In this episode, we speak with Dr. Pierce Salguero about his beginnings as a scholar of Buddhism and medicine, his time studying traditional Thai medicine, what counts as Buddhist medicine, and why Buddhism and medicine have always been intertwined. He  shares recent work with students documenting the thriving and diverse Buddhist medicine cultures that can be found around Philadelphia.

We also discuss his online course, BS 111 | Buddhism and Medicine, which will explore these issues in more depth!

Speaker Bio

Dr. Pierce Salguero is a transdisciplinary scholar of health humanities who is fascinated by historical and contemporary intersections between Buddhism, medicine, and cross-cultural exchange. He has a Ph.D. in History of Medicine from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (2010), and teaches Asian history, medicine, and religion at Penn State University’s Abington College, located near Philadelphia.

The major theme in his scholarship is discovering the role of Buddhism in the global transmission and local reception of knowledge about health, disease, and the body. He approaches this topic using methodologies from history, religious studies, translation studies, and literary studies. More recently, he has gotten into ethnography and documentary filmmaking as well.

Links discussed in episode

•  BS 111| Buddhism and Medicine
• The Jivaka Project
• Buddhish: A Guide to the 20 Most Important Buddhist Ideas for the Curious and Skeptical by Pierce Salguero
• Buddhism and Medicine: An Anthology of Premodern Sources, edited by Pierce Salguero
• Buddhism and Medicine: An Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Sources, edited by Pierce Salguero 
• A Global History of Buddhism and Medicine by Pierce Salguero