Medicine in China: Historical Artifacts and Images (review)

Medicine in China is a translation of Huichun: Rückkehr in der Frühling: Chinesische Heilkunde in historischen Objekten und Bildern, a publication that accompanied an exhibition at the Museum für Völkerkunde, Berlin, and other locations in Germany in 1995 and 1996. One hundred and twenty illustrations accompany the six chapters of the text: "The History of Medicine in China: An Overview"; "The Literature of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Pharmaceutics"; "The Chinese Pharmacy"; "The Chinese Physician: His Patients and His Instruments"; "Medicine, Healing, and Popular Religion"; and "Chinese Medicine in Art and Literature." Another 178 plates (nearly all in color), with commentary and long captions, depict objects that were in the exhibition, including acupuncture charts, statues of the medicine god Sun Simiao, and an extensive selection of porcelain bottles ("pharmacy delivery containers," in the language of the captions).

Paul Unschuld is a respected and prolific scholar in the field of the history of Chinese medicine. In this volume, he draws on many of his earlier publications, and his particular perspective is apparent in many passages. The theoretical framework for Chinese medicine that developed in the Han dynasty, involving yin-yang dichotomies and a system of correspondences between the elements as they are found inside the body and exist outside it, should be considered, in Unschuld's view, a self-contained elite tradition. It is responsible, for instance, for the absence of empirical anatomical explorations in order to establish whether postulated centers or palaces in the body actually exist. The language of this elite tradition could be adopted by an itinerant doctor around 1900 as obfuscatory gobbledygook, even when his actual practice was psychologically canny: "The Minister Fire is moving without regularity. The Fire of the Gate of Life is weak . . . If this continues on, you will develop a cough" (p. 77). The same set of beliefs resulted in a treatment shown in a startling photograph dating from 1981 (p. 86): walnut-shell spectacles were developed because they would assist the eyes in becoming a pathway for vital vapors to reach the brain (walnuts look like brain tissue, as known from Western anatomical illustrations). At the same time, it is because of this elite tradition that the expression "the use of drugs resembles the advance of soldiers" arose as long ago as the Han dynasty, while in the West the theory of hostile germs is modern (p. 35). Nevertheless, China's centuries-old pharmacopoeia, as known through texts both illustrated and unillustrated, should be considered a valuable tradition with empirical roots, one that can be looked at as quite independent of elite theory.

With its many illustrations and broad scope, Medicine in China serves in many ways as a good introduction to the subject. But it can be recommended to the general reader only with reservations. Infelicities in the translation from the German are one reason: they are found both in awkward syntax and in the choice of words ("excerpt of a drawing," for instance, rather than "section of a handscroll," p. 29). Another reason would be the author's failure to take up matters about which the nonspecialist reader is naturally curious. The premises and structure of the traditional elite theory are never fully explicated, and the question of the physiological basis for acupuncture (especially in light of the spread of the technique in the West) is not tackled directly. Despite the many fascinating topics on which Unschuld touches, it is also to be regretted that medicine for him means largely the cure of disease. In summarizing the important medical texts from Mawangdui (second century B.C.E.), he mentions that one "explains sexual practices for the purpose of treating illness and preserving health" and he illustrates part of another, showing figures in various postures, engaged in physical exercises (p. 21)—yet neither exercise nor sex is subsequently discussed...