Medicine in East Asia HI 176: Lecture - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

Medicine in East Asia

HI 176: Lecture 6Dr. Howard ChiangSlide2

Historical Context

Periodization of East Asian History

China: Ming (1368-1644), Qing (1644-1911), Republican (1911-49), PRC (1949-present)

Japan: Edo/Tokugawa (1603-1868), Japanese Empire (1868-1945), Showa (1926-89),

Hesei

(1989-present)

Korea:

Choson

(1392-1897), Korean Empire (1897-1910), Japanese Colony (1910-45), 2 Koreas (1945-)

Qing:

Manchu preserved basic social/political frameworks

Kaozheng

or ‘evidential scholarship’ movement

Opium War (1839-42); Taiping Rebellion (1851-64)

‘Self-Strengthening’ (1861-95); Sino-Jap War (1894-5)Slide3
Slide4

First Opium WarSlide5
Slide6

Fuzhou ShipyardSlide7

Partitioning of China

- Queen Victoria

- William II (Germany)

- Nicholas II (Russia)

- French Marianne

- Meiji EmperorSlide8

Medical Systems: East Asia

Until rather recently:

All healers and medical systems operated within a common set of limits: none had any route of direct access to the internal workings of the body

inferred from a narrow range of indirect evidence

Human body is a microcosm of the universe

Disease is a state of body imbalance

Chinese/East Asian Medical System:

Five ‘elements’/‘phases’ theory

(

wuyuan

) – metal (the lungs), wood (the liver), water (the kidneys), fire (the heart), and earth (the spleen)Slide9

Body as microcosm

of the universe Slide10

Medical Systems: East Asia

Chinese/East Asian Medical System:

Yin

(‘feminine’) and

Yang

(‘masculine’)

- dark/light, wet/dry, cold/warm

Does not impose a rigid duality

- within each predominantly yin or yang entity, characteristics associated with its opposite occur

Huangdi

Neijing

or the

Inner Canon of the Yellow Emperor

: the earliest surviving medical text (200BCE)

major channels known as

jing

and

mai

, through each of these channels flows a fluid substance called

qi

Healthy body depends on free circulation of

qi

-

qi

is

polysemic

: literal breath, wind in the meteorological sense, vital principle, life forceSlide11

Hua

Shou

(1341) v. Vesalius (1543)Slide12

Social, Cultural, Intellectual Trends

Qing period – fluid boundaries between multiple realms of curative and health-promoting activities

No regulations controlled who could provide healing services – the ability to attract patients was the ‘practical’ requirement to become a healer

Everyday knowledge exchange among friends, relatives, and neighbors

‘daily use encyclopedias’

‘protecting life’ (

weisheng

) and ‘nourishing life’ (

yangsheng

) – former becomes ‘hygiene’ in 20

th

c.

Internal (

neidan

) vs. external alchemy (

waidan

)

People consult & compare multiple practitioners

Everyone could be his/her own doctorSlide13

Daoist

AlchemySlide14

Gentrification of Medicine

1772: Qianlong Emperor’s

Complete Books of the Four Treasuries

(

Siku

quanshu

) – literary purge?

‘evidential research’ – to recover the original form and meaning of Han Dynasty

(206BC-220 AD) works

, which was allegedly distorted by Song-era

(960-1279) commentaries

- challenge Song-era Neo-Confucianism

- close relationship to

literate medicine

in Qing

Gentrification of medicine:

- ‘medical legitimacy’ – from ‘3 generations of medicine’ (hereditary physicians,

shiyi

) to mastery of ‘3 canonical texts’ (scholarly physicians,

ruyi

)

Qing:

qualification & authority constructed on cultural terms rather than legal regulationsSlide15

Complete Books of Four TreasuriesSlide16

Global Medical Exchange

The

materia

medica

Bencao

gangmu

(1578) by Li

Shizhen

(1518-1593) could be purchased in Korea, Japan, Vietnam, and communities in Southeast Asia

Tribute system

– structured China’s relations with other kingdoms and conduit for medical exchange

New in Qing: between China and the West

- founding the Society of Jesus in 1540

18

th

century:

- European interest in acupuncture and

moxibustion

- European interest in Chinese drugs: e.g., ginseng, ‘China root’, rhubarb, and tea

19

th

century: opiumSlide17

Li

shizhen’s

Bencao

GangmuSlide18

Acupuncture /

MoxibustionSlide19

Ginseng, Rhubarb, TeaSlide20

Western Medicine & Self-Strengthening

Treaty ports – e.g., Shanghai & Tianjin

‘cultural imperialism’ – Western medicine to E Asia

Tokugawa Japan – Dutch East India Company

17

th

& 18

th

c. China – Jesuit Missionaries

- 1693, French Dominique

Parennin

,

Manchu Anatomy

19

th

c. China – Protestant Missionaries

- British Benjamin Hobson,

Outline of Anatomy and Physiology

(1851) – first systematic translation

-

Tongwen

Guan in Beijing – translators’ school

- Scottish John Dudgeon, Gray’s

Anatomy

(1886)

- American John Kerr, Refuge for the Insane (1898)Slide21

Manchu Anatomy (1693)Slide22

Benjamin Hobson (1851)Slide23

Kerr Refuge for the InsaneSlide24

20

th

Century Transformations

In the 20

th

century, the cacophonous medical marketplace was eventually harmonized into a single medical system in which

modern biomedicine became the model against which acceptable versions of Chinese medicine were measured

1928 – Ministry of Health in China

Yu

Yunxiu

(1879-1954) led the movement to ‘abolish old-style medicine’

Chinese medicine made appear more ‘scientific’

- edited new textbooks

- founded new schools of Chinese medicine

- National Studies movement – ‘national medicine’

- embodied

experience

, what Western med. lackedSlide25

20

th

Century Transformations

Chinese medicine in the PRC (1949-present):

1949-53 – subsumed under biomedicine

1954-65 – creation of ‘traditional Chinese medicine’

1966-77 – led by ideological simplification

1976-89 – exploded into myriad options/possibilities

1989-present – integration into global health care

Globalization:

Actively supported by WHO, promoted by the Chinese state, dispersed by Chinese physicians, studied by conventional and alternative practitioners throughout the world, sought after by international clientele of patientsSlide26

Chinese medicine

- cultural imperialism?