Greek and Chinese Horse Medicine: Déjà vu All Over Again

Abstract

The Chinese have always had mixed feelings about the horse. It was a source of great pride for them during such periods of national greatness as the Han 3| (206 BC-220 AD) and Tang 0 (618-906); the former with its magical Ferghana horses known from literary descrip tions and tomb art; the latter with pedigree dancing horses celebrated by the poets of the time.2 But at the same time the horse was also a symbol of weakness even during the periods when it was most celebrated. The Chinese have, for much of their history, lacked adequate horse pasture to keep their horses, no matter how esteemed, healthy and active. Alfalfa a hay crop in much of the world, and the most ancient recorded feed given to horses, was an early introduction, but it was never grown widely enough nor was it suitable for cultivation everywhere. Other feeds were even rarer. Oats, for example, often the feed of choice for war horses in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, were completely unavailable in old China.3 There was an added issue in so far as the Chinese caring for their horses: veterinary medicine was little studied and little developed. In this respect China lagged far behind the contemporary West, the Middle East and India. Much of the veterinary medicine that they did have, it will be suggested, was apparently imported. The many military problems of the Song Dynasty 5fc (960-1279), particularly Southern Song (1125-1279), reflect the difficulties the Chinese had in maintaining and caring for horses. The Song mobilized far larger and technologically better equipped armies than their Mongol rivals but was defeated again and again as they tried to defend fixed fortresses against a highly mobile enemy.4 Part of the problem was a physical lack of horses, but Song attitudes towards the kind of specialized knowledge represented by horse managers and horse veterinarians were also an issue. After the failure of the reforms of Wang Anshi ^ iS (1021-1086) and his allies, the only knowledge that truly mattered was Confucian. All military knowledge, including veterinary knowledge used for the care of battle horses, was suspect. Also, bold cavalry or other movements were not a part of Song strategy. Thus, Song horses were neglected and of little use to its embattled armies. In this paper we will explore one aspect of China's veterinary history, its key horse medi cine, and some of the ideological issues associated with it, and we will suggest some of the

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