Many introductions to Chinese medicine have appeared in the English language. Chinese Medicine differs in that, although it is not a history book as such, it is the work of a historian and is written from a historian's point of view, explaining events against the background of the life of the times in China. Paul Unschuld's Chinese Medicine introduces each element of the Chinese medical corpus of knowledge, each phase of its development in the light of the intellectual, social, political, and economic soil from which it sprang.
As the author tells us, a medical system develops its theories, and gains and maintains the acceptance of the community it serves not by its clinical effectiveness
but by the acceptability of its underlying ideas. From this perspective, Chinese Medicine explains how the concepts of Chinese medicine were able to gain acceptance, and how, despite its gradual evolution, its basic features remained stable for two thousand years. From the same perspective, it also explains the conditions that have allowed the survival of Chinese medicine into the modern age in China despite China's adoption of Western medicine as the mainstay of its health-care system; and the conditions in which, after centuries of European interest in and rejection of China's healing arts, Chinese medicine has finally taken root in the West. It is this dimension of Chinese medicine that sets the book apart from others of its kind.
Aside from the wealth of information it contains about the nature and development of Chinese medicine, the author's view of the reception of Chinese medicine in the West is a major contribution to our understanding of alternative health care, and forcefully challenges the conceptions of Chinese medicine among many of its Western adherents.
Contents
1. Introduction
2. The Early Formative Phase
3. The Doctrine of the Five Periods and Six Qi
4. Ophthalmology
5. Use of Drugs and Pharmacology
6. Chinese Medicine in China in the Modern Era and Present
7. The Long March West
Chronological Table
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