Case Records as Medical Stories: A Song-dynasty Doctor’s Narration of His Own Medicine—Xu Shuwei (1080–1154)

Abstract

Abstract The key point in studying or teaching the history of Chinese medicine is on the doctrines underlying it and on its perception of the body, physiology, pathology, and its treatment. Namely, there is often a tendency to focus on reading and analysing the classical canons and therapy-related texts including formularies and materia medica collections. However, focusing on these sources provides us with a one-sided presentation of Chinese medicine. These primary sources lack the clinical down-to-earth know-how that encompasses medical treatment, which are represented, for instance, in the clinical rounds of modern medical schools. Our traditional focus on the medical canons and formularies provides almost no clinical knowledge, leaving us with a one-sided narrative that ignores how medicine and healing are actually practiced in the field. This paper focuses on the latter aspect of medicine from a historical perspective. Using written and visual sources dating to the Song dynasty, clinical encounters between doctors and patients including their families are depicted based on case records recorded by a physician, members of the patient’s family, and bystanders. This array of case records or case stories will enable us to narrate the interaction between physicians and patients both from the clinical perspective and from the social interaction. This paper will also discuss visual depictions of the medical encounter to provide another perspective for narrating medicine during the Song dynasty. Medical case records and paintings depicting medical encounters are exemplary of the potential of Chinese primary sources for narrative medicine.