Health Across the Hemispheres

In Peru, they learned that splashing urine in ears promotes wellness. In China, they went on a tour of a hospital devoted entirely to traditional medicine, where Chinese doctors prescribe herbs in lieu of pills.

But that was never the plan.

By mid-April, Michael T. Henderson ’11 and Tom Z. Wang ’11 appeared to be headed for every Harvard student’s nightmare: a summer unmarked by resume-building activities.

For months, they had planned to attend an exchange program at Oxford, and were banking on Harvard funding to help foot the $10,000 bill.

Then their funding request was rejected. Coming up with the cash was out of the question—and their plans went bust.

But Henderson wasn’t ready to resign himself to a mall job.

He walked down Mt. Auburn Street one afternoon, en route to his job at Mass. General, but detoured into STA Travel on a whim, rattling off a list of countries to a travel agent, and asking how much it would cost to get him to each one.

He learned that he could finance a trip to five continents at about half the cost of the Oxford program, and immediately called Wang to ask if he was interested in a world tour.

The two would go on to visit Peru, London, Rome, Paris, Barcelona, Egypt, Greece, and three cities in China in a span of two months.

To validate the trip—and in a move inspired by the Societies of the World 25: “Health, Culture and Community: Case Studies in Global Health” class—Henderson and Wang conducted a comparative health study of Peru and China, evaluating perceptions of Western and traditional medicine among the local residents.

“We figured if we are going to all these places, we’d do something meaningful,” said Henderson.

The pair conducted 30 interviews in each country—speaking with youths, church members, hospital workers in urban China, peasants, people in hospitals in rural Peru—and found that in both bustling cities and pastoral villages, people were much more likely to use herbal remedies for relatively minor issues, like fevers and colds, but embraced Western medicine for more significant problems, like diabetes and arthritis.

Wang said that in general, traditional medicines are more trusted and that people view traditional medicines as preventative, slow-acting treatments.

“People say, ‘natural herbs that don’t cause side effects,’” he said. “‘The bottle says side effects may include nausea, heart burn, vomiting. This is worse than what I have.’”

Especially in China, Wang said, traditional medicine is believed to pose potential long-term cures, whereas Western medicine is used to cure sudden symptoms and complex medical issues in need of immediate attention, like surgery.

“Doctors saw a distinction, but realized a synthesis of the two is the best way to treat their patients,” Wang said.

Though the two said they had learned many of these lessons in their coursework at Harvard, they agreed that hearing first-hand accounts explaining the rationale behind hundreds of years of traditional medicine was a life-changing experience.

“You have assumptions, you know people use traditional medicine, but you don’t know why,” Wang said. “Being there lets you escape from the Western, imperialistic mindset that our medicines are the best,” he said.

­—Staff writer Laura G. Mirviss can be reached at lmirviss@fas.harvard.edu.

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