Knowledge and the Scholarly Medical TraditionsDonald George Bates However much the three great traditions of medicine - Galenic, Chinese and Ayurvedic - differed from each other, they had one thing in common: scholarship. The foundational knowledge of each could only be acquired by careful study under teachers relying on ancient texts. Such medical knowledge is special, operating as it does in the realm of the most fundamental human experiences - health, disease, suffering, birth and death - and the credibility of healers is of crucial importance. Because of this, scholarly medical knowledge offers a rich field for the study of different cultural practices in the legitimation of knowledge generally. The contributors to this volume are all specialists in the history or anthropology of these traditions, and their essays range from historical investigations to studies of present-day practices. |
Contents
Scholarly ways of knowing an introduction | 1 |
Scholarly medicine in the West | 23 |
Epistemological arguments in early Greek medicine in comparativist perspective | 25 |
Autopsia historia and what women know the authority of women in Hippocratic gynaecology | 41 |
The growth of medical empiricism | 60 |
Scholarship and social context a medical case from the eleventhcentury Near East | 84 |
The experience of the book manuscripts texts and the role of epistemology in early medieval medicine | 101 |
Artifex factivus sanitatis health and medical care in medieval Latin Galenism | 127 |
A deathly disorder understanding womens health in late imperial China | 235 |
Rewriting traditional medicine in postMaoist China | 251 |
Ayurvedic medicine | 277 |
Writing the body and ruling the land Western reflections on Chinese and Indian medicine | 279 |
The scholar the wise man and universals three aspects of Ayurvedic medicine | 297 |
The epistemological carnival meditations on disciplinary intentionality and Ayurveda | 320 |
Commentaries | 345 |
AMOS FUNKENSTEIN | 347 |
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Ali ibn Ridwan amenorrhoea Ancient Medicine argument Aristotelian Aristotle autopsia Ayurvedic medicine blood body Cambridge Canon causal cause century chapter China ching Chyawanprash claims classical clinical colour computus concept concerned Confucian cultural cure debate Deng developed diagnosis discussion diseases disorder doctors Dogmatists Dong drugs early medieval medical empirical Empiricism Empiricists Epid epilepsy epistemic epistemology essay example experience female G.E.R. Lloyd Galen gnostic Greek Herophilus Hippocrates Hippocratic Huang-ti Huangdi neijing human humoral Ibid Ibn Butlān Ibn Ridwan Indian intellectual laozhongyi Latin learned medicine learned physicians manuscripts means medical knowledge medical texts medical traditions medieval medicine Mencius modern nature Pantegni patient philosophical physician practice practitioners question Rasāyana references Sanskrit scholarly scholars scientific sense Sivin social symptoms textual theoretical theory therapeutic therapy things traditional Chinese medicine traditional medicine translation treatises University Press Western women words Yellow Lord