Traditional Medicine in Modern China

is round the corner now, a century later, when 'pangenesis' may be vindicated by the molecular biologists. These more general essays set out with some clarity the overall picture of the philosophical and scientific scene as it applied to medicine. The subsequent papers refer in more detail to individual aspects of medical development of which Medical Mycology 1841-1870 by F. M. Keddie surveys an unusual field; a series on public and state medicine shows how the national conscience was awakening; a paper on The Dental Profession by N. D. Richards explains the complicated story by which the dentists began to achieve recognition and a final essay by E. Gaskell on Medical Literature rounds off the volume with a most useful survey. All the essays are fully documented and the volume should be studied closely by all who wish to discover more about the basis on which modem medicine stands, whether he be clinician or medical historian. In recent years there has been a growing interest among historians in the history of Chinese medicine. But little attention has been devoted so far to what might be called the intellectual setting. A theoretical system preserved for so many centuries in a country as populous as China was naturally accompanied by a mass of folklore and legend (cf. Chinese Medicine: Catalogue ofan exhibition illustrating the traditional medicine of China, The Wellcome Historical Medical Museum and Library, 1966, 35 pp. with plates). Since everything is made from the yin and the yang (acupuncture is a procedure to restore the balance), the order can be seen through the universe. The human body was thus a universe in miniature and we have the stereotype of changeless China. But the traditional medical system of China suggests infinite complexities and striking contrasts. Those who are close to Chinese studies are now fully aware of the Chinese contribution to medicine. If we want to understand the doctors of the Far East it will not be enough simply to speak like them (though that would indeed be something) we must also try to reason like them. Disease could be caused by a disharmony between the world and a patient. Chinese arguers since the earliest times have not managed to create a system, like the system of Western logic. But they proposed a concrete dialectic and a course of action. In a medical team the reasoning will often be very brief. …