1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910790258003321

Autore

Unschuld Paul U (Paul Ulrich), <1943->

Titolo

What is medicine? [[electronic resource] ] : Western and Eastern approaches to healing / / Paul U. Unschuld ; translated from the German by Karen Reimers

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Berkeley, Calif. ; ; London, : University of California Press, c2009

ISBN

0-520-94470-4

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (252 p.)

Disciplina

610.1

Soggetti

Medicine - Philosophy - History

Medicine, Oriental - Philosophy - History

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Front matter -- Contents -- Preface -- 1. Life = Body Plus X -- 2. Medicine, or Novelty Appeal -- 3. Why Laws of Nature? -- 4. Longing for Order -- 5. Ethics and Legality -- 6. Why Here? Why Now? -- 7. Thales' Trite Observation -- 8. Polis, Law, and Self-determination -- 9. The Individual and the Whole -- 10. Nonmedical Healing -- 11. Mawangdui: Early Healing in China -- 12. Humans Are Biologically Identical across Cultures. So Why Not Medicine? -- 13. The Yellow Thearch's Body Image -- 14. The Birth of Chinese Medicine -- 15. The Division of the Elite -- 16. A View to the Visible, and Opinions on the Invisible -- 17. State Concept and Body Image -- 18. Farewell to Demons and Spirits -- 19. New Pathogens, and Morality -- 20. Medicine without Pharmaceutics -- 21. Pharmaceutics without Medicine -- 22. Puzzling Parallels -- 23. The Beginning of Medicine in Greece -- 24. The End of Monarchy -- 25. Troublemakers and Ostracism -- 26. See Something You Don't See -- 27. Powers of Self-healing: Self-evident? -- 28. Confucians' Fear of Chaos -- 29. Medicine: Expression of the General State of Mind -- 30. Dynamic Ideas and Faded Model Images -- 31. The Hour of the Dissectors -- 32. Manifold Experiences of the World -- 33. Greek Medicine and Roman Incomprehension -- 34. Illness as Stasis -- 35. Head and Limbs -- 36. The Rediscovery of Wholeness -- 37. To Move the Body to a Statement -- 38. Galen of Pergamon: Collector in All Worlds -- 39. Europe's Ancient



Pharmacology -- 40. The Wheel of Progress Turns No More -- 41. Constancy and Discontinuity of Structures -- 42. Arabian Interlude -- 43. The Tang Era: Cultural Diversity, Conceptual Vacuum -- 44. Changes in the Song Era -- 45. The Authority of Distant Antiquity -- 46. Zhang Ji's Belated Honors -- 47. Chinese Pharmacology

Sommario/riassunto

What Is Medicine? Western and Eastern Approaches to Healing is the first comparative history of two millennia of Western and Chinese medicine from their beginnings in the centuries BCE through present advances in sciences like molecular biology and in Western adaptations of traditional Chinese medicine. In his revolutionary interpretation of the basic forces that undergird shifts in medical theory, Paul U. Unschuld relates the history of medicine in both Europe and China to changes in politics, economics, and other contextual factors. Drawing on his own extended research of Chinese primary sources as well as his and others' scholarship in European medical history, Unschuld argues against any claims of "truth" in former and current, Eastern and Western models of physiology and pathology. What Is Medicine? makes an eloquent and timely contribution to discussions on health care policies while illuminating the nature of cognitive dynamics in medicine, and it stimulates fresh debate on the essence and interpretation of reality in medicine's attempts to manage the human organism.