plants, Health and Healing, this research grows out of an ecological critique of an empiricist stance of perception and draws impetus from Bruno Latour's 'realistic realism'. It advocates a practical stance in anthropological research that takes seriously the call to view the human-in-the-environment as a continuum (Ingold 2000).
This "ethno-archaeological" project aims to pursue questions that plants in medical practice, as observed in contemporary (ethnobotanical) research or as described in ancient texts, bring for further exploration to the natural scientist. For instance, in many places on this globe people work with fresh plant extract applications in medical treatment but modern science knows very little about their efficacy. Another, more specific question that is currently being pursued, is: there are distinctions in appearance of two varieties of the qinghao plant that a Chinese scholar made one thousand years ago, which echo those of modern botanists between Artemisia annua L. and Artemisia apiacea Hance. The research undertaken explores whether this distinction may have any botanical and medical validity. In other words, are Artemisia annua L. and Artemisia apiacea Hance the same species? The Flora Sinensis suggests so but not the Flora of Korea. The Flora of Korea describes the former as an annual plant and the latter as a perenniel one.