Hippocratic Bodily “Channels” and Oriental Parallels

The argument of this paper is based primarily on a close reading of several Hippocratic texts; parallels with Chinese traditional medicine are adduced. Study of Greek medicine is usually situated in the context of western medical history. However, it is evident that the vascular anatomy envisaged in the Hippocratic Corpus is not at all coincident with our known post-Harveian model; it here becomes apparent that it is coincident rather with Chinese patterns. The supposed working and actual treatment of the body are fundamental concerns of doctors in any society, but different suppositions have been made, and different practices followed, in different ages and different places. When the evidence from Greek and Chinese traditions is pared down to parallel analysis under the broad heads of physiology (nature of the body), pathology (nature of disease) and surgery (nature of treatment), remarkable common essentials and shared anatomical presuppositions are seen to emerge. Parallel analysis of a specialist field, ophthalmology, reveals common elements also. There are obvious limitations and difficulties in essaying an approach which is neither clearly synchronic nor firmly diachronic. Once similarities between two modes of thought have been isolated, quid sequitur? Similarities in practice can readily be explained by common human physiology: doctors of different societies at different times