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What, if not Durkheim's 'collective representations' acquired during exalted states of effervescence, gives rise to society, culture and science? Marcel Mauss provides another answer by pointing to the different rhythms of social relationships and the human effort to synchronise them. The seasonal cycle of the Eskimo [Inuit], Mauss argues, is in accord with their game; hence people disperse in summer to pursue economic activities in small bands, while they congregate in dense house-complexes in winter and engage in ritual. It would appear that Mauss draws heavily on Boas's contrast between the Kwakiutl winter celebrations and their 'uninitiated' livelihood in summer. These insights have traction for medical anthropologists who are interested in finding an anthropological explanation for the efficaciousness of 'traditional' medicines or 'indigenous' healing techniques.

Two terms for wind prevail in Chinese medical texts and practice:qiandfeng. Shigehisa Kuriyama noted thatqiusually referred to regular andfengto unruly winds. This is not contested in this paper, but it considers these connotations of wind a characteristic ofqiandfengin late imperial China in particular, and calls for an account that is more sensitive to historical change. Based on a study of twenty‐five medical case histories in the 105th chapter of theRecords of the Historian(Shi ji,c.86 BCE) and related texts, it suggests that in the third and second century BCEqigenerally designated internal andfengexternal winds. Both alluded to the spirit world:qi‐breaths tended to be associated withshen‐spirits,feng‐winds withgui‐ghosts, although there were overlaps. Breathing techniques, with their emphasis on regularity, were developed for stabilizing the mind and appeasing the emotions, whilefeng‐winds, associated with the fecundity‐enhancing weather conditions of wind and rain, were a generative principle of procreation. By medieval times, the violent and unruly aspects of wind, and their destructive potential, started to be emphasized. Accordingly,feng‐winds became the main aetiology of madness, which in early texts had been rising heat and hot bloodedness.

Artemisinin, qinghaosu, was extracted from the traditional Chinese medical drug qinghao (the blue-green herb) in the early 1970s. Its 'discovery' can thus be hailed as an achievement of research groups who were paradoxically successful, working as they were at the height of a political mass movement in communist China, known in the West as the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), a period that was marked by chaos, cruelty and enormous suffering, particularly, but by no means only, among the intelligentsia. On the one hand, China's cultural heritage was seen as a hindrance to progress and Mao set out to destroy it, but on the other hand he praised it as a 'treasure house', full of gems that, if adjusted to the demands of contemporary society, could be used 'for serving the people' (wei renmin fuwu). The success of the 'task of combating malaria' (kang nüe ren wu), sometimes known as 'task number five hundred and twenty-three', depended crucially on modern scientists who took seriously knowledge that was recorded in a traditional Chinese medical text, Emergency Prescriptions Kept up one's Sleeve by the famous physician Ge Hong (284–363).