Table Of ContentROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK
OF CHINESE MEDICINE
The Routledge Handbook of Chinese Medicine is an extensive, interdisciplinary guide to the
nature of traditional medicine and healing in the Chinese cultural region, and its plural
epistemologies. Established experts and the next generation of scholars interpret the ways in
which Chinese medicine has been understood and portrayed from the beginning of the em-
pire (third century BCE) to the globalisation of Chinese products and practices in the present
day, taking in subjects from ancient medical writings to therapeutic movement, to talismans
for healing and traditional medicines that have inspired global solutions to contemporary
epidemics. The volume is divided into seven parts:
• Longue Durée and Formation of Institutions and Traditions
• Sickness and Healing
• Food and Sex
• Spiritual and Orthodox Religious Practices
• The World of Sinographic Medicine
• Wider Diasporas
• Negotiating Modernity
This handbook therefore introduces the broad range of ideas and techniques that comprise
pre-modern medicine in China, and the historiographical and ethnographic approaches that
have illuminated them. It will prove a useful resource to students and scholars of Chinese
studies, and the history of medicine and anthropology. It will also be of interest to practi-
tioners, patients and specialists wishing to refresh their knowledge with the latest develop-
ments in the feld.
Vivienne Lo 羅維前 is Professor of Chinese History at University College London. She
has published widely on the ancient and medieval history of medicine in China and in dias-
pora. Her research interests include medical manuscripts, medical imagery and the history
of nutrition.
Michael Stanley-Baker 徐源 is Assistant Professor in History at the School of Hu-
manities, and of Medical Humanities at the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine,
at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. An historian of Chinese medicine and
religion, particularly Daoism, he works on the early imperial period as well as contempo-
rary Sinophone communities. Currently completing a monograph on medicine and religion
as related genres of practice in China, he also produces digital humanities tools and data-
sets to study the migration of medicine across spatio-temporal, intellectual and linguistic
boundaries.
Dolly Yang 楊德秀 is a postdoctoral research associate at the Institute of History and Phi-
lology, Academia Sinica, Taiwan. She received a PhD in 2018 from University College
London for her investigation into the institutionalisation of therapeutic exercise in Sui China
(581–618 CE). She has a particular interest in examining the use of non-drug-based therapy
in early medieval China, allied to a passion for translating and analysing ancient Chinese
medical and self-cultivation texts.
ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK
OF CHINESE MEDICINE
Edited by Vivienne Lo and Michael Stanley-Baker,
with Dolly Yang
LONDON AND NEW YORK
First published 2022
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2022 selection and editorial matter, Vivienne Lo and Michael Stanley-
Baker; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Vivienne Lo and Michael Stanley-Baker to be identified
as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their
individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and
78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com,
has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non
Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Lo, Vivienne editor. | Stanley-Baker, Michael, 1971– editor. |
Yang, Dolly, editor.
Title: Routledge handbook of Chinese medicine / edited by Vivienne Lo
and Michael Stanley-Baker with Dolly Yang.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021030176 | ISBN 9780415830645 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781032149776 (paperback) | ISBN 9781135008970 (adobe pdf) |
ISBN 9781135008963 (epub) | ISBN 9781135008956 (mobi)
Subjects: LCSH: Medicine, Chinese.
Classification: LCC R601 .R68 2022 | DDC 610.951—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021030176
ISBN: 978-0-415-83064-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-14977-6 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-74026-2 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9780203740262
Typeset in Bembo
by codeMantra
To Jennifer,
Geofrey and Rowan
With all my love
Michael (Papa)
To all my teachers, friends and family
human and otherwise
the spirits, the demons, the dogs and the horses
Vivienne
In memory of
Charles ‘Chip’ Chace (1958–2018)
whose dedication and enthusiasm for the study of Chinese medicine,
and great generosity in sharing his knowledge, have been a model for
generations of scholars and practitioners
and
Ma Kanwen 馬堪溫 (1927–2016)
whose life and contributions to the history of medicine have been an
inspiration to us all
CONTENTS
List of fgures xiii
List of tables xvii
List of contributors xix
Acknowledgements xxvi
Conventions and abbreviations xxvii
An introduction 1
Michael Stanley-Baker and Vivienne Lo
PART 1
Longue Durée and formation of institutions and traditions 11
1 Yin, yang, and fve agents (wuxing) in the Basic Questions and early
Han (202 BCE–220 CE) medical manuscripts 13
Chen Yun-Ju
2 Qi 氣: a means for cohering natural knowledge 23
Michael Stanley-Baker
Appendix: Categories of qi in the Inner Canon 39
Jiang Shan
3 Re-envisioning Chinese medicine: the view from archaeology 51
Vivienne Lo and Gu Man
4 The importance of numerology, part 1: state ritual and medicine 72
Deborah Woolf
vii
Contents
5 The importance of numerology, part 2: medicine: an overview of the
applications of numbers in Huangdi neijing 91
Deborah Woolf
6 Therapeutic exercise in the medical practice of Sui China (581–618 CE) 109
Dolly Yang
7 The canonicity of the Yellow Emperor’s Inner Classic: Han through Song 120
Stephen Boyanton
8 Pre-standardised pharmacology: Han through Song 133
Asaf Goldschmidt
9 Developments in Chinese medicine from the Song through the Qing 146
Charles Chace
PART 2
Sickness and healing 161
10 Ancient pulse taking, complexions and the rise of tongue diagnosis
in modern China 163
Oliver Loi-Koe
11 Case records Yi’an 醫案 181
Nancy Holroyde-Downing
12 Acupuncture illustrations 189
Huang Longxiang and Wang Fang
13 Anatomy and surgery 206
Li Jianmin 李建民
Translated by Michael Stanley-Baker and Vivienne Lo
14 History of disease: pre-Han to Qing 217
Di Lu
15 Pre-modern madness 230
Hsiu-fen Chen
16 Late imperial epidemiology, part 1: from retrospective diagnosis to
epidemics as diagnostic lens for other ends, 1870s to 1970s 245
Marta Hanson
17 Late imperial epidemiology, part 2: new material and conceptual
methods, 1980s to 2010s 263
Marta Hanson
viii
Contents
18 Folk medicine of the Qing and Republican periods: a review of
therapies in Unschuld’s Berlin manuscripts 282
Nalini Kirk
PART 3
Food and sex 301
19 What not to eat – how not to treat: medical prohibitions 303
Vivienne Lo and Luis F-B Junqueira
20 Chinese traditional medicine and diet 320
Vivienne Lo
21 Food and dietary medicine in Chinese herbal literature
and beyond 328
Paul D. Buell
22 The sexual body techniques of early and medieval China –
underlying emic theories and basic methods of a non-reproductive
sexual scenario for non-same-sex partners 337
Rodo Pfster
23 Sexing the Chinese medical body: pre-modern Chinese medicine
through the lens of gender 356
Wang Yishan
24 Gynecology and obstetrics from antiquity to the early
twenty-frst century 368
Yi-Li Wu
25 The question of sex and modernity in China, part 1: from xing to
sexual cultivation 381
L. A. Rocha
26 The question of sex and modernity in China, part 2: from new
ageism to sexual happiness 389
L. A. Rocha
PART 4
Spiritual and orthodox religious practices 399
27 Daoism and medicine 401
Michael Stanley-Baker
ix
