Styles of Practice and Medical Diversity in the History of Healing in China

Session Submission Type: Roundtable Session

Abstract

In the world of contemporary complementary and alternative medicine, Chinese medicine is portrayed as a monolithic tradition based on timeless, ancient knowledge. While historical research has shattered this stereotype, scholars still have much to understand about the full diversity of Chinese healing practices. This panel will investigate historical medical plurality in China by focusing on styles of healing practice. To this end, we will look at the different things that healers did and how they assigned meaning to them. This allows us to address several important but still only partially understood questions: What different styles of practice existed? What are their histories? What social stakes motivated people to draw boundaries between them? To stimulate discussion on these topics, our roundtable takes the novel approach of comparing case histories from different styles of healing practice. To highlight the contrasts between the styles, all of the cases involve healers seeking to treat what would now be called musculoskeletal disorders or traumatic injuries—a domain of healing that receives little attention in present-day discussions of Chinese medicine. This format further facilitates engaging the audience as active participants in reading the cases and not merely as respondents to finished research. The presentations include material from the 11th to 19th centuries. Stephen Boyanton examines how the Song cold-damage disorder specialist Xu Shuwei resorted to more than one style of practice in dealing with bodily aches. TJ Hinrichs explores Song physician Zhang Gao’s strategies of “situational judgment” for adapting expertise on trauma treatment from diverse sources. Volker Scheid presents the Qing doctor Ye Tianshi’s innovative doctrine of illnesses entering the collateral vessels, which points to new ways of imagining the body among Jiangnan physicians. Finally, Yi-Li Wu sheds light on the inadequately studied domain of manual healing by exploring how the 19th century bonesetter Hu Tingguang managed traumatic injuries.

Area of Study

• China and Inner Asia

Session Organizer

• Stephen Boyanton, Independent Scholar

Chair

• T.J. Hinrichs, Cornell University

Discussants

• Stephen Boyanton, Independent Scholar

• T.J. Hinrichs, Cornell University

• Volker Scheid, University of Westminster

• Yi-Li Wu, University of Michigan