A unique collection of 36 chapters on the history of Chinese medical illustrations, this volume will take the reader on a remarkable journey from the imaging of a classical medicine to instructional manuals for bone-setting, to advertising and comic books of the Yellow Emperor. In putting images, their power and their travels at the centre of the analysis, this volume reveals many new and exciting dimensions to the history of medicine and embodiment, and challenges eurocentric histories. At a broader philosophical level, it challenges historians of science to rethink the epistemologies and materialities of knowledge transmission. There are studies by senior scholars from Asia, Europe and the Americas as well as emerging scholars working at the cutting edge of their fields.
Thanks to generous support of the Wellcome Trust, this volume is available in Open Access.
Vivienne Lo 羅維前 is the Director of the UCL China Centre for Health and Humanity (CCHH). Her research focuses on the social and cultural origins of acupuncture and therapeutic exercise. She translates and analyses manuscript material from early and mediaeval China and studies the transmission of scientific knowledge along the so-called Silk Roads through to the modern Chinese medical diaspora.
Penelope Barrett is a researcher and translator based in the China Centre for Health and Humanity (CCHH) at University College London (UCL). She has a background in mediaeval European languages and literatures as well as Chinese studies. She is currently pursuing a PhD on ‘Bernard Read: Translating medical worlds’.
"Imagining Chinese Medicine is something quite special, within and beyond Chinese studies. It is a work that systematically applies iconology to the history of knowledge. In addition to its worth as a major contribution to the history of Chinese medicine, science and embodiment, it makes two signal contributions to the broader history of science / knowledge. First, it provides a spectrum of unfamiliar insights that challenge many commonplaces in the still largely Eurocentric history of perception, embodiment, and visual culture. Second, it deploys iconology to powerful effect as a method for generating a rhizomatic, non-linear history of knowledge.(…) This unique, path-breaking collection will set the terms for future studies of medicine and embodiment in Chinese history, and will be an essential work of reference for years to come." - Francesca Bray, Professor Emerita of Social Anthropology, University of Edinburgh
List of Plates
List of Tables
Dedication and Acknowledgements
Introduction - Vivienne Lo
1 A Survey of Images from the Chinese Medical Classics - Wang Shumin and Gabriel Fuentes
Part 1: Mapping the Body: Space, Time and Gender
2 Picturing the Body in Chinese Medical and Daoist Texts from the Song to the Qing Period (10th to 19th Centuries) - Catherine Despeux
3 Imagining Practice: Sense and Sensuality in Early Chinese Medical Illustration -Vivienne Lo
4 The Iconography of Time: What the Visualisation of Efficacious Movement (Shi 勢) Tells Us about the Composition of the Yijin Jing 易筋經 (Canon for Supple Sinews) - Elisabeth Hsu
5 Nurturing the Foetus in Medieval China: Illustrating the 10 Months of Pregnancy in the Ishimpō 醫心方 - Sabine Wilms
6 The Gendered Medical Iconography of the Golden Mirror, Yuzuan Yizong Jinjian 御纂醫宗金鑑, 1742 -Yi-Li Wu
Part 2: Effective Representation
7 The Limits of Illustration: Animalia and Pharmacopeia from Guo Pu to - Bencao Gangmu 本草綱目 - Roel Sterckx
8 Observational Drawing and Fine Art in Chinese Materia Medica Illustration - Zheng Jinsheng
9 Reading Visual Imagery and Written Sources on Acupuncture and Moxibustion - Huang Longxiang
10 The Fine Art of the Tongue - Nancy Holroyde-Downing
11 Diagnostic Images of the Tongue: Aetiology and Pathology Made Visible - Liang Rong
12 A Brief Introduction to Illustration in the Literature of Surgery and Traumatology in Chinese Medicine - Hu Xiaofeng
Part 3 Imagining Medical Practice
13 Polychrome Illustrations in the Ming Bencao Literature - Cao Hui
14 Illustrations of Drug Collection and Preparation in Buyi Lei Gong Paozhi Bianlan 補遺雷公炮製便覽 - Xiao Yongzhi
15 The Relationship between Chinese Erotic Art and the Art of the Bedchamber: A Preliminary Survey - Sumiyo Umekawa and David Dear
16 The Vital Role of Illustration in the Literature of Childhood Smallpox - Wan Fang
17 Picturing Medicine in Daily life: Court and Commoner Perspectives in Song Era Paintings - TJ Hinrichs
Part 4 Imagining Travelling Medicine
18 Images of Healing, Hygiene and the Cultivation of the Body in the Dunhuang Cave Murals - Wang Jinyu, translated with Lu Di
19 Travelling Light: Sino-Tibetan Moxa-Cautery from Dunhuang - Vivienne Lo and Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim
20 Chasing the Vermilion Bird: Late Medieval Alchemical Transformations in The Treasure Book of Ilkhan on Chinese Science and Techniques -
Vivienne Lo and Wang Yidan
21 Fanciful Images from Abroad: Picturing the Other in Bencao Pinhui Jingyao 本草品彙精要 - Chen Ming
22 Chinese Horse Medicine: Texts and Illustrations - Paul D. Buell, Timothy May and David Ramey
23 Korean Anatomical Charts in the Context of the East Asian Medical Tradition - Shin Dongwon, translated by Kim Yuseok
24 Imagining Acupuncture: Images and the Early Westernisation of Asian Medical Expertise - Roberta Bivins
Part 5 Esoteric Contexts and Knowledge Transmission
25 The Body of Laozi and the Course of a Taoist Journey Through the Heavens - Patrice Fava
26 Clinical Medicine Texts: The Earliest Stone Medical Inscription - Zhang Ruixian, Wang Jiakui and Michael Stanley-Baker
27 Embodying Animal Spirits in the Vital Organs - Zhang Qicheng, translated and edited by Wang Jing and David Dear
28 A Phoenix Amid the Flames: Mount Emei Big Dipper Finger-Point Method, Daoyin and Qigong - Liao Yuqun
29 Moving towards Perfection: Physical Culture in Dzogchen as Revealed in Tibet’s Lukhang Murals - Ian A. Baker
30 A Tibetan image of Divination: Some Contextual Remarks - Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim
Part 6 Imagining Modern Medicine
31 Places and Traces: Selections from Professor Ma Kanwen’s 馬堪溫 Ethnography of 1955. Abridged by Penelope Barrett with an Introduction by Vivienne Lo
32 Visualisation in Parasitological Research: Patrick Manson and his Chinese Assistants - Shang-Jen Li
33 Marketing Medicine to Koreans - Soyoung Suh
34 The Visual Language of Medicine Advertisements in The Ladies’ Journal 479 - Chang Che-chia
35 Beauty and Health: Images of Health and Illness from 20th-Century China - Zhou Xun
36 Sketching the Dao: Chinese Medicine in Modern Cartoons - Judith Farquhar and Lai Lili
Chinese Dynasties
Author Biographies
Index
List of
All interested in Chinese medicine and the history of illustration, the transmission of Chinese medical knowledge and ideas along the Silk Roads and maritime routes.