Rethinking the Human Body in the History of Chinese Medicine

Homing in on a more concrete explanation of Chinese medical practices and experiences, the current historiography of Chinese medicine pays special attention to bodily experiences situated in historical contexts. Empirical experiences bearing on the corporeality of the human body, in this way, come to the foreground in the historical narrative of Chinese medicine. The anatomical structure of the human body, which figures large in the current historical study of the Chinese medical body, flings open a window in terms of which "real" historical bodily experiences leap to the eye. A tension between past and present, and between China and the West, however, crops up. If we take modern anatomy as the criterion of the historical Chinese medical body, then the Chinese presentation of the human body in the past could be reduced to a mere obscure shadow of the modern (Western) anatomy. If we portray Chinese medical bodies in history "on their own terms," then the Chinese medical body in the past turns out to be one of multiplicity, fanning out into disparate historical-clinical situations. How can we tease out a historical Chinese medical body that transcended individual clinical encounters while at the same time defying modern anatomy? This question serves as the problematic of this paper. By pointing out paradigms and parading shifts in the illustrations of the human body in Chinese history from the 11th to 18th centuries, this paper puts forth an argument that paradigmatic theories of pulse-diagnostics in the history of Chinese medicine could explain the Chinese medical body and bodily experiences in the past "on their own terms" with out referring to modern anatomy. The tension highlighted above, therefore, is ratcheted down by shifting our focus from modern anatomy to autochthonous medical sphygmology.