The Expressiveness of the Body and the Divergence of Greek and Chinese Medicine

The Expressiveness of the Body and the Divergence of Greek and Chinese Medicine PDF

Author: Shigehisa Kuriyama

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2023-10-17

Total Pages: 159

ISBN-13: 0942299930

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An illuminating account of how early medicine in Greece and China perceived the human body Winner of the William H. Welch Medal, American Association for the History of Medicine The true structure and workings of the human body are, we casually assume, everywhere the same, a universal reality. But when we look into the past, our sense of reality wavers: accounts of the body in diverse medical traditions often seem to describe mutually alien, almost unrelated worlds. How can perceptions of something as basic and intimate as the body differ so? In this book, Shigehisa Kuriyama explores this fundamental question, elucidating the fascinating contrasts between the human body described in classical Greek medicine and the body as envisaged by physicians in ancient China. Revealing how perceptions of the body and conceptions of personhood are intimately linked, his comparative inquiry invites us, indeed compels us, to reassess our own habits of feeling and perceiving.

Body and Emotion

Body and Emotion PDF

Author: Robert R. Desjarlais

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2011-09-16

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 0812206428

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Body and Emotion is a study of the relationship between culture and emotional distress, an examination of the cultural forces that influence, make sense of, and heal severe pain and malaise. In order to investigate this relationship, Robert R. Desjarlais served as an apprentice healer among the Yolmo Sherpa, a Tibetan Buddhist people who reside in the Helambu region of north-central Nepal.

Neither Donkey nor Horse

Neither Donkey nor Horse PDF

Author: Sean Hsiang-lin Lei

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2014-09-09

Total Pages: 395

ISBN-13: 022616991X

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Neither Donkey nor Horse tells the story of how Chinese medicine was transformed from the antithesis of modernity in the early twentieth century into a potent symbol of and vehicle for China’s exploration of its own modernity half a century later. Instead of viewing this transition as derivative of the political history of modern China, Sean Hsiang-lin Lei argues that China’s medical history had a life of its own, one that at times directly influenced the ideological struggle over the meaning of China’s modernity and the Chinese state. Far from being a remnant of China’s premodern past, Chinese medicine in the twentieth century coevolved with Western medicine and the Nationalist state, undergoing a profound transformation—institutionally, epistemologically, and materially—that resulted in the creation of a modern Chinese medicine. This new medicine was derided as “neither donkey nor horse” because it necessarily betrayed both of the parental traditions and therefore was doomed to fail. Yet this hybrid medicine survived, through self-innovation and negotiation, thus challenging the conception of modernity that rejected the possibility of productive crossbreeding between the modern and the traditional. By exploring the production of modern Chinese medicine and China’s modernity in tandem, Lei offers both a political history of medicine and a medical history of the Chinese state.

Greek Medicine

Greek Medicine PDF

Author: James Longrigg

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-08-21

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1136782184

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First Published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

In the Grip of Disease

In the Grip of Disease PDF

Author: G. E. R. Lloyd

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2003-03-06

Total Pages: 302

ISBN-13: 9780191589287

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This original and lively book explores Greek ideas about health and disease and their influence on Greek thought. Fundamental issues such as causation and responsibility, purification and pollution, mind-body relations and gender differences, authority and the expert and who can challenge them, reality and appearances, good government, happiness, and good and evil themselves are deeply implicated. Using the evidence not just from Greek medical theory and practice but also from epic, lyric, tragedy, historiography, philosophy, and religion, G. E. R. Lloyd offers the first comprehensive account of the influence of Greek thought about health and disease on the Greek imagination.

Praxagoras of Cos on Arteries, Pulse and Pneuma

Praxagoras of Cos on Arteries, Pulse and Pneuma PDF

Author: Orly Lewis

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2017-02-06

Total Pages: 391

ISBN-13: 9004337431

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This study offers an edition and fresh analysis of the fragmentary evidence for the views of Praxagoras of Cos (4th-3rd c. BC) on arteries, pulsation and pneuma. It presents the relevant fragments and draws new conclusions on Praxagoras’ views and sources.

Translation at Work

Translation at Work PDF

Author: Harold John Cook

Publisher: Brill

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9789004362741

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Medical ideas and practices originating in China became entangled in the activities of other places through processes of alteration once known as translatio. Recognition of differences provoked creative responses in Japan, the imperial court, and Enlightenment Europe.

Healing with Poisons

Healing with Poisons PDF

Author: Yan Liu

Publisher: University of Washington Press

Published: 2021-06-22

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 0295749016

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Open access edition: DOI 10.6069/9780295749013 At first glance, medicine and poison might seem to be opposites. But in China’s formative era of pharmacy (200–800 CE), poisons were strategically employed as healing agents to cure everything from abdominal pain to epidemic disease. Healing with Poisons explores the ways physicians, religious figures, court officials, and laypersons used toxic substances to both relieve acute illnesses and enhance life. It illustrates how the Chinese concept of du—a word carrying a core meaning of “potency”—led practitioners to devise a variety of methods to transform dangerous poisons into effective medicines. Recounting scandals and controversies involving poisons from the Era of Division to the Tang, historian Yan Liu considers how the concept of du was central to how the people of medieval China perceived both their bodies and the body politic. He also examines the wide range of toxic minerals, plants, and animal products used in classical Chinese pharmacy, including everything from the herb aconite to the popular recreational drug Five-Stone Powder. By recovering alternative modes of understanding wellness and the body’s interaction with foreign substances, this study cautions against arbitrary classifications and exemplifies the importance of paying attention to the technical, political, and cultural conditions in which substances become truly meaningful. Healing with Poisons is freely available in an open access edition thanks to TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem) and the generous support of the University of Buffalo.