Medieval Chinese Medicine: The Dunhuang Medical Manuscripts

ISBN-13: 9780415342957 / Angielski / Twarda / 2005 / 476 str.

Vivienne Lo; Vivienne Lo; Christopher Cullen

Opis

In recent decades various versions of Chinese medicine have begun to be widely practised in western countries, and the academic study of the subject is now well established. However, there are still few scholarly monographs that describe the history of Chinese medicine and there are none at all on the medieval period. The collection presented here is an example of the kind of international collaboration of research teams, centres and individuals that is required to begin to study the source materials adequately. The primary sources for this research come from a collection of medieval manuscripts discovered in 1900 in a walled-up room in the Buddhist cave-shrines of Dunhuang, Gansu Province, west China. Dunhuang was formerly an important Silk Road town, and formed the base of one of the first garrisons to be established during the Han period to secure the safe passage of soldiers, officials and traders between east and west. While the majority of the manuscripts stored in the cave are copies of Buddhist scriptural texts, there are also thousands of non-Buddhist texts, both religious and secular. The presence among these of some one hundred medical texts suggests that the Dunhuang pr

Recenzje

'This book is among the few in English to tackle this eclectic period in Chinese History, and the only one to deal with Dunhuang medicine. For this reason alone, it is an invalueable contribution to the field.' -  Medical History, January 2007

Spis treści

1. The Dunhuang Collections and International Collaboration  2. Introduction  Part 1: The Manuscripts  3. Manuscripts as Sources in the History of Chinese Medicine  4. A General Survey of Medical Works contained in the Dunhuang Medical Manuscripts  5. Comments on the Problem of 'Transcription'  6. Han Bamboo and Wooden Medical Records discovered in Military Sites from the North Western Frontier Regions  Part 2: Divination, Iatromancy and Related Arts  7. Mantic Texts in their Cultural Context  8. Dunhuang Iatromantic Manuscripts: P.2856 V°and P.2675 R°  9. Love Charms among the Dunhuang Manuscripts  10. From Prognosis to Diagnosis of Illness in Tang China  Part 3: Self-Cultivation and the Popular Medical Traditions  11. Introductory Essay  12. Quick and Easy Chinese Medicine: The Dunhuang Moxibustion Charts  13. Art of the Bedchamber  14. Daoism and the Dunhuang Regimen Texts  Part 4: Pharmacology  15. The Dunhuang Manuscripts and Pharmacology in Mediaeval China  16. The Three juan Edition of Bencao Jizhu and Excavated Sources  17. Canonical Methods for Brews and Decoctions: A Lost Text Recorded in the Hanshu Bibliography  18. Wind Malady as Madness in Mediaeval China  19. A Treatment for Cardiovascular Dysfunction in a Dunhuang Medical Manuscript  Appendix 1: Materia Medica Abstracts of 73 manuscripts containing medical information held in the British Library and the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, Institute for Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St Petersburg and Ryukoku University Library

O autorze

Vivienne Lo researches and lectures on the early and medieval history of Asian medicine at the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine, University College London.
Christopher Cullen is Director of the Needham Research Institute, Cambridge.