Immortal Medicine: Understanding the Resilience of Burmese Alchemic Practice

ABSTRACT

The institutionalization of indigenous medicine in contemporary Myanmar (Burma) placed alchemy at the margins of the formal health system. The practice, however, remains very much alive. Here, I explore the resilience of alchemic medicine by unraveling the relationship between this practice and the social space within which it operates. I show that the negotiation of a space for resilience comes from the gray areas created by the weak regulatory system of the medical sector and the gap left by biomedicine. I demonstrate that the marginalization of alchemic practice has come to invest it with new political meanings that help its practitioners navigate that hostile space.

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KEYWORDS:

• Myanmar
• alchemy
• biomedicine
• institutionalization
• marginalization
• resilience

Acknowledgments

This research has been conducted with the approval from the Institutional Review Board of the National University of Singapore. I wish to thank the different healers and alchemists in Myanmar who kindly shared their time and knowledge with me, my friend Kay Thi Hla Kyi for her assistance on the field, Jeremy Fernando for his constant support, and the anonymous reviewers who helped me improve the article.

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Supplemental data for this article can be accessed on the publisher’s website.

Notes

1. This work is based on information gathered during several fieldwork trips conducted from 2005 to 2016. Research was mainly carried out in Yangon, Mandalay, and Thandwe. In all three settings, I worked mainly among Buddhist communities, conducting observations and interviews with different health care providers and ordinary people/consumers.

2. As suggested by Wahlberg’s (2012) works on Vietnam (2012), Hsu’s (1999, 2001), Taylor’s (2005) and Saxer’s on China, and Ma’s on Korea (2010:377), the institutionalization and modernization of medical practices were very much part of local bureaucratization systems in line with the modern development agenda of the state.

3. Bada means mercury, the main ingredient used in Burmese alchemy.

4. http://www.burmalibrary.org/docs15/1996-SLORC_Law1996-07-Traditional_Drug_Law-en.pdf.

5. All real names have been replaced by pseudonyms except for Hsaya Gyi U Shein, for whom issues of anonymity are not at stake given that he always operated openly and became very famous.

6. Only the treatment provided by private doctors is expensive; that provided by public hospitals and the NGOs is free.

7. The same confrontation and competitive spirit is attested by Wahlberg in Vietnam where it is said that “Southern medicine [herbal medicine] and acupuncture […] have cured some illnesses that Western medicine has not been able to” (2014:43).

Additional information

Funding

This research has been partially funded through two Research Grants from the Asia Research Institute of the National University of Singapore.

Notes on contributors

Céline Coderey

Céline Coderey is research fellow at the Asia Research Institute of the National University of Singapore. Working at the crossroads of medical and religion anthropology, she explores the diversity of medical and healing practices in contemporary Myanmar.