Students travel to China to learn about traditional medicine

A group of UConn students traveled across the globe this summer to learn about medical practices that have existed for thousands of years.

Seven students from the School of Pharmacy and six from other academic disciplines spent five weeks in Beijing, China studying traditional Chinese medicine.

They took field trips to herb farms and pharmaceutical groups, watched acupuncture performed on patients, and studied Mandarin. They also visited hospitals that prescribe herbal medicine and the factories that produce it.

“It was an amazing experience,” says Grzegorz Rdzak, who is in UConn’s Pharm.D. program. “I never would have done something like this on my own. I learned a lot about the culture and many aspects of herbal medicine.”

UConn Study Abroad and the School of Pharmacy sponsored the program. Courses were conducted at the Peking University School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, which has had a “sister” relationship with UConn’s School of Pharmacy since 2007. The students lived at the university’s health sciences campus in the center of Beijing.

Although Western medicine is practiced in China, most citizens rely heavily on traditional Chinese medicine, says the program’s director, Diane Burgess, a professor of pharmaceutical sciences.

“Traditional Chinese medicine covers a range of medicinal practices that developed over thousands of years, including herbal medicine, massage therapy, and acupuncture,” she says.

“Our program focused on herbal medicine, which is becoming a popular method of treatment in the West. We wanted our students to see how this other type of medicine is such an accepted part of the Chinese culture, to learn more about it and how well it works.”

Students earned six credits for the program, which included seminars that covered the history and the basic theories of traditional Chinese medicine.

They also studied the morphology and chemistry of Chinese herbs and minerals, quality control, and the clinical use of the medicines. Faculty at Peking University presented the lectures. The students were also required to take 28 hours of instruction in Mandarin.

Students visited pharmaceutical groups and observed the preparation of Chinese herbs. They were shown ancient and modern processing methods, and learned how the major dosage forms are manufactured, including pills, powders, tablets, and capsules. At herb farms, students learned how to identify plants and prepare sample specimens.