C. Pierce Salguero, associate professor of Asian history and religious studies at Penn State Abington, provides an introduction to the principles of Sino-Buddhist medicine, the product of centuries of cross-cultural exchange between medieval India and China.

Susan Burns, professor of history at the University of Chicago, explores the incorporation of saffron into Japanese pharmacology, a complex process that involved the rise of natural science and a "productive confusion" that linked saffron with other botanicals.