Medicine in China: A History of Ideas (Comparative Studies of Health Systems and Medical Care)
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.50 (670 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0520062167 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 440 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2013-05-18 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Paul Unschuld is a professor at the Institute for the History of Medicine at the University of Munich.
In the first comprehensive and analytical study of therapeutic concepts and practices in China, Paul Unschuld traces the history of documented health care from its earliest extant records to present developments.
The Social, Philosophical and Political Basis of Chinese Medicine On the face of it, a book on the history of Chinese medicine may sound about as interesting as watching paint dry. But this excellent book is riveting.It tells a story with many parallels in the West: medicine is heavily influence by the society in which it is practiced. How we think about people, how to keep them healthy and how to heal them, is a reflection of the prevailing understanding of the time. If you believe that the world is a magical place containing angels and demons then illness may be seen as demonic and its cure as the action of an angel. If, as is common today, the human being is thought of as no more than a biochemica. "Good intellectual history" according to Tom Nash. I realy don't know what book the above reviewer read before writing their review, but it certainly appears not to have been this one. Unschuld's premise is that any medicine MUST be understood within the context of the intellectual and cultural history out of which it arises, and not judged or even atempted to be understood from the intellectual and cultural framework of another culture seeking to understand the medicine only. Therefore, students of Traditional Chinese Medicine MUST study Chinese culture, history, and intellectual thought in order to fully understand the emdicine itself. Otherwise it is just a haphazard grab bag of cle. ELC said A great overview. This book should be required for all first year students of Chinese medicine. Unschuld places the medicine in its cultural and historical context. A picture is painted of not just one unchanging China, but of a geographical area that went through many important changes over time, all of which influenced the medicine. The theories and practices that modern Chinese medicine uses today represent a few pieces of a big and complicated puzzle. This book will help you find many of the missing pieces.
Undeniably valuable is his emphasis on how each new wave of Chinese medical theory ended up by complementing the preceding corpus of ideas." -- Roy Porter, Times Literary Supplement"Unschuld successfully weaves the evolution of medical ideas with the prevalent socio-political events of the past three and one-half millennia. The reward is immense." -- Peter Kong-ming New, Medical Anthropology. "Paul Unschuld's massive erudition lies at the service of relativism. His main aim is to explain the history of Chinese medical theories by locating them within successive broader paradigms of belief demonological, Confucian, Taoist, Buddhist, Marxist (each of which he anchors in turn within the line of dynasties from the Shang and Chou empires up to the Gang of Fo