This paper readdresses the assertion found in much secondary literature that Greek medicine was adopted in Tibet in the seventh and eighth centuries. I discuss some of the traces of Galenic medical knowledge in early Tibetan medicine, and raise the question of why Tibetan medical histories who mention Galen give Galenic medicine a much more significant place than is evidenced in the Tibetan medical literature itself. I discuss some historiographical considerations and argue that the centrality given to Galenic medicine is more indicative of the period in which these sources are written than of the period which they presumably describe.

In recent years there has been increasing interest in the role of animals in science and medicine. While historians have tended to focus on the processes of standardisation, increasing attention is being given to the surprising and unexpected elements of the model organism. Experimental organisms are, simultaneously, both artefacts and samples of nature. Rachel Ankeny and Sabina Leonelli put it clearly and succinctly: ‘they are systems that have been engineered and modified to enable the controlled investigation of specific phenomena, yet at the same time they remain largely mysterious products of millennia of evolution, whose behaviours, structures, and physiology are for the most part still relatively ill-understood by scientists.’ In continuously generating new questions, organisms provide novelty so essential to successful experimental systems. They are, as Hans-Jörg Rheinberger would argue, scientific objects or ‘epistemic things’, not merely predictable ‘technical objects’.

Seirogan, a popular anti-diarrhoeal pill, is arguably one of the most successful pharmaceutical products of modern Japan. What is less known is that the Japanese army initially developed Seirogan during the Russo-Japanese War as the ‘Conquer-Russia-Pill’, which was later marketed to the public by private manufacturers. Previous scholars have emphasised the top–down governmental method of mobilising private sectors to manipulate public opinion for the cause of external imperialist expansion and domestic stability during wartime Japan. But the matrix that the Conquer-Russia-Pill allows us to glimpse is an inverted power relation among the state, commercial sectors, and imperial citizens. While the Japanese government remained indifferent if not hostile to jingoistic pharmaceutical manufacturers who could easily disrupt international relations, pharmaceutical companies quickly recognised and exploited the opportunities that the Conquer-Russia-Pill and its symbolism provided under the banner of the empire. In turn, Japanese consumers reacted to commercial sermons carefully anchored in patriotic and militaristic discourses and images by opening their wallets. In other words, the popularity of the Conquer-Russia-Pill was a culmination of the convergence of a governmental initiative to enhance military capabilities, the commercial ingenuity of pharmaceutical manufacturers, and a consumer response to patriotic exhortations.