 |
Research by Region
China
Chinese medicine
Earlier times
Perhaps the most enduring feature of Chinese medicine is its eclectic nature. For well over 2000 years naturalistic theories about the body have coexisted easily with equally scholarly medical ideas that regard the human body as vulnerable to interference by ancestors, demons and spirits.
Classical Chinese physiology, based upon ideas about man's relationship with the heavens and earth, the weather, and the passing of the seasons is well-documented from the late Warring States period (c 600-221BCE). This was a time when philosophers and gentlemen hawked their skills around the courts of the kings. The first emperor was particularly fond of fangshi (gentlemen of remedies) from Yan and Qi who, it is said, transmitted the arts of Zou Yan. Zou Yan's school was purported to be the institutional origin of the Yin and Yang philosophies. In documents of state generated by these advisers, in their military tactics, divination, medical and religious matters, we find the earliest records of Yin Yang and the Wuxing (five agents).
|
|
