• Article

Transmitting Chinese Medicine: Changing Perceptions of Body, Pathology, and Treatment in Late Imperial China

Scheid, V. 2013. Transmitting Chinese Medicine: Changing Perceptions of Body, Pathology, and Treatment in Late Imperial China. East Asian Medicine: Tradition & Modernity. 8 (2), pp. 299-360. https://doi.org/10.1163/15734218-12341319

TitleTransmitting Chinese Medicine: Changing Perceptions of Body, Pathology, and Treatment in Late Imperial China
AuthorsScheid, V.
Abstract

Historians of Chinese medicine acknowledge the plurality of Chinese medicine along
both synchronic and diachronic dimensions. Yet, there remains a tendency to think of
tradition as being defined by some unchanging features. The Chinese medical body
is a case in point. This is assumed to have been formalised by the late Han dynasty
around a system of internal organs, conduits, collaterals, and associated body structures.
Although criticism was voiced from time to time, this body and the micro/
macrocosmic cosmological resonances that underpin it are seen to persist until the
present day. I challenge this view by attending to attempts by physicians in China and
Japan in the period from the mid 16th to the late 18th century to reimagine this body.
Working within the domain of cold damage therapeutics and combining philological
scholarship, empirical observations, and new hermeneutic strategies these physicians
worked their way towards a new territorial understanding of the body and of medicine
as warfare that required an intimate familiarity with the body’s topography. In late
imperial China this new view of the body and medicine was gradually re-absorbed
into the mainstream. In Japan, however, it led to a break with this orthodoxy that in the
Republican era became influential in China once more. I argue that attending further
to the innovations of this period—commonly portrayed as one of decline—from a
transnational perspective may help to go beyond the modern insistence to frame East
Asian medicines as traditional.

Keywordstradition; modernity; body; Ming/Qing transition; medicine as warfare
JournalEast Asian Medicine: Tradition & Modernity
Journal citation8 (2), pp. 299-360
ISSN1573-420X
Year2013
PublisherBrill
Accepted author manuscript
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)https://doi.org/10.1163/15734218-12341319
Web address (URL)http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/10.1163/15734218-12341319;jsessionid=5380sq91ka4gm.x-brill-live-03
Publication dates
PublishedOct 2015
FunderWellcome Trust (publisher)
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