Abstract
Orthodoxy and Pluralism in Chinese Medicine In imperial China, classical literati medicine regularly had to contend with and manage what it considered undesirable elements, such as demonological etiologies and local exorcistic therapies. Apart from a few periods as brief as they were exceptional, and despite repeated attempts, the supernatural was never fully expunged from the canons of medical orthodoxy. One explanation is that literati physicians could not dispense with the supernatural without undercutting the authority of the state which they embodied ; indeed the legitimacy of the state’s existence was rooted in its mandate to order and standardize the supernatural. As a result, classical literati medicine in imperial China had to accommodate supernatural elements, but not without imposing a normative orthodox discourse upon the heterogeneous local traditions that were its source— a feature that it shares with today’s Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM).
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