What Is Medicine?Western and Eastern Approaches to Healing

Abstract

This book is a comparative history of two millennia of Western and Chinese medicine from their beginnings in the centuries bce through present advances in sciences such as molecular biology and in Western adaptations of traditional Chinese medicine. In this interpretation of the basic forces that undergird shifts in medical theory, the book relates the history of medicine in both Europe and China to changes in politics, economics, and other contextual factors. Drawing on extended research of Chinese primary sources as well as scholarship in European medical history, this book argues against any claims of “truth” in former and current, Eastern and Western models of physiology and pathology. The book contributes to discussions on health care policies while illuminating the nature of cognitive dynamics in medicine, and stimulates fresh debate on the essence and interpretation of reality in medicine's attempts to manage the human organism.

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