Miranda Brown. The Art of Medicine in Early China: The Ancient and Medieval Origins of a Modern Archive. xv + 237 pp., illus., tables, app., bibl., index. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015. $99 (cloth).

Reviewed by: Pulse Diagnosis in Early Chinese Medicine: The Telling Touch by Elisabeth Hsu Michael Nylan Elisabeth Hsu . Pulse Diagnosis in Early Chinese Medicine: The Telling Touch. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. xv + 404 pp. Ill. $120.00 (978-0-521-51662-4). This book is a welcome if odd contribution to the expanding field of Chinese medicine. Elizabeth Hsu is a reader in social anthropology at Oxford, and her previous publications include the well-received books titled The Transmission of Chinese Medicine (1999) and Innovation in Chinese Medicine (2001). Hsu's translation of Sima Qian's Shiji "biography" of Chunyu Yi appears in volume 9 of William Nienhauser's The Grand Scribe's Records (2011). By her own telling, Hsu has been working since 1987 on this text, which is mainly a medical casebook detailing twenty-five case histories and eight dialogues on medical rationale and transmission. This protracted history may account for some of the book's oddities, since the field of early China studies has made great strides recently, not all of which are reflected in this volume. (Few items in the bibliography postdate 2002 anyway.) Still, a contribution to the field of pulse diagnosis, especially one comparing the contents of excavated manuscripts with this well-known Shiji chapter, is bound to excite considerable interest. My chief concern is that the book does not (cannot possibly?) deliver on its initial promise to provide a study free of anachronisms and ethnocentricity. The book's undeniable strengths include these: Hsu does a memorable job of separating Chunyu Yi the historical actor from Chunyu Yi the exemplary healer portrayed in Sima Qian's chapter, proving the formulaic nature of the these case histories in three parts, the (1) disorder's name, (2) disorder's cause, and (3) diagnostic quality indicating the disorder. Hsu should be applauded, too, for insisting that Chunyu Yi's treatments are not "primitive magic" (in the style of Frazer), nor "occult thought" (contra Harper), nor "natural philosophy" (despite legions of scholars) (pp. 7, 17), since all the foregoing characterizations presuppose the superiority of modern Western modes of thinking supposedly premised on rationality and reason. Hsu posits three overlapping ways to view the body: (1) the rather static "bodily architecture" of muscles and skeleton; (2) what Hsu calls "the body ecologic," which presumes seasonal change and humoral transformations; and (3) her "sentimental body," whose two main sentiments of grief/joy and anger are generated in the heart and liver respectively, which organ systems then produce the feelings we moderns tend to dub "psychological." Sense perception, especially touch (with visual perception cast as contact/impact in early China),1 plays a key role not only in guiding the body's workings but also in making it readable to technical experts and diagnosticians.2 Equally useful, [End Page 115] if perhaps somewhat overdrawn, is Hsu's observation that Chinese technicians are more interested in synchronicity and cycles than in mechanical causation. ("Knowing how" meanwhile trumps "knowing that.") Crucially, Hsu realizes that qi in Sima Qian's account does not always refer to something that permeates the entire universe; often it operates more locally. At the same time, there are undeniable weaknesses in this book. First, there is a paucity of references to modern Chinese and Japanese secondary literature on classical-era medical treatises, aside from the original reports of excavated finds. Second, having noted—quite correctly—that Chunyu Yi's biography is not really a medical treatise, Hsu quickly proceeds to treat it as such when fashioning her analysis. Far too often she resorts to external evidence from the Huangdi neijing medical compendium for determining the right way to read her text of centuries earlier, when reference to closer analogues, for example, other Shiji chapters, early legal casebooks, and the vast literature devoted to the technical arts, might have shed greater light on the preoccupations threading through in Chunyu Yi's "biography." Third, Hsu is more positivist than the extant sources allow; as we have but one-one thousandth of what once existed, by some estimates, one is inclined to query such definite statements as "the inner aspect of the 'sentimental body' comprised only two feelings, joy/grief and...

Miranda Brown. Cambridge University Press, New York, 2015. 237pp. ISBN: 978-1-107-99705-6. ![Graphic][1] The title of this book may be slightly misleading, because, as Miranda Brown says at the outset, it is not about how medicine was practised in early China but about how the ancient healers have been understood in both Europe and China. From this one might think that the book would have little relevance for modern acupuncture practitioners, especially as there is little discussion of acupuncture specifically, contrary to what the cover illustration might suggest. That was my own initial impression, but further reading convinced me I was wrong. In the 20th century the main sources of information for Westerners interested in the history of Chinese medicine were the writings of Joseph Needham and Lu Gwei-djen. … [1]: /embed/inline-graphic-1.gif

Initial analysis of the contents of the Laoguanshan manuscripts shows there is an emphasis on a number of healing principles and techniques that have been associated with Bian Que: puncturing the mai-channels to heal disease; diagnosis based on examining the appearance and palpating multiple sites on the body; reverence for the mantic arts, and the superior physician who can correctly “determine whether [the patient] will live or die.” These characteristics have been ascribed to Bian Que across a number of domains: through non-medical texts that describe cases or anecdotes, passages in the received medical literature ascribed to a person or lineage with this name, and material evidence from Han dynasty mortuary art. Widespread references to Bian Que in medical and non-medical works indicate that citing the name constituted a recognizable and potent mode of establishing authority. Although we cannot completely reconstruct the medical practices of a person, clan, or mode of authority called “Bian Que,” the traces that remain substantiate claims that a set of ideas and practices associated with Bian Que was revered as efficacious healing worthy of study and transmission.

Book Reviews 143 Food, Sacrifice, and Sagehood in Early China ROEL STERCKX. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. vi, 235 pages. ISBN 978-1-107-00171-8. £55.00, US$90.00, hardcover. Roel Sterckx’s new book is a welcome addition to the growing volume of publications on early Chinese history. Sterckx explores aspects of food culture in early China, primarily— albeit not exclusively—in the context of sacrificial activities; this focus allows him to address manifold issues concerning the philosophy of sacrifices, conceptualization of human senses, and early Chinese economic history and political thought. This rich and well written book will become indispensable to everybody interested in China’s food culture, in early Chinese religious history, and also to many students of early Chinese philosophy. References to food and food-related metaphors are ubiquitous in early Chinese texts, and this very richness of sources may have impeded systematic research on these topics in the past. In facing this challenging task, Sterckx relies on his awesome erudition, which was fully visible already in his first magnum opus, The Animal and the Daemon in Early China.1 In Food, Sacrifice, and Sagehood Sterckx utilizes, even if inevitably briefly, most of the received texts from the Springs-and-Autumns (770–453 BCE), Warring States (453–221 BCE), and the Han (206 BCE–220 CE) periods; these, in addition to occasional references to the paleographic sources and to archeological discoveries, allow Sterckx to present a panoptic view of Chinese sacrificial culture. The scope of the book is impressive both in terms of the periods covered (Sterckx expands his discussion at times both backwards, to the Western Zhou period [ca. 1045–771 BCE], and forwards, toward the post-Han sources) and in terms of topics covered, which include food habits of the elite, food as philosophical and political metaphor, nature of the human interaction with the deities, the economics of sacrifice, and aspects of sagehood and of rulership in pre-imperial and early imperial China. While not all of these topics are covered with equal density, and while the discussion on many issues may require further fine-tuning and modifications, overall the position of the Food, Sacrifice, and Sagehood as a standard for any future exploration in the field seems to me undeniable. The quasi-encyclopedic nature of the Food, Sacrifice, and Sagehood allows a reader to select a chapter close to his/her field of interest and read it as a separate essay; yet it is also possible to discern a few common ideas that underlie Sterckx’s discussions. Among these, the most interesting to the present reviewer is the author’s emphasis on multiple tensions that accompanied almost any imaginable aspect of food and sacrificial culture. Food and drinks were the source of nourishment and high joy, but also potentially of self-destructive overindulgence; deities had to be fed much like the humans, but the most exquisite offering was, paradoxically, the tasteless stew; sacrifices were essential for the community well-being, 1 Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2002. 144 Journal of Chinese Religions but also potentially damaging due to the waste of resources; and, while the sage rulers were supposed to be all-hearing and clairvoyant (congming 聪明), their ears and eyes had to be covered to prevent direct contact between their senses and their environment. By highlighting these tensions, Sterckx adds another dimension to our understanding of the deeply contradictory nature of China’s sacrificial, and, more broadly ritual culture with its embedded tension between the ritual and reality, between the image of perfect order generated through elaborate ceremonies and the imperfect sociopolitical situation; between persistent appeal to divine support and a somewhat equivocal belief in its efficacy. Speaking of tensions, one may identify some of them in the book itself. Perhaps the most significant one is between Sterckx-anthropologist and Sterckx-historian. The first tends to depict Chinese food consumption and sacrificial practices as if they were uniform throughout the six to ten centuries under discussion, perpetuating, inadvertently, the long bygone image of changeless China. The author frankly explains why he eschews chronological treatment of the topics under discussion: given the notoriously unreliable dating of major texts, most notably of ritual compendia...

Abstract: Against the backdrop of the modern-era conflict between traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and Western medicine, during which Western medicine gradually gained administrative authority over public health, Chinese medicine faced an existential crisis. Due to Shang Han Lun (《伤寒论》 Treatise on Cold Damage) being characterized by its emphasis on clinical efficacy rather than metaphysical speculation, and under the influence of Japanese Kampo medicine, which highly valued the study of Shang Han Lun and promoted Chinese-Western integration, Shang Han Lun Theory emerged as a primary breakthrough point for the scientification of TCM. Modern-era scholars of Shang Han Lun Theory developed innovative interpretations of the Six Meridians from multiple perspectives, including reinterpretation based on syndromic patterns, Organ Structures and Physiopathological Mechanisms, the Stage-Based Model, and Pathological Location and Nature. They also incorporated new scientific knowledge such as bacteriology, physiology, pathology, and pharmacology to reinterpret the etiology, medicinals, and formulas within the Shang Han Lun.Moreover, these scholars pioneered the clinical co-application of Western pharmaceuticals with Shang Han Lun–based formulas, introduced Western diagnostic instruments into TCM clinical practice, and explored institutional models of the Integration of TCM and Western Medicine. These innovations and transformations led to the formation of a new research paradigm within Shang Han Lun Theory, which not only countered the criticisms from Western medicine, thereby preserving the academic and clinical space for TCM, but also initiated a new educational model for Shang Han Lun studies. More importantly, it laid a crucial theoretical and practical foundation for the post-1949 development of the Integration of TCM and Western Medicine, marking a significant milestone in the modern history of Chinese medicine.

The name Bian Que, like that of the Yellow Emperor (Huangdi), has reverberated through the development of Chinese medicine since the time of the Warring States. The discovery of a human figurine showing channels and strategic points, together with a number of medical texts, during the excavation of the Laoguanshan Han tomb in Chengdu, Sichuan, in 2012–13 has reignited controversies about whether it is correct to speak of a specific Bian Que school, or whether, as this paper argues, these texts were written by the Han physicians who used Bian Que as a mouthpiece to record their own medical expositions. The paper begins by examining the main characteristics of the Laoguanshan human figurine and discusses what this excavated artifact reveals about the early history of Chinese medicine. It questions the existence of the so-called Bian Que school and, obliquely, the suggested relationships between the school and the figurine and between the school and medical texts found in the same tomb. The paper shows how diverse the disjointed knowledge of medicine was and that the idea of a “school” does not accurately reflect what was happening in the transmission of medical knowledge during the Warring States, Qin, and Han periods (475 BCE–220 CE).

Excavated from the Western Han tomb in Tianhui Town (天回镇), Jinniu District (金牛区), Chengdu, China, Tian Hui Yi Jian (《天回医简》 Tianhui Medical Slips) were penned during the Warring States period by the renowned physician Bian Que (扁鹊) and his students. Since their discovery, the medical, historical, and archaeological communities have given them considerable attention. This paper sorts out the diagnostic content of Tian Hui Yi Jian from various aspects of inspection, palpation, inquiry, listening and smelling examination and provides a summary and analysis of four features: the concept of the correspondence between heaven and man is the foundation, the idea of the five elements throughout the whole process, extremely focus on pulse diagnosis, emphasize a comprehensive analysis of four examinations. These analyses can investigate the value and significance of Tian Hui Yi Jian in developing traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) diagnosis history. In this way, we aim to reproduce the overview and level of TCM diagnostics at that time, clear up some ambiguous understanding of its development history, and provide a reference for further research on the origin and development of TCM.

Chapter 6 - Tongue and Pulse Diagnosis

Reviewed by: The Politics of the Past in Early China by Vincent S. Leung Lothar von Falkenhausen The Politics of the Past in Early China. Vincent S. Leung. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. xii + 202 pp. Hardcover US $100, ISBN 9781108425728; Paperback US $30, ISBN 9781108443241; E-book US $80, ISBN 9781108619196. In his introductory chapter, Leung forcefully dismantles the essentializing notion, pervasive in older Sinological writings, that references to the past in early Chinese texts were overwhelmingly didactic in their motivation. He instead proposes to focus on the “deliberate mobilization of the field of the past as ideological capital toward the construction or deconstruction of various political arguments and ethical ideas” (p. 13). So far, so good, but can anyone come up with a new and truly superior understanding? As one reads on, such initial doubts are quickly dispelled. Chapter by chapter, Leung carefully builds a compelling and, as far as I am able to judge, quite original argument that does justice both to the diversity of the texts and the agency of their authors in their historical and sociopolitical circumstances. The textual loci adduced in support of this new narrative are judiciously chosen and conscientiously translated. Rather than attempting to cover every pertinent text, Leung deliberately restricts himself to a limited range. The result is a slim but intelligent volume that is eminently worth reading. Chapter 1, by far the longest in the book, ranges from the Western Zhou bronze inscriptions to the Confucian Analects and the Mozi. In contradistinction to the protagonists of the Bronze Inscriptions, who dwelled upon their genealogical links to illustrious ancestors in ritual settings, Confucius—in what strikes one as an astonishingly modern gesture—was the first to treat the past as a veritable smørgåsbord of precedents available to all comers, regardless of background, to help them determine their course of action as autonomous moral agents in the present age. The authors of the Mozi, while sharing a similar outlook on the past, flipped Confucius’s vision by treating the past as a series of negative examples illustrating the chaos that would ensue if individuals were to exert their autonomy instead of submitting under the discipline of an orderly régime imposed by a sage ruler. Chapter 2 juxtaposes the Laozi (as represented in the manuscript text excavated at Guodian, Jingmen [Hubei]) and the Mengzi. According to Leung, these two approximately contemporaneous texts both implicitly deny the relevance of any historical reference: the Laozi by initiating a “cosmogonic turn” and tracing the origins of the world way back to a patently mythical female figure; and the Mengzi by insisting that it is only one’s inborn moral nature, rather than any precedent from history, that will determine human action in concrete situations of the present. Chapter 3 treats the attitudes to the past espoused in the writings of the Warring States-period Legalist thinkers and the imperial Qin ideologues. While the former constantly referred to the past as a way of emphasizing that times had changed and historical precedent was useless in dealing with new circumstances, the latter proclaimed [End Page 485] the end of all history. The Qin world order was intended to work like mechanical clock-work, creating a never-varying pattern that accommodated all conceivable situations and events, and that, if successfully imposed, would have removed all need to account for individual cases; in other words, it would have assimilated human life to natural history. In chapter 4, Leung describes how the early Western Han thinkers Jia Yi and Lu Jia reacted to the failure of Qin by reviving, in Jia’s case, a Confucian vision of autonomous agency guided by historical precedents (which now included the failures of the Qin), or anchoring, in Lu’s case, a new view of the world in the study of the Confucian classics, which were now reinterpreted as revealed knowledge transmitted from the sages of the past. Chapter 5 zeroes in on two chapters in the Shi ji that deal with economic issues. Leung juxtaposes the anarchist model of a natural economy that works best without any institutional interference presented in the “Huozhi liezhuan [Biographies of the money-makers]” chapter against...

Shang Han Zheng Jie is a four-volume medical book, an annotation for Shang Han Lun by Dai Yaochi in the Qing Dynasty. It was first published in the tenth year of the Tongzhi Period in the Qing Dynasty (1871). It was found that the existing version is only the engraved one in the tenth year of the Tongzhi Period (1871). The book consisting of three full volumes with each volume separately located in the library of Anhui University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, the library of Shanghai University of Chinese Medicine, and the library of the Medical College of Shanghai Jiao Tong University respectively. The one with the author's stamp, collected by the Anhui University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, is believed to be the most valuable version. Beyond that, the other two fragment books have been collected by the Medical Branch of Wuhan University Library and the library of Tianjin Medical College respectively. Its author Dai Yaochi annotated Shang Han Lun by revising, deleting, splitting and merging the content to minimise negligence and playing new tricks. He believed that "typhoid fever is a process of identifying the six meridians. If the six meridians failed to be clarified, the clinical symptoms would not be treated reasonably" after editing the complicated and messy provisions of the original texts. Therefore, he recompiled the style of Shang Han Lun in his book Shang Han Zheng Jie, reorganised his book with the Six Meridians, and reinterpreted Shang Han Lun based on his own understanding and other annotations of previous authors.

Interview with Dr. Liu Qingquan: Traditional Chinese Medicine for COVID-19 Diagnosis and Treatment

This article investigates the development of Chinese medicine during the Qin and Han dynasties. It focuses on the formation of theoretical foundations such as the Yin-Yang theory and the Five Elements, as well as the development of practical treatment methods including acupuncture, herbal medicine, and pulse diagnosis. The author highlights the contributions of prominent figures in Chinese medicine during this period, such as Zhang Zhongjing and Li Shizhen, whose works have become foundational to the field. The article also examines various medical treatises that have survived to this day and contain valuable information on treatment methods, medicinal substances, and the philosophical underpinnings of Chinese medicine. The significance of the Qin and Han dynasties in shaping traditional Chinese medicine as a comprehensive system of knowledge and practices that continues to influence medicine today is emphasized. Methodology of the research. The research methodology is grounded in the principles of historicism, objectivity, systematicity, and interdisciplinarity. The study employs general scientific, specialized historical, and interdisciplinary methods. Each of these methods has proven effective in its specific context, allowing for an objective investigation into the genesis and evolution of the foundational theoretical concepts of Chinese medicine during the Qin and Han dynasties, as well as an assessment of their impact on the subsequent development of the field. Conclusions. The era of the first centralized empires in ancient China marked a flourishing of culture and science. The empire achieved significant power, and Chinese scholars actively developed knowledge about the world around them. This period laid the groundwork for the development of Chinese medicine. Chinese physicians of that time made significant achievements: they first applied the method of clinical disease description, performed complex surgical operations, and developed various treatment methods such as acupuncture, herbal medicine, and pulse diagnosis. The first medical treatises were created, forming the foundation for the subsequent development of Chinese medicine. The theories of Yin and Yang and the Five Elements became the theoretical basis of Chinese medicine. Chinese physicians viewed a person as a unified system interacting with the environment, and treatment was aimed at restoring harmony in the body. The widespread use of medicinal plants was an important aspect of Chinese medicine. Pulse diagnosis became one of the most characteristic diagnostic methods. Chinese medicine of that time actively interacted with the medical systems of other peoples, contributing to its development. Thus, the Qin and Han dynasties marked the golden age of the formation of the foundations of traditional Chinese medicine. It was during this period that the theoretical foundations were laid and practical treatment methods were developed, which determined the development of this medical system for millennia to come

Literature of TCM contains abundant information of Chinese medicine. Traditional Chinese medicine information is characterized by its high degree of knowledge-intensive and complex inter-knowledge, so it is difficult to integrate and share knowledge. The Shanghanlun is one of the Chinese medical classics, and it includes the rules and methods of syndrome differentiation and treatment and it showed good effects in the clinical application. However, it is difficult to master for beginners. As a kind of knowledge organization tool, topic maps can flexibly define the relationship between knowledge, which realizes the visualization of knowledge network, and integrates and shares the distributed knowledge. This paper focused on the current situation of topic maps researches. The topic maps was used to organize the original content of Shanghanlun, construct the concept model of it and explore the specific application of topic maps technology in the field of traditional Chinese medicine. Key words: Shang Han Lun; Traditional Chinese medicine and pharmacy; Knowledge organization; Topic maps

Elisabeth Hsu (ed.), Innovation in Chinese medicine, Needham Research Institute Series, No. 3, Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. xv, 426. £55.00, US$80.00 (hardback 0-521-80068-4) - Volume 48 Issue 2

In March 11, 2011, worst disaster called Sendai Quake attacked the north east side of Japan. In the disaster area, Tsunami removed the all building, so, we need simple and easy medical equipment. As the portable device, Electric doctor bag has been invented. In the traditional and alternative medicine, a pulse diagnosis is one of the most important diagnostic methods. However, there was no paper in which the medical evidence of a pulse diagnosis was shown. We invented the quantitative diagnosis machine which could carry out a pulse diagnosis scientifically. This machine could perform a pulse diagnosis using three pressure sensors. The pulse diagnosis is reproduced by various pressures being applied to three pressure sensors from external surface. Three experimental series including the experiments using model circulation circuit, an animal experimental series, and a clinical application with pulse diagnosis machine were conducted. Chaos theory was used for the evaluation in the clinical application of the pulse diagnosis machine. At least as for the part, the data which are in agreement with a traditional Chinese medicine by this pulse diagnosis machine are obtained. A part of Chinese medicine may have the scientific basis medically, in future. Scientific evidence may be able to be given to a pulse diagnosis for the first time in the world using invention of this pulse diagnosis machine.