I am just a humble student. I am looking for information on the "Fifty two Prescriptions" unearthed from the Mawangdui Han Dynasty Tombs. These were written on silk scrolls and were cures for many diseases. One of the cures listed was Artemisinin, or Qinghaosu, but I would like to know what the other 51 items or cures listed on that scroll were. I have searched all over the internet and have been unable to find any further information about this. Could someone help me with the answers I seek.
Thank you most humbly,
Bao Dog
Full Version: "Recipes for 52 illnesses" from Mawangdui tomb
China History Forum, Chinese History Forum > Chinese Culture Topics > Chinese Science, Technology and Medicine
I think Donald Harper's book Early Chinese Medical Literature has them in, or at least the English translations. The book was published by Kegan Paul in 1998.
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I agree. You may want to search for Donald Harper's book entitled Early Chinese Medical Literature: The Mawangdui Medical Manuscripts (ISBN 0-7103-0582-6), which may have what you're looking for.
Here is a review by Lisa Raphals that was published in China Review International 7.2 (Fall 2000):
Here is a review by Lisa Raphals that was published in China Review International 7.2 (Fall 2000):
QUOTE
Archaeological finds over the past three decades have cast new light on many aspects of Warring States intellectual history, and medicine has been no exception. The Mawangdui medical corpus consists of seven medical manuscripts written on three sheets of silk, recovered from Mawangdui Tomb 3 in 1973, a burial dating from 168 B.C.E. They were originally published in volume 4 of Mawangdui hanmu boshu [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (The Han dynasty silk manuscripts of Mawangdui) (Beijing: Wenwu Chubanshe, 1983). Donald Harper's translation and commentary marks a breakthrough, not only for the understanding of early Chinese medicine but for all aspects of Chinese intellectual history and philosophy.
The first part of the volume is a lengthy introduction to the history and significance of the Mawangdui medical manuscripts. The first section is a survey of their contents and provenance, including the questions of their relation to other medical literature excavated from tombs and their relation to such Han texts as the Huang Di neijing [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] and the biography of Chunyu Yi in [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]Shi ji 105. The second section turns to the complex intellectual context of the Mawangdui materials. Harper locates them within a range of technical and philosophical literature, and discusses their significance for broader issues of Warring States intellectual history. He explores the at times complex relationships (as in Greece) between the activities of philosophers, physicians (yi [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), shamans (wu [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), and a spectrum of magico-religious skills and practices, including the mastery of "recipes and techniques" (fangji [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) and "calculations and arts" (shushu [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), as well as the vexing question of their relation to the development of yin-yang theory in the Han. This section also includes a very interesting comparison of two sets of philosophical arguments: Chinese controversies surrounding the status of medical arts and techniques and Greek arguments surrounding the status of techne or "skill" and its relation to philosophical activity and human well-being (and the relation of both to the occult arts).
Next comes a description of the medical ideas and practices treated in the corpus, broken down into the categories of illness, physiology, therapy, and materia medica. A third section discusses macrobiotic hygiene and techniques that were, as Harper convincingly argues, significant elements in Warring States philosophical and religious discourses on self-cultivation. He focuses on the "Neiye" [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] chapter of the Guanzi as the best exemplar of "physiological theories which fused the physical and spiritual component of the human organism, and which made vapor the source of each" (p. 119). It includes a trenchant discussion of the importance of macrobiotic hygiene for an understanding of Warring States philosophy.
The introduction's final section, "Magic," takes up the influence of magical traditions associated with the southern kingdoms of Chu [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] and Yue [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]. Harper draws on the work of the twentieth-century scholar Chai E [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] to argue for the early existence of a southern tradition of breath magic in which illness could be displaced by means of "incantations for removal" (zhuyou [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]). Harper argues that such breath-magic techniques as the "Recipes of Yue" (Yue fang [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) disappeared in medieval times because "the popular use of charms, spells and talismans was subsumed in religious Daoism" (p. 178).
In the second part of the book, Harper provides an annotated translation of the Mawangdui medical manuscripts. The individual manuscripts are untitled, but have been assigned titles by Chinese scholars on the basis of their contents. The first manuscript (MS 1) consists of five sections: Zubi shiyi mai jiujing [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] or "Cauterization Canon of the Eleven Vessels of the Foot and Forearm" (1.1), Yin Yang shiyi mai jiujing [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] or "Cauterization Canon of the Eleven Yin and Yang Vessels" (1.2), Maifa [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] or "Model of the Vessels" (1.3), Yin Yang mai sihou [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] or "Death Signs of the Yin and Yang Vessels" (1.4), and Wushier bingfang [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] or "Recipes for Fifty-two Ailments" (1.5). The second manuscript has two parts: Quegu shi qi [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] "Eliminating Grain and Eatin g Vapor" (2.1), and Daoyin tu [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] "Drawings of Guiding and Pulling" (2.2). MS 3 and MS 4 are compendia of recipes: Yangsheng fang [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] or "Recipes for Nurturing Life" and Zaliao fang [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] or "Recipes for Various Cures." MS 5, Taichan shu [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], the "Book of the Generation of the Fetus," is specifically concerned with pregnancy. Its section on fetal instruction (taijiao [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), which contains instructions for each month, gives substance to a notion attributed in myth to the mothers of sage-kings. MS 6 and MS 7 consist of four texts on various subjects: Shiwen [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] or "Ten Questions" (6.1), He Yin Yang [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] or "Harmonizing Yin and Yang" (6.2), Zajin fang [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] or "Recipes for Various Charms" (7.1), and Tianxia zhidao tan [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] or "Discussion of the Culminant Way in Under-heaven" (7.2).
Perhaps the most important medical document found at Mawangdui is the Recipes for Fifty-two Ailments (1.5), the oldest extant exemplar of a medical-recipe manual, one of the oldest genres of medical literature. Its recipes are listed in fifty-two categories that form the organizing principle of the text (each category contains up to thirty recipes). Animal bites and related injuries comprise several of these: recipes for mad-dog bites (category 6), dog bites (category 7), crow'sbeak poisoning (category 10), scorpions (category 11), leech bites (category 12), lizards (category 13), Grain-borer ailment (category 18), maggots (category 19), chewing by bugs (category 46), and gu poisoning (category 49). Before the second century, under the prevailing views (and methods of treatment) of disease, illness was seen as the invasive influence of external forces, including natural forces (wind, heat, cold), demonic entities and magical influence, and animal-inflicted injuries, including bites and the effects of parasit es and insects. Most of these ailments, whether acute or chronic, are external, and there are few references to internal organs. Harper notes the lack of reference to concepts of illness based on correspondences between the body and yin-yang or Five Phase cycles. Yin and yang appear as organizing principles to describe the human body and the causation and treatment of disease in other Mawangdui works.
The titles of several Mawangdui manuscripts are specifically concerned with the yin-yang vessels. The "Cauterization Canon of the Eleven Vessels of the Foot and Forearm" (1.1) and the "Cauterization Canon of the Eleven Yin and Yang Vessels" (1.2) describe the location of yin and yang vessels within the body. "Death Signs of the Yin and Yang Vessels" (1.4) likens yin and yang to the qi of heaven and earth. It classifies five terminal syndromes, not according to yin and yang but according to their associations with Flesh, Bone, Sinews, Blood, or Qi. "Harmonizing Yin and Yang" (6.2) is a manual of sexual arts for the promotion of health. It conspicuously uses the movements of animals as metaphors to describe whole-body movement. (The same kinds of metaphors appear in the later literature of Daoist-inspired martial arts, where the modes of movement of cranes, mantises, and other creatures are taken as models for attack and defense.) All these texts use yin-yang language to describe vessels, acumoxa points, and so forth, but without the yin-yang (or Five Phase) correspondence theories of the Huang Di neijing.
These texts also bear clear relation to other medical texts excavated from tombs. "Harmonizing Yin and Yang" and "Discussion of the Culminant Way in Under-heaven" (7.2) contain sections that refer to the movements and postures of animals as whole-body metaphors for sexual techniques and postures, for example the description of the "Ten Postures" in "Harmonizing Yin and Yang":
The ten postures: the first is "tiger roving"; the second is "cicada clinging"; the third is "measuring worm"; the fourth is "river deer butting"; the fifth is "locust splayed"; the sixth is "gibbon grabbing"; the seventh is "toad"; the eighth is "rabbit bolting"; the ninth is "dragonfly"; the tenth is "fish gobbling." (p. 418)
The "Pulling Book" (Yinshu shiwen [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) text found at Zhangjiashan in Jiangling also describes exercises that refer to or are named after animals, including: inchworms, snakes, mantises, wild ducks, owls, tigers, chickens, bears, frogs, deer, and dragons.
The Mawangdui medical texts reflect Warring States medical traditions of the third and second centuries B.C.E., at an earlier stage of medical theory than the coalescence of Han medical theory in the Huang Di neijing. Han dynasty medical concepts arose from a variety of disciplines, practices, and textual genres, includeing magico-religious and occult ideas, yin-yang divination, practices for "nurturing life," and sexual literature.
These texts also contain potentially rich material for a consideration of gender as a significant dimension of Warring States medical and magical thinking and practice. This is an area that the present book does not explore and that invites further study. To take the example of the Recipes for Fifty-two Ailments, most of its recipes make no mention of gender, yet others contain variations in the treatment of men and women without explanation or clear basis. Some are explicit statements that both men and women may use the recipe, for example Recipes 30 (for mad dog bites) and 136 (for inguinal swellings). Others introduce variations in the number of repetitions of an incantation or action, usually seven for men and twice seven for women--for example, Recipes 66 and 70 (two among several recipes for warts) and 234 (for a rash from working with lacquer, also one among several). Others involve non-gynecological recipes addressed specifically to women (Recipes 111 and 112).
Harper's comprehensive translation and survey of these third- and second-century B.C.E. texts will be of great value to scholars of Warring States and Han China, but perhaps most of all to philosophers who are too readily inclined to take their ideas in isolation. Harper demonstrates conclusively the limitations of this approach.
The first part of the volume is a lengthy introduction to the history and significance of the Mawangdui medical manuscripts. The first section is a survey of their contents and provenance, including the questions of their relation to other medical literature excavated from tombs and their relation to such Han texts as the Huang Di neijing [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] and the biography of Chunyu Yi in [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]Shi ji 105. The second section turns to the complex intellectual context of the Mawangdui materials. Harper locates them within a range of technical and philosophical literature, and discusses their significance for broader issues of Warring States intellectual history. He explores the at times complex relationships (as in Greece) between the activities of philosophers, physicians (yi [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), shamans (wu [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), and a spectrum of magico-religious skills and practices, including the mastery of "recipes and techniques" (fangji [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) and "calculations and arts" (shushu [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), as well as the vexing question of their relation to the development of yin-yang theory in the Han. This section also includes a very interesting comparison of two sets of philosophical arguments: Chinese controversies surrounding the status of medical arts and techniques and Greek arguments surrounding the status of techne or "skill" and its relation to philosophical activity and human well-being (and the relation of both to the occult arts).
Next comes a description of the medical ideas and practices treated in the corpus, broken down into the categories of illness, physiology, therapy, and materia medica. A third section discusses macrobiotic hygiene and techniques that were, as Harper convincingly argues, significant elements in Warring States philosophical and religious discourses on self-cultivation. He focuses on the "Neiye" [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] chapter of the Guanzi as the best exemplar of "physiological theories which fused the physical and spiritual component of the human organism, and which made vapor the source of each" (p. 119). It includes a trenchant discussion of the importance of macrobiotic hygiene for an understanding of Warring States philosophy.
The introduction's final section, "Magic," takes up the influence of magical traditions associated with the southern kingdoms of Chu [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] and Yue [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]. Harper draws on the work of the twentieth-century scholar Chai E [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] to argue for the early existence of a southern tradition of breath magic in which illness could be displaced by means of "incantations for removal" (zhuyou [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]). Harper argues that such breath-magic techniques as the "Recipes of Yue" (Yue fang [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) disappeared in medieval times because "the popular use of charms, spells and talismans was subsumed in religious Daoism" (p. 178).
In the second part of the book, Harper provides an annotated translation of the Mawangdui medical manuscripts. The individual manuscripts are untitled, but have been assigned titles by Chinese scholars on the basis of their contents. The first manuscript (MS 1) consists of five sections: Zubi shiyi mai jiujing [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] or "Cauterization Canon of the Eleven Vessels of the Foot and Forearm" (1.1), Yin Yang shiyi mai jiujing [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] or "Cauterization Canon of the Eleven Yin and Yang Vessels" (1.2), Maifa [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] or "Model of the Vessels" (1.3), Yin Yang mai sihou [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] or "Death Signs of the Yin and Yang Vessels" (1.4), and Wushier bingfang [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] or "Recipes for Fifty-two Ailments" (1.5). The second manuscript has two parts: Quegu shi qi [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] "Eliminating Grain and Eatin g Vapor" (2.1), and Daoyin tu [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] "Drawings of Guiding and Pulling" (2.2). MS 3 and MS 4 are compendia of recipes: Yangsheng fang [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] or "Recipes for Nurturing Life" and Zaliao fang [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] or "Recipes for Various Cures." MS 5, Taichan shu [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], the "Book of the Generation of the Fetus," is specifically concerned with pregnancy. Its section on fetal instruction (taijiao [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), which contains instructions for each month, gives substance to a notion attributed in myth to the mothers of sage-kings. MS 6 and MS 7 consist of four texts on various subjects: Shiwen [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] or "Ten Questions" (6.1), He Yin Yang [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] or "Harmonizing Yin and Yang" (6.2), Zajin fang [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] or "Recipes for Various Charms" (7.1), and Tianxia zhidao tan [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] or "Discussion of the Culminant Way in Under-heaven" (7.2).
Perhaps the most important medical document found at Mawangdui is the Recipes for Fifty-two Ailments (1.5), the oldest extant exemplar of a medical-recipe manual, one of the oldest genres of medical literature. Its recipes are listed in fifty-two categories that form the organizing principle of the text (each category contains up to thirty recipes). Animal bites and related injuries comprise several of these: recipes for mad-dog bites (category 6), dog bites (category 7), crow'sbeak poisoning (category 10), scorpions (category 11), leech bites (category 12), lizards (category 13), Grain-borer ailment (category 18), maggots (category 19), chewing by bugs (category 46), and gu poisoning (category 49). Before the second century, under the prevailing views (and methods of treatment) of disease, illness was seen as the invasive influence of external forces, including natural forces (wind, heat, cold), demonic entities and magical influence, and animal-inflicted injuries, including bites and the effects of parasit es and insects. Most of these ailments, whether acute or chronic, are external, and there are few references to internal organs. Harper notes the lack of reference to concepts of illness based on correspondences between the body and yin-yang or Five Phase cycles. Yin and yang appear as organizing principles to describe the human body and the causation and treatment of disease in other Mawangdui works.
The titles of several Mawangdui manuscripts are specifically concerned with the yin-yang vessels. The "Cauterization Canon of the Eleven Vessels of the Foot and Forearm" (1.1) and the "Cauterization Canon of the Eleven Yin and Yang Vessels" (1.2) describe the location of yin and yang vessels within the body. "Death Signs of the Yin and Yang Vessels" (1.4) likens yin and yang to the qi of heaven and earth. It classifies five terminal syndromes, not according to yin and yang but according to their associations with Flesh, Bone, Sinews, Blood, or Qi. "Harmonizing Yin and Yang" (6.2) is a manual of sexual arts for the promotion of health. It conspicuously uses the movements of animals as metaphors to describe whole-body movement. (The same kinds of metaphors appear in the later literature of Daoist-inspired martial arts, where the modes of movement of cranes, mantises, and other creatures are taken as models for attack and defense.) All these texts use yin-yang language to describe vessels, acumoxa points, and so forth, but without the yin-yang (or Five Phase) correspondence theories of the Huang Di neijing.
These texts also bear clear relation to other medical texts excavated from tombs. "Harmonizing Yin and Yang" and "Discussion of the Culminant Way in Under-heaven" (7.2) contain sections that refer to the movements and postures of animals as whole-body metaphors for sexual techniques and postures, for example the description of the "Ten Postures" in "Harmonizing Yin and Yang":
The ten postures: the first is "tiger roving"; the second is "cicada clinging"; the third is "measuring worm"; the fourth is "river deer butting"; the fifth is "locust splayed"; the sixth is "gibbon grabbing"; the seventh is "toad"; the eighth is "rabbit bolting"; the ninth is "dragonfly"; the tenth is "fish gobbling." (p. 418)
The "Pulling Book" (Yinshu shiwen [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) text found at Zhangjiashan in Jiangling also describes exercises that refer to or are named after animals, including: inchworms, snakes, mantises, wild ducks, owls, tigers, chickens, bears, frogs, deer, and dragons.
The Mawangdui medical texts reflect Warring States medical traditions of the third and second centuries B.C.E., at an earlier stage of medical theory than the coalescence of Han medical theory in the Huang Di neijing. Han dynasty medical concepts arose from a variety of disciplines, practices, and textual genres, includeing magico-religious and occult ideas, yin-yang divination, practices for "nurturing life," and sexual literature.
These texts also contain potentially rich material for a consideration of gender as a significant dimension of Warring States medical and magical thinking and practice. This is an area that the present book does not explore and that invites further study. To take the example of the Recipes for Fifty-two Ailments, most of its recipes make no mention of gender, yet others contain variations in the treatment of men and women without explanation or clear basis. Some are explicit statements that both men and women may use the recipe, for example Recipes 30 (for mad dog bites) and 136 (for inguinal swellings). Others introduce variations in the number of repetitions of an incantation or action, usually seven for men and twice seven for women--for example, Recipes 66 and 70 (two among several recipes for warts) and 234 (for a rash from working with lacquer, also one among several). Others involve non-gynecological recipes addressed specifically to women (Recipes 111 and 112).
Harper's comprehensive translation and survey of these third- and second-century B.C.E. texts will be of great value to scholars of Warring States and Han China, but perhaps most of all to philosophers who are too readily inclined to take their ideas in isolation. Harper demonstrates conclusively the limitations of this approach.
QUOTE (Bao Dog @ Jun 15 2007, 03:50 PM) 
I am just a humble student. I am looking for information on the "Fifty two Prescriptions" unearthed from the Mawangdui Han Dynasty Tombs. These were written on silk scrolls and were cures for many diseases. One of the cures listed was Artemisinin, or Qinghaosu, but I would like to know what the other 51 items or cures listed on that scroll were. I have searched all over the internet and have been unable to find any further information about this. Could someone help me with the answers I seek.
Thank you most humbly,
Bao Dog
Thank you most humbly,
Bao Dog
Sorry for my lack of knowledge in medicine, what is "Artemisinin"? What kind of disease is that?
QUOTE (General_Zhaoyun @ Aug 21 2008, 09:46 PM)
Sorry for my lack of knowledge in medicine, what is "Artemisinin"? What kind of disease is that?
Hi General_Zhaoyun,
Artemisinin is called Qinghaosu 清蒿素 in modern Chinese. It is a compound that Chinese scientists extracted from a herb called Artemisia annua (qinghao 清蒿) in 1972. They were trying to test the properties of about 200 plants that appeared in old recipes for malaria, and Artemisia was the only herb that turned out to have real anti-malarial properties. The plant Artemisia (not Artemisinin, which is a modern chemical compound) was first mentioned in the Mawangdui text that modern editors have called Recipes for Fifty-two Illnesses (Wushier bingfang 五十二病方). The copy that was found in a tomb near Mawangdui was written down between around 215 and 195 BC, but it was probably compiled or copied from earlier sources. The text contains more than 250 medical recipes for 52 illnesses (some of these illnesses have names that historians have been unable to identify). I discussed the history of Artemisia in some detail here:
http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/index.php?showtopic=26871 (posts 3 and 7)
You can also check the Wikipedia page on Artemisinin.
Since this thread is only remotely concerned with archeology, could someone transfer it to the forum on Chinese Science, Technology and Medicine? Thank you!
Alright.. topic moved to Chinese Medicine forum.
Leaving aside the illness names that scholars have been unable to identify, the illnesses Wushier bingfang 五十二病方 gave remedies for were (as translated by Donald Harper):
Various wounds
Rigidity due to a wound
Infant-cord rigidity
Infant ailing from spasms
Infant convulsions
Mad dog bites a person
Dog bites a persons
Wuhui (monkshood) poisoning
Scorpion
Leeches bite
Lizard
Warts
Seizure sickness
To make a person ailing from the horse not have spasms
To make a person ailing from the sheep not have spasms
To make a person ailing from the snake not have spasms
To make a person ailing from the [?] not have spasms
Various eating ailments
Various [?] ailments
Urine retention ailment
When urine has sediment
Lard urine
Swollen scrotum
Intestine inguinal swelling
Vessel hemorrhoid
Male hemorrhoid
Female hemorrhoid
Anus itchiness
Ju abscess ailment
Burns
Shin burns
Shin wounds
Scabies
Snake bite
Abscess
Lacquer
Chewing by bugs
Dry itch
Old scabbing
Gu poisoning
Child sprite
Removing a person's horse warts
Treating facial pustules
Various wounds
Rigidity due to a wound
Infant-cord rigidity
Infant ailing from spasms
Infant convulsions
Mad dog bites a person
Dog bites a persons
Wuhui (monkshood) poisoning
Scorpion
Leeches bite
Lizard
Warts
Seizure sickness
To make a person ailing from the horse not have spasms
To make a person ailing from the sheep not have spasms
To make a person ailing from the snake not have spasms
To make a person ailing from the [?] not have spasms
Various eating ailments
Various [?] ailments
Urine retention ailment
When urine has sediment
Lard urine
Swollen scrotum
Intestine inguinal swelling
Vessel hemorrhoid
Male hemorrhoid
Female hemorrhoid
Anus itchiness
Ju abscess ailment
Burns
Shin burns
Shin wounds
Scabies
Snake bite
Abscess
Lacquer
Chewing by bugs
Dry itch
Old scabbing
Gu poisoning
Child sprite
Removing a person's horse warts
Treating facial pustules
QUOTE (madalibi @ Aug 23 2008, 02:28 AM)
To make a person ailing from the sheep not have spasms
Okay, I need help with this one. QUOTE
QUOTE
(madalibi @ Aug 23 2008, 02:28 AM)
To make a person ailing from the sheep not have spasms
To make a person ailing from the sheep not have spasms
Okay, I need help with this one.That was not exactly limpid, was it?
"Ailing from the sheep" probably meant making the sound of a sheep during spasmodic fits that might have looked like epileptic seizures.The character for "spasms" is xian 癎 (usually written 癇 in modern books). It is made of the "illness" radical (疒) and the character jian 間, which provides the sound, but also means "intermitent" or "episodic." Because of this meaning of jian 間 and because some of the symptoms of xian 癎 as described in later medical texts correspond to those of epilepsy, some people translate xian 癎 directly as epilepsy. I prefer "spasmodic fits."
The "Recipes for 52 illnesses" is the first known example of the division of xian into kinds named after animals. The five received ones (which we know from later documents) were sheep, horse, ox, pig, and chicken. Some books added the dog to this list. "Recipes for 52 Illnesses" named only four categories and one of them (the snake) was not a domestic animal.
Donald Harper (p. 251, note 2) explains that, in received classifications,
QUOTE
The sounds emitted by the afflicted person and the contortions of his body during an attack of spasms are the basis for naming each type. The four categories of xian ailments in MSI-E [Harper's code for "Recipes for 52 Illnesses"] seem to have a similar basis.
At most a few centuries after the Mawangdui texts were written, xian 癎 came to be considered a close equivalent of another illness characterized by seizures: dian 癲. Both were attributed to invasion by wind. It is interesting that the term "yang dian feng" 羊癲風 ("sheep-seizure Wind") has survived into modern Chinese as a popular name for epilepsy!
QUOTE (madalibi @ Aug 23 2008, 11:12 PM)
Okay, I need help with this one.That was not exactly limpid, was it?
"Ailing from the sheep" probably meant making the sound of a sheep during spasmodic fits that might have looked like epileptic seizures.The character for "spasms" is xian 癎 (usually written 癇 in modern books). It is made of the "illness" radical (疒) and the character jian 間, which provides the sound, but also means "intermitent" or "episodic." Because of this meaning of jian 間 and because some of the symptoms of xian 癎 as described in later medical texts correspond to those of epilepsy, some people translate xian 癎 directly as epilepsy. I prefer "spasmodic fits."
The "Recipes for 52 illnesses" is the first known example of the division of xian into kinds named after animals. The five received ones (which we know from later documents) were sheep, horse, ox, pig, and chicken. Some books added the dog to this list. "Recipes for 52 Illnesses" named only four categories and one of them (the snake) was not a domestic animal.
Donald Harper (p. 251, note 2) explains that, in received classifications,
At most a few centuries after the Mawangdui texts were written, xian 癎 came to be considered a close equivalent of another illness characterized by seizures: dian 癲. Both were attributed to invasion by wind. It is interesting that the term "yang dian feng" 羊癲風 ("sheep-seizure Wind") has survived into modern Chinese as a popular name for epilepsy!
Interesting classification of conditions related to spasms and fits, do you think Tourette's Syndrome would be classified as one of these?
QUOTE (scottbajie @ Aug 24 2008, 11:26 PM)
Interesting classification of conditions related to spasms and fits, do you think Tourette's Syndrome would be classified as one of these?
This is a difficult question... In historical documents, I have seen cases of xian 癎 ("spasmodic fits" or "epileptiform seizures") that included scolding and swearing and that could have corresponded to Tourette's syndrome, but there is no way to know if this is what they were describing. At best, we could wonder what category someone suffering from typical Tourette symptoms would have been classified under, and then we might have a choice between:
xian 癎: "spasmodic fits"
or
kuang 狂: mania
The problem is that typical xian did not include words and typical kuang did not include spasms and tics... If Tourette's syndrome is caused by biological processes that are common to all humanity, some ancient Chinese doctors probably recorded a case or two of it somewhere, but I'm not sure where. What is almost certain is that until about the 12th century, doctors would have attributed these symptoms to Wind, but after that "mucus" (tan 痰, also translated as "phlegm") would have been the preferred candidate.
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