Traditional Medicine in Laos

Dr. Pierce Salguero sits down with two guests, Ounkham Souksavanh and Elizabeth Elliott, to talk about community engagement and community health in Laos. They discuss how Elizabeth as a medical anthropologist, and Ounkham as a physician, work together to build trust and improve healthcare access across an ethnically and religiously diverse landscape. Along the way, we learn about Elizabeth’s experience of foraging for herbs and Ounkham’s memories of growing up with traditional medicine in his family. If you want to learn about the landscape of Lao traditional healers and medicinal plants — with a few snake bites and plant talismans thrown in — then this episode is for you!

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Resources mentioned in the podcast:

• Elizabeth's dissertation: "Potent Plants, Cool Hearts" (2021)

• Pierce Salguero, Traditional Thai Medicine: Buddhism, Animism, Yoga, Ayurveda (2016)

• Richard Poitier, Yû dî mî hèng "être bien, avoir de la force" (2007)

• Elizabeth's documentary: Traditional Medicine in Southern Laos (2023)

• Brand new book released after the interview was recorded: Djaja Djendoel Soejarto et al, Medicinal Plants of Laos (2023)

Dr. Pierce Salguero is a transdisciplinary scholar of health humanities who is fascinated by historical and contemporary intersections between Buddhism, medicine, and crosscultural 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. He is also the host (with Lan Li) of the Blue Beryl podcast. Subscribe to Blue Beryl here.