The Medieval Daoist Metaphor of the Cave: Cosmogony, Sacred Geography, and the Human Body

In this introductory essay to the theme issue “Intersections of Discourses – Pliable Body, the Making of Religion, and Social Definition,” we sketch the main contours of thinking about human bodiliness in religion. This relates both to the way in which bodies and ways of bodiliness feature in religious discourse and practice but also to the way in which scholarly theorising deal with human bodies in religion. Our argument is based on two main points of departure, namely that bodies are constructed products of discourse and that “religion” is a set of somaticising practices. After a long neglect, the body was rediscovered as a core topic for religious studies in the wake of four intersecting force fields, namely the interest in human bodies in anthropology and sociology, the intellectual legacy of Michel Foucault, the emergence of spirituality as lived religion, and interest in religious experience as study field. In sum, it is argued that the essays presented here constitute a reminder that religious discourses are not languages “out of this world”, but are very much human languages effecting human intentional (and unintentional) outcomes in interactional social and cultural settings.

“The nature of the body is the beginning of medical science”-Hippocrates. From the chosen Dhanvantri of ancient India to Imhotep of Egypt, to Huangdi of China, the disease was seen as a combination of the supernatural and the natural and medicine focused on healing the soul and the body. While practices have changed drastically since the establishment of the first organized medieval medical school Schola Medica Salernitana in Italy, what remains unchanged is the importance of the basics. If anything, modern knowledge and analysis have increased the emphasis laid on basic sciences and anatomy can be regarded as the backbone, the core of basic medical sciences.
 Just as a mechanic cannot repair a car without a thorough knowledge of its form, external and internal, a doctor cannot heal the human body without a deep understanding of its structure. A fact that has been understood and utilized by the likes of Herophilus and Vesalius, fathers of anatomy. The subject deals with the learning of the structure of the human body from the gross external features down to the microscopic level, at all stages of development, from the embryo to the elderly. This knowledge is essential for a physician to understand the functioning of the body, disease pathophysiology, and treatment modalities. The speciality that benefits the most from this subject in clinical practice is surgery while the rest of the specialities rely on anatomy during physical exams, symptom interpretation, patient education, and interpretation of radiological images. 
 If we talk specifically about the undergraduate medical curriculum, anatomy is a vital component of the basic sciences taught during the first one or two years of medical or dental school. The role these subjects play in the curriculum can be discussed in two categories: the ideal, theoretical role and the less-than-perfect, practical reality.
 Despite having adopted an integrated modular system, most medical schools in Pakistan, UK, and USA still teach anatomy in the first two years at the most. During these two years, a specific number of hours (from around 150 hours of total teaching time for anatomy) is allocated to gross anatomy, neuroanatomy, histology, etc. Anatomy should be taught in all 4-5 years of medical school for deeper understanding and integration, assimilated with clinical subjects. While the systems approach of teaching medical curriculum sounds fine on paper, the lack of a standardized practical application of this approach has its pitfalls, especially for complex subjects like anatomy. Study shows that students who learned anatomy via the old curriculum scored higher in the subject as compared to students taught through the modular approach. Instead of taking anatomy to a higher pedestal, newer recommendations have decreased the time and resources spent teaching anatomy, raising concerns among students, faculty, and clinicians. A sound, comprehensive anatomy curriculum needs to be created, one aligned with clinical practice, with input from anatomists, clinicians, and educationists. 
 Added to this is the issue of the anatomy faculty. In Utopia, medical schools would have a highly trained team of anatomists, proficient in the traditional and modern methods of teaching the subject. The reality, however, is bleak: anatomists have been rapidly dwindling in number with the passing years and the funds allocated to anatomists and their relevant research have been declining leading to lesser people choosing the subject as a profession. The medical world has become enchanted with fields like molecular genetics and cellular biology, diverting staff, resources, and graduate requirements to newer fields. Medical students rarely choose to teach the subject after their medical school years. Anatomists now form a very small community, and their training level has deteriorated. Pakistan has not been spared by this pedagogical plague and Ph.D.-trained anatomists are now an almost extinct species in the country adding to the multitude of challenges already faced in anatomy teaching. The problem of the ‘disappearing anatomists’ and its impact on medical education has been widely studied but no concrete steps have been taken to address this issue that threatens to disrupt the fabric of medical education.
 If anatomy is to be seen as the backbone of the basic sciences, the subject that sets the stage and scenery for all other basic sciences subjects, then dissection can be called the building block of that backbone. A lot has changed since the seventh century when the first dissections were practised and consequently outlawed for the next few centuries. Dissections can now be performed legally, within ethical parameters, and yield a treasure trove of knowledge regarding the human body. Dissection provides solid, tangible scientific knowledge and teaches important skills like teamwork, professional development, empathy, and coming to terms with the prosaic reality of death. However, due to the question of ethics and resources, dissection has been removed from many medical curricula. But has this been a wise decision? Surveys show that most medical students feel that more hours and detail should be invested in dissections and prosections. Medical schools that previously removed cadaveric dissection from the curricula realized their folly and started reintroducing this age-old practice, most of them taking steps to inculcate it along the lines of vertical integration. 
 ‘Obsolete’ is a slur frequently directed at the didactics of anatomy. While paying homage to tradition and all that can learn from it, it is imperative that the subject gains maximum benefit from the fruits of technology and development. Computer-assisted learning utilizing 2-D and 3-D imaging, virtual dissection, radiological aids, live surgical streaming, and modern educational tools like Problem-Based learning needs to be integrated especially in a country like Pakistan where most students still learn anatomy swotting over bland textbooks with the occasional once-in-a-lifetime trip to a poorly equipped dissection hall. Modern educational tools can be manna in our country where medical education is already suffering due to a lack of allocated resources and trained staff. The most avant-garde medical colleges in Pakistan are still using hopelessly outdated multimedia options, resulting in increased student dissatisfaction. 
 In conclusion, an exhaustive amount of research has been carried out to define and appreciate the role of anatomy in the undergraduate curriculum, with most clinicians agreeing to anatomy is the cornerstone of medical education. Is this subject being taught in a manner fitting its vast implications in the life of doctors and patients? The answer is no. Do most students possess an adequate knowledge of anatomy? No. If anything, the conditions of anatomy learning, despite the incorporation of novel technologies, are worsening in medical institutions, leading to potentially grave consequences for the future of healthcare. The stakeholders need to take urgent and applicable steps in the right direction.

“The nature of the body is the beginning of medical science”-Hippocrates. From the chosen Dhanvantri of ancient India to Imhotep of Egypt, to Huangdi of China[i], disease was seen as a combination of the supernatural and the natural and medicine focused on healing the soul and the body. While practices have changed drastically since the establishment of the first organized medieval medical school Schola Medica Salernitana in Italy[ii], what remains unchanged is the importance of the basics. If anything, modern knowledge and analysis has increased the emphasis laid on basic sciences and anatomy can be regarded as the backbone, the core of basic medical sciences. Just as a mechanic cannot repair a car without a thorough knowledge of its form, external and internal, a doctor cannot heal the human body without a deep understanding of its structure. A fact that has been understood and utilized by the likes of Herophilus and Vesalius, fathers of anatomy[iii]. The subject deals with the learning of the structure of the human body from the gross external features down to the microscopic level, at all stages of development, from the embryo to the elderly. This knowledge is essential for a physician in order to understand the functioning of the body, disease pathophysiology and treatment modalities.[iv] The specialty that benefits the most from this subject in clinical practice is surgery while the rest of the specialties rely on anatomy while during physical exams, symptom interpretation, patient education and interpretation of radiological images.[v] If we talk specifically about the undergraduate medical curriculum, anatomy is a vital component of the basic sciences taught during the first one or two years of medical or dental school. The role this subject plays in the curriculum can be discussed int two categories: the ideal, theoretical role and the less-than-perfect, practical reality. Most medical schools in Pakistan, UK and USA, despite having adopted an integrated modular system, still teach anatomy in the first two years at the most.[vi] During these two years, a specific number of hours (from around 150 hours of total teaching time for anatomy) is allocated to gross anatomy, neuroanatomy, histology etc. For deeper understanding and integration, anatomy should be taught all 4-5 years of medical school, assimilated with clinical subjects. While the systems approach of teaching medial curriculum sounds fine on paper, the lack of a standardized practical application of this approach has its pitfalls like the especially for complex subjects like anatomy. Study shows that students who learnt anatomy via the old curriculum scored higher in the subject as compared to students taught through the modular approach. [vii] Instead of taking anatomy to a higher pedestal, newer recommendations have actually decreased the time and resources spent teaching anatomy, raising concerns among students, faculty and clinicians. [viii] A sound, comprehensive anatomy curriculum needs to be created, one aligned with clinical practice, with input from anatomists, clinicians and educationists. [ix] Added to this is the issue of the anatomy faculty. In Utopia, medical schools would have a highly trained team of anatomists, proficient in the traditional and modern methods of teaching the subject. The reality, however, is bleak: anatomists have been rapidly dwindling in number with the passing years and the funds allocated to anatomists and their relevant research have been declining leading to lesser people choosing the subject as a profession. The medical world has become enchanted with fields like molecular genetics and cellular biology, diverting staff, resources and graduate requirements to newer fields. Medical students rarely choose to teach the subject after their medical school years. Anatomists now form a very small community, and their training level has deteriorated.[x] Pakistan has not been spared by this pedagogical plague and PHd trained anatomists are now an almost extinct species in the country adding to the multitude of challenges already faced in anatomy teaching. [xi] The problem of the ‘disappearing anatomists’ and its impact on medical education has been widely studied but no concrete steps have been taken to address this issue that threatens to disrupt the fabric of medical education. If anatomy is to be seen as the backbone of the basic sciences, the subject that sets the stage and scenery for all other basic sciences subjects, then dissection can be called the building block of that backbone. A lot has changed since the seventh century when the first dissections were practiced and consequently outlawed for the next few centuries. Dissections can now be performed legally, within ethical parameters, and yield a treasure trove of knowledge regarding the human body. [xii] Not only does dissection provide solid, tangible scientific knowledge, it also teaches important skills like teamwork, professional development, empathy and coming to terms with the prosaic reality of death. [xiii] However, due to the question of ethics and resources, dissection has been removed from many medical curricula. But has this been a wise decision? Surveys show that most medical students feel that more hours and detail should be invested in dissections and prosections. [xiv] Medical schools that previously removed cadaveric dissection from the curricula realized their folly and started reintroducing this age-old practice, most of them taking steps to inculcate it along the lines of vertical integration. [xv] ‘Obsolete’ is a slur frequently directed at the didactics of anatomy. While paying homage to tradition and all that can learn from it, it is imperative that the subject gains maximum benefit from the fruits of technology and development.[xvi] Computer assisted learning utilizing 2-D and 3-D imaging, virtual dissection, radiological aids, live surgical streaming[xvii] and modern educational tools like Problem-Based learning need to be integrated especially in a country like Pakistan where most students still learn anatomy swotting over bland textbooks with the occasional once-in-a-lifetime trip to a poorly equipped dissection hall. Modern educational tools can be manna in our country where medical education is already suffering due to lack of allocated resources and trained staff. The most avant-garde medical colleges in Pakistan are still using hopelessly outdated multimedia options, resulting in increasing student dissatisfaction. [xviii] In conclusion, an exhaustive amount of research has been carried out to define and appreciate the role of anatomy in the undergraduate curriculum, with most clinicians agreeing to anatomy being the cornerstone of medical education.[xix] Is this subject being taught in a manner fitting it vast implications in the life of a doctors and patients? The answer is no. Do most students possess an adequate knowledge of anatomy? No[xx]. If anything, the conditions of anatomy learning, despite incorporation of novel technologies, are worsening in medical institutions, leading to potentially grave consequences for the future of healthcare. The stakeholders need to take urgent and applicable steps in the right direction.

<p>The sexual body techniques of early and medieval China are treated heuristically to form a sexual scenario for non-same-sex partners that is discussed in textual sources dating from approximately 200 BCE to 1000 CE. These sources were transmitted and reformulated throughout this period as part of the wider sexual knowledge culture of imperial China. Minimal referential series of short extracts from such sources will be presented in a historical order to illustrate some fairly consistent basic ideas, concepts, theories and practical advice documented therein. This concise review discusses general aspects of the sexual scenario in which gender-specific roles during the sexual encounter must be emphasised. As ‘essence’ is considered to be the most precious generative fluid in the human body, men are advised to deal with male essence as a scarce good, and thus learn to avoid emission and ejaculation during a sexual encounter. In stark contrast to this male preoccupation with containment, women are thought to be a superior source of nourishment. Repeated female ejaculation provides the ‘female essence’ that can be absorbed by the man. Performing a sexual encounter means mutual stimulation to this end during foreplay and onset phase, followed by a series of penetrative ‘advances’ with ‘intermissions’, and culminating in a ‘grand finale’.</p>

The paper is focused on the cognitive mechanisms underlying the construction of axiological status of Tomos and autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Ukrainian religious media discourse of the last few months from the standpoint of cognitive linguistics and rhetoric. The data used for the study are interviews, announcements and other media texts of the UOC (MP) and UOC (KP) leaders and spokesmen, published on respective official websites of each jurisdiction in 2018. As a result of our study, it was found out that discussions around Tomos and autocephaly gave birth to new allusion-based phraseological units in Ukrainian media space, while also actualizing the use of religious terms which had been previously unknown to average citizens, such as "Tomos", "autocephaly", "canonicity", "Eucharistic communication", "Ecumenical Patriarch" etc. In the media context, these specific terms of the Church law have acquired axiological connotations, turning into axiologems and anti-axiologems. It was also revealed that the argumentation of the positive/negative axiological status of Tomos and autocephaly in Ukrainian religious mass media largely relies on cognitive metaphors and metonymies. In the media context, these cognitive mechanisms of knowledge categorization are of great importance in swaying the public opinion and affecting the value system of the audience. In the texts under study, the most common cognitive metaphors are "Church is body", "Church leaders are doctors", "Intra-Orthodox relations are war", "Intra-Orthodox relations are play", while the most prominent cognitive metonymy is geographical metonymy, whereby the agency is transferred to location. The most productive source domains for the metaphors, which serve to express the evaluation of current processes in the Church, turn out to be human body, medicine, war, play and crime. Decisions of Church leaders regarding Tomos are conceptualized as right or wrong diagnosis and treatment for an illness, expansionist policies or war for peace, raider attack or fair/unfair play. In the media texts produced by both sides, negative connotations are also conveyed via geographical metonymy, when the Constantinople Patriarchate is substituted for by Fanar or Istanbul, whereas the Moscow Patriarchate is referred to as Moscow or Kremlin. We have come to the conclusion that cognitive metaphors and metonymies in Ukrainian religious media discourse are used with the purpose of increasing the persuasive effect of the text and swaying the audience towards adopting the viewpoint of the addresser.

Mixtures is of central importance for Galen's views on the human body. It presents his influential typology of the human organism according to nine mixtures (or 'temperaments') of hot, cold, dry and wet. It also develops Galen's ideal of the 'well-tempered' person, whose perfect balance ensures excellent performance both physically and psychologically. Mixtures teaches the aspiring doctor how to assess the patient's mixture by training one's sense of touch and by a sophisticated use of diagnostic indicators. It presents a therapeutic regime based on the interaction between foods, drinks, drugs and the body's mixture. Mixtures is a work of natural philosophy as well as medicine. It acknowledges Aristotle's profound influence whilst engaging with Hippocratic ideas on health and nutrition, and with Stoic, Pneumatist and Peripatetic physics. It appears here in a new translation, with generous annotation, introduction and glossaries elucidating the argument and setting the work in its intellectual context.

In the autumn of 1651, Colonel Edward Harley (1689–1741) and his uncle Edward Conway (1594–1655), second Viscount of Conway and Kiluta, spent considerable time discussing Sir John Tracey’s (died 1648) recipe to brew ale. High on their list of concerns was a production step which called for water to be boiled on its own for 3 h. This essay takes an in-depth look at Sir John Tracey’s ale recipe and the ‘boiling water step’ in order to explore how and where household recipes might fit into discussions on ‘structures of practical knowledge.’ Through examining the myriad of reasons why early modern men and women might consider carrying out the ‘boiling water step,’ I reconstruct a series of contextual frames around the creation of the ale recipe. These frames include the social structure of the early modern English country house and changing contemporary ideas about water quality, diet, health and the human body. I argue that practical knowledge such as recipes are continually framed or ‘structured’ by shifting social, cultural and intellectual contexts. The longevity of particular recipes lies in their flexibility to connect with changing contextual frameworks.

© The Author 2009

Reviewed by: The Hand on the Shakespearean Stage: Gesture, Touch, and the Spectacle of Dismemberment by Farah Karim-Cooper Bailey Sincox The Hand on the Shakespearean Stage: Gesture, Touch, and the Spectacle of Dismemberment. By Farah Karim-Cooper. London: Bloomsbury, 2016. Pp. xiii + 309. $112 (hardback), $35 (paper). Farah Karim-Cooper illustrates the legibility of the hand on the early modern stage and in present revivals by establishing a compendium of ideas of the hand from conduct manuals, anatomy textbooks, religious discourse, and philosophy. She explores Elizabethan and Jacobean theatrical gesture, hands narrated in The Rape of Lucrece and Venus and Adonis, the relationship between touch and desire in Romeo and Juliet and Othello, and the severed hands in Titus Andronicus. Augmented by observations from recent Shakespeare’s Globe productions, this highly interdisciplinary work is a useful tool for any scholar of performance. In the tradition of studies of anthropological and anthropomorphized “parts” such as Jonathan Sawday’s The Body Emblazoned: Dissection and the Human Body in Renaissance Culture (1995), David Hillman and Carla Mazzio’s The Body in Parts (1997), William Slights’s The Heart in the Age of Shakespeare (2008), and, of course, Simon Palfrey and Tiffany Stern’s Shakespeare in Parts (2007), Karim-Cooper elaborates on the hand as an emblem of identity and a tool of communication. She attends to the “gestural ambiguity” of Shakespeare’s characters, arguing that the playwright composes a careful sub-narrative using hands to “transmit meanings beyond those codified in medieval and Renaissance courtesy manuals and art” (2). The first two chapters, “The Idea of the Hand in Shakespeare’s World” and “Manners and Beauty: The Social Hand” survey depictions of hands from a wide range of disciplines in countries across Europe from antiquity to the mid-seventeenth century. Karim-Cooper links Galen and Aristotle’s anatomical “perfectly structured and ideal hand” (12–13) to Vesalius’s dissections, the courtly blazon (15), and the sketches of Leonardo da Vinci (18–20); Bulwer’s Chirologia, the notion of “hand” as handwriting, and Nashe’s commentary on palmistry are said to evidence “the very notion [End Page 749] that the hand could contain and conceal inner lives and that hidden truths might be unlocked through an attempt to read it, either in social discourse or as it gestured in performance” (27). She gives equal attention to visual art, elevating Dürer’s engravings and Wither’s emblems, monarchical healing rituals and readers’ manicules to the status of texts and, in so doing, putting her own theory into practice (27–39). Though the second chapter does not forward any groundbreaking arguments—indeed, at times bordering on banality, e.g. “Etymologically and pragmatically, the handkerchief was associated for early moderns first and foremost with the hand” (48)—the early modern value placed on white, delicate female hands in the period (55–61) and the condemnation of “choppy” hands and long nails associated with witches (61–7) receive new life in conjunction with Karim-Cooper’s emphasis on performance. What these chapters lack in cohesion they make up in breadth. Throughout this section it is to Karim-Cooper’s credit that she refrains from New Historical narrative construction; she does not speculate that Shakespeare read Vesalius or saw The Last Supper. She simply gathers early modern images and conceptions of the hand—some not so different from our current ones, such as the dexterous hand as humanity’s evolution above the animals, and others decidedly alien, such as the hand “as God’s instrument of creation” and source of female original sin (27)—into a scintillating mosaic, illuminating the close readings of Shakespeare and his contemporaries that follow. Chapter 3, “‘Lively Action’: Gesture in Early Modern Performance,” defies expectations. Rather than tread the hackneyed road of Chirologia or, indeed, any hard-and-fast cipher for early modern gestural practices, Karim-Cooper explores rhetorical training, staging conventions (light, space, costume, genre), and actor emotion as intertwined critical contexts within which to imagine early modern hands in movement. She argues that gestures are influenced by character, costume, and, interestingly, space; in this last criterion, Karim-Cooper speculates on adjustments made to performances in the original Blackfriars based on...

This article examines violence and necropolitical experiences in the management of life and death in Pakistan’s largest city, Karachi and its representation by Omar Shahid Hamid in his debut novel The Prisoner (2013). Pakistan’s western border and the largest city Karachi have long been epicentres of violent actions in the backdrop of wars (for instance, the Soviet and the ‘War on Terror’) in neighbouring Afghanistan. The relationship of governing authorities with violence and necropolitics is analysed in the light of critical approaches from the works of Michael Foucault (2008), Achille Mbembe (2001 & 2003), Giorgio Agamben (1998 & 2005), and Judith Butler (2004). Through the analysis of the fictional narrative, this paper examines local and global deployment of various strategies of occupation, domination and subjugation that aims to manage human bodies through social, economic, political and religious discourses. This article argues that violence and death are used as a means of control over human bodies as represented in the novel, a situation in which some lives are disposable and are reducible to ‘bare life’ by state and non-state actors. Against this backdrop, the article highlights how some lives matter more than others in Karachi’s political landscape. This article also suggests that the landscape in The Prisoner is an embodiment of what Agamben called the ‘state of exception’, a state where (some) people are deemed unworthy of life, and are therefore, removed. It is hoped that this article will be useful to understand complex issues of Karachi.

This study explores materiality and material cultures of human placenta in Ming China (1368-1644), for it perfectly displays Chinese ambiguous attitudes towards the human body parts between living and non-living. For a long time, the Chinese had widely applied human body parts in medical treatments and ritual healings. Numerous evidences in relation to their collection, production, efficacy and application are widely recorded in medical works, in particular those found in materia medica. In the sixteenth century, the Bencao gangmu (Systemic Materia Medica, 1596) illustrates thirty-five "human body drugs." Of those, the placenta was believed effective for curing illnesses, nourishing the body and prolonging life. The questions to be answered include: how is the placenta perceived in medical and religious discourses? What is its "materiality" and "efficacy" when it becomes a drug? What ethical issues and moral concerns are involved with eating the placenta? Last but not least, how was the placenta ritually buried after childbirth in premodern China? In so doing, this essay aims to provide a better understanding of the placenta situated in both material and cosmological worlds. It helps us rethink the multiple relations of human body part to part, part to whole, and body to body.

The first evidence of spinal surgery was found in Egyptian mummies 2900 BC [1]. In the antiquity, about 2500 years later, Hippocrates who is considered “The father of spine surgery” collected a valuable heritage of knowledge and methodology about the human body. He was the first who described sciatica and low-back pain. He also proposed a traction procedure and invented devices based on his fundamental principle [2]. Concerning the cervical spine, Aulus Celsus was the first who noted death following injury of the cervical spinal cord [3]. Paulus of Aegina performed the first operative repair of injured spinal cord by removing bony fragments which irritated the spinal cord and caused consecutive paralysis in the seventh century [3]. It took spinal surgery about 1900 years until an endoscope was applied. In 1983, the first report of an examination technique for intervertebral disc space after nucleotomy via endoscopy/arthroscopy was described by Frost and Hausmann [4]. Since then new surgical technology and techniques for minimally invasive approaches have revolutionized the work of surgeons of all subspecialties. Procedures such as laparoscopic cholecystectomy and orthopedic arthroscopy have proven to decrease surgically related morbidity, shorten postoperative hospital time and improve clinical outcomes [5–7]. In spinal surgery, morbidity is associated with iatrogenic muscle and soft tissue injury due to approach and exposure of the surgical field. Particularly in lumbar spine surgery, the standard open approach leads to iatrogenic injury of the paraspinal muscles which might result in decreased muscle strength and muscle atrophy after extensive muscle retraction [8, 9]. Biomechanical studies have investigated the function of the posterior column and its importance in maintaining lumbar spinal stability [10, 11]. Serial tube dilators and retractors were designed to split the back muscle gently and thus made to minimize retraction and disruption of the paraspinal muscular integrity. Further, other studies demonstrated that the postoperative recovery of CK and CRP levels occurred within 1 week and that the intensity of low back pain was mild [12, 13]. Mayer et al. studied the postoperative muscle architecture on CT scan and its relevance for failed-back syndrome [8]. They found that the integrity of paraspinal muscles might be of utmost importance for the postoperative result. A tubular retraction system provides direct and focal access to the diseased anatomy via a less invasive approach [14, 15]. Surgery can be done by using either an endoscope or using a microscope for visualization. The microendoscopic technique for interlaminar fenestration is considered safe and effective treatment of degenerative lumbar spine diseases and makes this to be seen as an option along with the traditional technique for every spine surgeon [16].

Thispaper focuses on the encounter and collision of two different cultural systems in the influx of biomedicine and Protestant Christianity during the 1888 'baby riot' in Seoul, Korea. This research scrutinizes the relationship between religion and medicine in modern Korea to illustrate why Korean people contested against the nexus of Protestant Christianity and biomedicine that had been introduced from the West. For them, biomedicine was not simply a way of treating sickness or disease, but a way in which their bodies were examined and manipulated by placing a new gaze on the human body. These disputes developed due to the significant differences between biomedicine and the traditional perspective that was based on the values of Confucian teachings. The Korean people desired to protect the belief that the human body was a locus of virtue and should be preserved without modification, which was considered as a pivotal part of their social identity. Therefore, people who lacked social and political power tried to express their opposition to the medicine and religion from the West by spreading rumors of cannibalism. Through the spread of the rumors, the people interpreted and manifested that Western medicine was cruel, ignorant, immoral and dehumanizing. This paper states that Koreans were not merely passive recipients of biomedicine and Protestant Christianity, but also appropriated the new medical and religious discourses to maintain their dignity and cultural authority against the current of colonization.

The legacy of Cartesian mind/body dualism on Western concepts of subjectivity has been an enduring perception of the self as abstract. Identity is thus situated in the brain (or the soul, according to religious discourse) and is separate from the material body. Within this ideological framework, the human body is situated as an object, something to be controlled and dominated but which is not intrinsic to the formation or development of subjectivity. Developments in cognitive science, psychology and continental philosophy in the twentieth century have sought to redress this relegation of the body to a position of inferiority. In particular, the interdisciplinary concept of “embodied cognition” holds that all aspects of cognition are shaped by the processes of the body. The material body has often provided the basis for the exclusionary practices used to construct the unitary humanist subject — and for this reason embodiment is crucial to models of posthumanism that seek to redress such concepts of selfhood. Using the ways in which the body can be transformed and extended by technology as an ideological starting point, Nayar views embodiment as “essential to the construction of the environment (the world is what we perceive through our senses) in which any organic system (the human body is such a system) exists” (2014: 9).KeywordsVirtual RealityFemale SubjectFemale BodyPhysical BodyMaterial BodyThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

In his treatise Contra Nestorianos Leontius of Jerusalem refers to the human soul as “divine inbreathing”, which he understands as a consubstantial emanation from God. This paper argues that Leontius was confronted with the Nestorian claim that a composition between an uncreated and a created entity is impossible and that he refuted this claim by arguing that the soul is divine and that the composition of a human soul with a human body is therefore a strict parallel for the incarnation. One of Leontius’ starting points was the traditional view that Adam’s soul was endowed with the Holy Spirit and not merely with a derivative grace. This model had the advantage that it located “God” in the human being but the disadvantage that this presence remained extrinsic to the human compound. To make it function as a precedent for the Incarnation Leontius substituted the Son for the Spirit and reduced the human nature to the body thereby indicating that the soul must be equated with the divine Son. In order to distinguish the case of Christ from that of Adam and other human beings he employed the Biblical motif of the “pledge”, which was traditionally used to contrast the partial spiritual endowment of the believers in this world with their complete spiritual endowment in the world to come but which he now applied to Adam and Christ. This permitted him to claim that in Adam the Son was only partially present while in Christ he was present completely. Thus he conceptualised the Incarnation not as the composition of the divine Word with a human nature consisting of body and soul but as a composition of the divine Word as soul and a human body. Consequently the divine component of traditional Christology could no longer be given a satisfactory role in the salvation of humankind. One reason for this shift, it is argued in this paper, was a too great dependence on the conceptual framework of his Nestorian opponent whose focus had been on the endowment of the human being Jesus with the Holy Spirit, who thus assumed a crucial role in the incarnation. Leontius accepted this framework as well as the Nestorian custom to see the difference between the Spirit in Jesus and the Spirit in other human beings in quantitative terms, and merely modified it by identifying the Holy Spirit with the Son on the one hand and with the soul on the other. However, it is suggested in this paper, Leontius may have believed in the divinity and timelessness of the soul independently of his Nestorian opponent. His interpretation of Philippians 2:6-7 suggests that he was a latter-day Origenist who could express his ideas more freely than his forebears because the political circumstances of the early seventh century made enforcement of orthodoxy impossible in the Eastern provinces.