Zongjiao yu yiliao 林富 [Religion and Healing] ed. by Fu-shih Lin 宗教與醫療 (review)

Zongjiao yu yiliao (Religion and Healing), a compilation of twelve articles by scholars from Taiwan, China, and South Korea, traces the interactions between religion and medicine in East Asia from the seventeenth century BC to the post-World War II era. The book commences with a section on Daoist medical practices, then proceeds to Buddhism, and ends with Christianity.

In the first article of the Daoist tradition section, Li Zong-kun (李宗焜) assesses concepts of disease in the Shang dynasty, correcting a number of mistakes other scholars have made. "Disease and Healing in the Shang as Reflected in Oracle Bone Inscriptions" emphasizes three attributes of the conditions: they were mainly located on the surface of the body, they were thought to be caused by the spirits of royal ancestors, and they were usually treated by shamans who prayed and carried out other rituals. There is no sound evidence for acupuncture, moxibustion, or surgical techniques during the Shang.

In "The Exorcists in Ancient East Asia," Chang In-sung (張寅成), a Korean historian, describes the expansion of exorcism in northeastern Asia after the sixth century. This was, Chang explains, the work of Buddhist monks from Japan and Korea's Baekje (百濟) kingdom, whose understanding of medicine (of which exorcism was a part) owed much to Daoist thought. Though exorcists were banned by the imperial house of Japan from the ninth century and suppressed by the Korean kings from the fifteenth century, Daoist rituals and techniques were not abandoned.

The third article is by Lin Fu-shih ((林富士), a Taiwanese historian who is also the editor of this collection. His "Healers or Patients: The Role and Depiction of Shamans in Taiwan" describes how Taiwanese shamans, known as dang-gi (or tonggi, 童乩), have thought about disease and gone about healing the ill. Lin points out that the dang-gi who serve as intermediaries between spirits and humans are seen as just as vulnerable as their patients.

Chuang Hung I (莊宏誼), a Taiwanese historian, contributed "Daoist Medicine of the Song Dynasty: A Study Based on Yijian zhi (夷堅志, Records of the Listener) by Hong Mai (洪邁)." Having identified thirty-three Daoist medical cases in Yijian zhi, he assigns those cases exclusively to twelfth-century southern China, which was separated both religiously and politically from its northern counterpart. Patients were mostly from the upper class, and many were officials of the Southern Song. The medical techniques practiced by Daoists were mainly rituals, often exorcisms to expel demons causing mental illnesses. Curative efficacy was thought to rely on the ethical integrity of the practitioners.

A Chinese historian named Jiang Sheng (姜生), in "Daoism and Smallpox Vaccination," dates the invention of smallpox inoculation to 1522, twenty-seven years earlier than that which Joseph Needham proposed. He also presents the Daoist perspective on the disease's causes, which emphasized the shaping of the fetus, and the tremendous impact of Daoism medicine on the recognition of smallpox in traditional Chinese society.

In "When Patients Met Ghosts: A Preliminary Survey of Scholarly Doctors' Attitudes toward 'Demonic Affliction' in Ming-Qing China," Chen Hsiu-fen (陳秀芬) indicates that between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries even literate physicians spoke of "demonic affliction" (xie sui bing, 邪祟病) and turned to magic as a cure. Chen therefore wonders whether the appearance of rationalism in traditional Chinese medicine was essential to medicine's modern legitimacy, and whether it was possible to differentiate it from magic.

The first of the articles on the Buddhist tradition is "Āyurvedic Medical Knowledge in an Esoteric Sutra from the Chinese Tripitaka:ACase of Kumāratantra or Sālāka" by Chen Ming (陳明), a Chinese historian. A comparative study reveals that the prescriptions recorded in the Chinese Tripitaka for the treatment of both eye diseases and pediatric diseases typically resembled the treatments of Indian Āyurvedic medicine, though leavened with the addition of more distinctively religious rituals, incantations, or mudrās.

Liu Shu-fen's (劉淑芬) article, "Between Self-Cultivation and the Monastic Code: Tea and Medicinal Soup in Tang and Song Monastic Life," uses diet to...