Pub Date : 2024-01-22DOI: 10.1163/15734218-12341528
Qi Zhou, Catherine Xin Xin Yu
Apart from the seven medical treatises excavated from Laoguanshan Tomb M3, there were also medical artifacts: an iron mortar and pestle for medicine, remains of plants that seem to be medicine, and a tiny figurine decorated with red and white lacquered lines. In accordance with the Han period funerary practice of “serving the dead as serving the living” (shi si ru shi sheng 事死如事生), these funerary medical artifacts are likely related to the profession and daily life of the tomb’s occupier, in this case, very probably a medical official. This article introduces the lacquer figurine and the “channels” (jingmai 經脈) it illustrates in relation to roughly contemporaneous textual accounts of similar channels that have been excavated from tombs that were sealed in the Western Han (202 BCE–9 CE) period, as well as to accounts in the medical classics that were passed down and printed over one thousand years later than the date of the Laoguanshan tomb.
{"title":"Research on the Lacquered Channel Figurine Excavated from a Han Tomb in Tianhui","authors":"Qi Zhou, Catherine Xin Xin Yu","doi":"10.1163/15734218-12341528","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15734218-12341528","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Apart from the seven medical treatises excavated from Laoguanshan Tomb M3, there were also medical artifacts: an iron mortar and pestle for medicine, remains of plants that seem to be medicine, and a tiny figurine decorated with red and white lacquered lines. In accordance with the Han period funerary practice of “serving the dead as serving the living” (shi si ru shi sheng 事死如事生), these funerary medical artifacts are likely related to the profession and daily life of the tomb’s occupier, in this case, very probably a medical official. This article introduces the lacquer figurine and the “channels” (jingmai 經脈) it illustrates in relation to roughly contemporaneous textual accounts of similar channels that have been excavated from tombs that were sealed in the Western Han (202 BCE–9 CE) period, as well as to accounts in the medical classics that were passed down and printed over one thousand years later than the date of the Laoguanshan tomb.","PeriodicalId":34972,"journal":{"name":"Asian Medicine","volume":"45 8","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139606802","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-01-22DOI: 10.1163/15734218-12341545
Harry Yi-Jui Wu
{"title":"Madness in the Family: Women, Care, and Illness in Japan, written by H. Yumi Kim","authors":"Harry Yi-Jui Wu","doi":"10.1163/15734218-12341545","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15734218-12341545","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":34972,"journal":{"name":"Asian Medicine","volume":"93 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139606469","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-01-22DOI: 10.1163/15734218-12341530
Shelley Ochs
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.
{"title":"Reflections on Bian Que in Religious and Medical Traditions in Early China","authors":"Shelley Ochs","doi":"10.1163/15734218-12341530","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15734218-12341530","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Initial 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.","PeriodicalId":34972,"journal":{"name":"Asian Medicine","volume":"16 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139607205","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-01-22DOI: 10.1163/15734218-12341540
E. Gurevitch
{"title":"Body and Cosmos: Studies in Early Indian Medical and Astral Sciences in Honor of Kenneth G. Zysk, edited by Knudsen, Toke Lindegaard, Jacob Schmidt-Madsen, and Sara Speyer","authors":"E. Gurevitch","doi":"10.1163/15734218-12341540","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15734218-12341540","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":34972,"journal":{"name":"Asian Medicine","volume":"9 11","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139609355","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-01-22DOI: 10.1163/15734218-12341546
Jan M. A. van der Valk
{"title":"Healing at the Periphery: Ethnographies of Tibetan Medicine in India, edited by Laurent Pordié and Stephan Kloos","authors":"Jan M. A. van der Valk","doi":"10.1163/15734218-12341546","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15734218-12341546","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":34972,"journal":{"name":"Asian Medicine","volume":"89 13","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139606319","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-01-22DOI: 10.1163/15734218-12341544
Amanda Kaminsky
{"title":"Chinese Medicine in East Africa: An Intimacy with Strangers, written by Elisabeth Hsu","authors":"Amanda Kaminsky","doi":"10.1163/15734218-12341544","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15734218-12341544","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":34972,"journal":{"name":"Asian Medicine","volume":"13 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139609391","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-01-22DOI: 10.1163/15734218-12341543
Leena Abraham
{"title":"The Practice of Texts: Education and Healing in South India, written by Anthony Cerulli","authors":"Leena Abraham","doi":"10.1163/15734218-12341543","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15734218-12341543","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":34972,"journal":{"name":"Asian Medicine","volume":"88 9","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139606165","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-01-22DOI: 10.1163/15734218-12341537
Dolly Yang
One of the most important archaeological finds excavated from the Tianhui Laoguanshan Han tombs in 2012–13 was a manuscript on horse medicine, dated around the third century BCE. Prior to the discovery of this highly specialized veterinary text, only a handful of horse recipes from the Qin and Han periods had been found, and a sixth-century CE agricultural treatise, Essential Techniques for the Common People, was generally regarded as the earliest surviving source of extensive veterinary material, including various medical treatments for horses. Although the Laoguanshan manuscript – given the modern title Book of Treating Horses by the Team for Collating the Medical Bamboo Slips Excavated from the Han Tombs in Tianhui Town, Chengdu – has suffered significant damage, it nevertheless gives us an insight into the knowledge and treatments for horses during the Qin and early Han periods. A variety of ways of treating horses are recorded in Treating Horses, including herbal remedies, piercing, cauterization, hot packs, bandages, massage, and bathing. The use of gold needles is also mentioned in this text, echoing the gold and silver sewing needles excavated from Liu Sheng’s (d. 113 BCE) tomb in Mancheng, Hebei Province. This paper offers a short introduction to this valuable text on horse medicine by examining the content of its fragments, including names of ailments, symptoms of certain diseases, etiologies, and treatment methods. The discovery of Treating Horses challenges the established view that horse treatment methods in ancient China were predominantly herbal and that techniques of bleeding and cauterization recorded in Essential Techniques were brought to China from elsewhere, together with the introduction of Buddhism. The paper argues that the “foreign influence” had already occurred at a much earlier date, in the form of interactions with nomadic tribes such as the Scythians, the horsemen par excellence of classical antiquity.
{"title":"A Brief Introduction to the Horse Medical Manuscript from the Tianhui Laoguanshan Han Tomb","authors":"Dolly Yang","doi":"10.1163/15734218-12341537","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15734218-12341537","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000One of the most important archaeological finds excavated from the Tianhui Laoguanshan Han tombs in 2012–13 was a manuscript on horse medicine, dated around the third century BCE. Prior to the discovery of this highly specialized veterinary text, only a handful of horse recipes from the Qin and Han periods had been found, and a sixth-century CE agricultural treatise, Essential Techniques for the Common People, was generally regarded as the earliest surviving source of extensive veterinary material, including various medical treatments for horses. Although the Laoguanshan manuscript – given the modern title Book of Treating Horses by the Team for Collating the Medical Bamboo Slips Excavated from the Han Tombs in Tianhui Town, Chengdu – has suffered significant damage, it nevertheless gives us an insight into the knowledge and treatments for horses during the Qin and early Han periods. A variety of ways of treating horses are recorded in Treating Horses, including herbal remedies, piercing, cauterization, hot packs, bandages, massage, and bathing. The use of gold needles is also mentioned in this text, echoing the gold and silver sewing needles excavated from Liu Sheng’s (d. 113 BCE) tomb in Mancheng, Hebei Province. This paper offers a short introduction to this valuable text on horse medicine by examining the content of its fragments, including names of ailments, symptoms of certain diseases, etiologies, and treatment methods. The discovery of Treating Horses challenges the established view that horse treatment methods in ancient China were predominantly herbal and that techniques of bleeding and cauterization recorded in Essential Techniques were brought to China from elsewhere, together with the introduction of Buddhism. The paper argues that the “foreign influence” had already occurred at a much earlier date, in the form of interactions with nomadic tribes such as the Scythians, the horsemen par excellence of classical antiquity.","PeriodicalId":34972,"journal":{"name":"Asian Medicine","volume":"37 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139607653","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-01-22DOI: 10.1163/15734218-12341535
Q. Luo, M. Gu, Changhua Liu, Dolly Yang
Among the medical manuscripts excavated in 2012–13 from the Han tombs at Tianhui Township in Sichuan Province is a collection of recipes for treating sixty ailments. Under each ailment heading are one or more recipes, making 106 recipes in total. Because its content focuses on “combining, blending and producing formulas,” the authors decided to name this collection the Methods of Decoctions with Blended Formulas to Treat Sixty Ailments after a title of a manuscript transmitted to Cang Gong as recorded in the “Biographies of Bian Que and Cang Gong” chapter of the Records of the Grand Historian, circa 100 BCE. The key phrase in this title, “methods of decoctions with blended formulas,” refers to methods of blending and harmonizing formulas optimally. This Tianhui manuscript preserves ancient medical recipes that had been long lost, including grain decoctions, alcoholic decoctions, and “fire formulas.” It is an invaluable source for charting the emergence of a genre of “classical formularies” in Han times that resulted in texts such as the Classical Methods of Decoctions, the title of which was noted in an ancient bibliography but until recently was thought to be entirely lost.
{"title":"Preliminary Report on the Tianhui Bamboo Manuscript Methods of Decoctions with Blended Formulas to Treat Sixty Ailments","authors":"Q. Luo, M. Gu, Changhua Liu, Dolly Yang","doi":"10.1163/15734218-12341535","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15734218-12341535","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Among the medical manuscripts excavated in 2012–13 from the Han tombs at Tianhui Township in Sichuan Province is a collection of recipes for treating sixty ailments. Under each ailment heading are one or more recipes, making 106 recipes in total. Because its content focuses on “combining, blending and producing formulas,” the authors decided to name this collection the Methods of Decoctions with Blended Formulas to Treat Sixty Ailments after a title of a manuscript transmitted to Cang Gong as recorded in the “Biographies of Bian Que and Cang Gong” chapter of the Records of the Grand Historian, circa 100 BCE. The key phrase in this title, “methods of decoctions with blended formulas,” refers to methods of blending and harmonizing formulas optimally. This Tianhui manuscript preserves ancient medical recipes that had been long lost, including grain decoctions, alcoholic decoctions, and “fire formulas.” It is an invaluable source for charting the emergence of a genre of “classical formularies” in Han times that resulted in texts such as the Classical Methods of Decoctions, the title of which was noted in an ancient bibliography but until recently was thought to be entirely lost.","PeriodicalId":34972,"journal":{"name":"Asian Medicine","volume":"49 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139608697","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}