East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine (EASTM - Universität Tübingen)

Burns, Susan L.

Nanayama Jundō at Work: A Village Doctor and Medical Knowledge in Nineteenth Century Japan

Vogel, Hans Ulrich

7 
Note from the Editor 
 
As announced in my last note to the journal, this issue of EASTM is dedicated to 
the history of medicine in early modern Japan. However, because all five articles 
could not be accommodated in one issue, we have had to distribute them across 
two. Thus, EASTM nos. 29 (2008) and 30 (2009) will basically focus on Japan, 
starting with a note from the guest editor, Bettina Gramlich-Oka, and an intro-
duction written by William Wayne Farris. Two of the five articles, namely those 
of Andrew Edmund Goble dealing with rhythms of medicine and community in 
late sixteenth-century Japan and of Susan L. Burns on a case study of a village 
doctor and medical knowledge in nineteenth-century Japan, will be published in 
this number, the other three articles authored by Gregory Smits, Bettina Gram-
lich-Oka and William Johnston in no. 30. Both issues will contain a number of 
book reviews, and no. 30 a research note by Nakayama Shigeru on the incom-
mensurability between Western geometrical and Chinese numerico-algebraic 
astronomy.  
Following these two special issues on the history of medicine in early modern 
Japan, no. 31 (2009) will contain a substantial number of the plenary lectures 
that were presented at the “12th International Conference on the History of Sci-
ence in East Asia” at John Hopkins University, Baltimore, July 14-18, 2008. We 
are scheduled to include contributions by James R. Bartholomew, Tian Miao, 
Ellis Tinios, Volker Scheid, and Paul U. Unschuld on such topics as East Asian 
scientists and the Nobel Prize, early stages of research on the history of mathe-
matics in China, the human body in Japanese illustrated books of the Edo period, 
the integration of Chinese medicine into modern health care systems, and the 
liberating potential of early Chinese medicine. 
No. 31 of EASTM will also be the last issue published under the former edi-
torial and technical set-up. Thereafter, starting with no. 32 (2010), we will switch 
to the new pattern, as outlined in the “Note from the Editor” in no. 28. To reiter-
ate briefly, this means that  EASTM will be made available as an electronic pub-
lication with a permanent electronic archive based on a policy of open access, 
with issues of the journal becoming available openly on the net two years after 
publication. As before, we will continue to publish EASTM in hard-copy, but 
electronic publishing will enable us to enhance and supplement our range of 
publication possibilities by, for instance, including more pictures, tables and 
appendices or even audio-visual material.  
Finally, let me express my gratitude to a number of colleagues and collabora-
tors who have made this and the next issue of EASTM possible. This includes 
the authors of the articles and book reviews as well as the anonymous referees,  
and also EASTM’s editorial staff, namely, our English language editor John P. C. 
Moffett in Cambridge and my student assistants Vanessa Dahlmann and Valerie 
Keppel. Thanks to their assistance and dedication, EASTM is able to continue to 
publish original research of high quality, and thus to fulfil an important mission 
in our globalized field of intercultural and cross-civilisational studies on the 
history of East Asian science, technology and medicine. The continuation of the 
8 
 
journal’s role is also guaranteed by the fact that submissions to EASTM have 
increased over the years so that the academic community can expect further 
fascinating issues, both general and on special topics.  
 
 
Hans Ulrich Vogel 
Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen  
Institute for Asian and Oriental Studies 
Department of Chinese and Korean Studies  
 
 
 
 


Note from the Editor

Engelhardt, Ute

 82 
REVIEWS 
 
 
H. T. Huang, Science and Civilisation in China. Vol. VI, Part 5, Fermentations 
and Food Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. xxviii, 
741 pp., ills. 
 
Ute Engelhardt 
 
[Ute Engelhardt is lecturer at the Department of Asian Studies, University of 
Munich, vice-president of the International Association of Chinese Medicine 
(SMS) and editor-in-chief of the journal Chinesische Medizin. She is co-author 
of Chinesische Diätetik, Urban & Schwarzenberg, München, 1997]. 
 
 
This volume, the 21st to appear in Joseph Needham’s series Science and Civili-
sation in China, represents the culmination of a lifetime’s work of the author H. 
T. Huang (Huang Hsing-tsung). It is the result of more than fifty years of 
observations and research into the history, technology and practice of processing 
food products in China. H. T. Huang is both a distinguished biochemist and 
deeply learned in Chinese tradition. In the early 1940s he served as Joseph 
Needham’s secretary in Chongqing and later went on to obtain a degree in 
chemistry at Oxford. After that, he worked for food processing and 
pharmaceutical companies in the United States. He also served as a program 
director for the National Science Foundation and more recently was Deputy 
Director of the Needham Research Institute. In his “author’s note” he explains 
vividly his lifelong interest in food processing practices, which began in a 
Chinese village in the 1940s.  
This book is an amply documented study of ancient Chinese food resources, 
culinary methods, literary sources on food and drink, various kinds of 
fermentation, including alcohol, soybeans and pickles, food preservation, the 
production of oils, malt sugar and starch, the processing of wheat flour, and tea 
processing and its effects on health. It also considers briefly a number of related 
issues, including Chinese approaches to nutritional deficiency diseases. The 
author traces the origin and development of Chinese food products, explains the 
scientific basis of traditional Chinese processing technologies, and whenever 
possible, compares them with similar processes in European and other cultures in 
the world.  
The eight subsections of this volume provide 1) an introduction to food re-
sources in ancient China and the Chinese culinary system; 2) a review of primary 
and secondary sources; 3) an analysis of fermentation processes and the evolution 
of alcoholic drinks; 4) a study of soybean processing and fermentation; 5) a dis-
cussion of food processing and preservation techniques; 6) a succinct history of 
83 Reviews 
tea processing and utilisation; 7) a short review of food and nutritional deficiency 
diseases; 8) an epilogue with theoretical reflections and conclusions. 
The author begins with an ample introduction to the various types of grains, 
oilseeds, vegetables, fruits, land and aquatic animals used in Chinese cooking (pp. 
17-65). Moreover it deals with methods of cooking, utensils, seasonings, dining 
vessels, implements and furniture that played an important role in the history of 
Chinese cooking and eating (pp. 66-115). This is the most convenient and 
reliable presentation of this information in a Western language, although some of 
it is available elsewhere, especially in Chinese. The section on eating implements 
is especially informative. For example, Huang notes that in the Warring States 
period chopsticks were used only for eating viands, not grain food, which was 
eaten with the fingers (p. 104). 
Another valuable section of the book (pp. 116-148) concerns the literature 
and sources that contribute to the study of Chinese culinary science. The author 
gives a detailed inventory of what information about “culinary content” can be 
obtained from such works as the Shijing 詩 經 (Book of Odes), Chuci 楚 辭 
(Elegies of Chu State), Liji 禮 記 (Record of Rites), Lüshi chunqiu 呂 氏 春 秋 
(Master Lü’s Spring and Autumn Annals), and the Mawangdui 馬 王 堆 bamboo 
slip lists of food products. The author also surveys the vast Chinese repertoire of 
pre-modern works concerned with food and drink, including the so-called “food 
canons” (shijing 食 經), works on wine technology and “materia dietetica” (on 
the medicinal properties of foods). He concludes with a review of the most 
important modern secondary studies of food culture and technology. 
The main part of this outstanding work is the long section devoted to 
fermentation (pp. 149-378). It begins with a lucid and comprehensive account of 
the origin and evolution of jiu 酒 (alcoholic drinks) in China. Other valuable 
information in this section is the discussion of ferments (qu 麴). They are often 
inaccurately translated as ‘yeast’, whereas Huang prefers the translation ‘ferment’ 
(always italicized). These ferments are made by the controlled exposure of 
cooked grain to organisms naturally present in the environment. Modern analyses 
indicate that ferments contain a wide variety of moulds, yeasts and bacteria (pp. 
280, 592). One also learns much about hongqu 紅 麴 (red yeast rice), which 
Huang translates as “red ferment”. The Chinese used it for various purposes: as a 
food preservative and flavoring agent, to make wine, and medicinally to improve 
digestion and enhance circulation. In modern Western medicines it is now 
becoming more and more popular for lowering serum cholesterol. 
Though it seems clear that the ferments were developed in the context of al-
cohol production, they have turned out to be useful in a wide variety of other 
food processes, especially in the preparation of soybean, vegetable, meat and fish 
preserves and sauces which are so important in Chinese cuisine. In this context, 
Huang devotes nearly a hundred pages (pp. 292-378) to a discussion of the 
various culinary uses of the soybean: soybean sprouts, bean curd, fermented 
soybeans (doushi 豆 豉), fermented soy paste (jiang 醬) and fermented soy sauce 
84 EASTM 28 (2008) 
(jiangyou 醬 油). Among all these highly interesting findings, the section on bean 
curd is one of the most valuable. Here, by means of an analysis of a mural 
painting discovered in a tomb located in Dahuting 打  虎  亭 county (Henan 
province), he provides evidence that the Chinese were making bean curd as early 
as the Han dynasty.  
The next part deals with food processing and preservation techniques (pp. 
379-502), where the author considers all manner of fermented condiments, as 
well as the techniques of drying and salting. He then goes on to the production of 
vegetable oils, malt sugar and starch. Moreover he devotes forty pages to the 
important subject of the processing of wheat flour to make what the Chinese 
called mianshi 麵 食 “flour food”, including bing 餅, the most common type of 
flour food in the Han and early medieval period, as well as steamed buns and 
different sorts of noodles. 
The final food item that the author discusses in detail is tea (pp. 503-570). 
This is certainly an unique account of the history, processing and utilisation of 
tea in a Western language. After surveying the impressive number of “tea books” 
(table 47 at p. 516), Huang describes the various methods for processing tea, 
cake teas, loose tea and different varieties of teas, such as oolong and black/red 
tea. Equally informative is his account of the methods of making tea. Finally, the 
author discusses the medicinal qualities of tea. 
The final section of this book is a brief survey entitled “food and nutritional 
deficiency diseases” (pp. 571-591) Here Huang briefly outlines the concept of 
Chinese dietary therapy (shiliao 食 療), in which foods are used as therapeutic 
agents for the treatment of diseases, and then turns to Chinese treatments of 
goitre, beriberi and night blindness. He may have chosen the topic of nutritional 
deficieny diseases in order to continue the work of Lu and Needham, who 
submitted their paper “A Contribution to the History of Chinese Dietetics”, 
dealing mainly with nutritional deficiency diseases, to ISIS more than fifty years 
ago (p. 578).  
Huang’s approach to the history, technology and practice of processing food 
products in China is rather similar to Needham’s intent of the SCC series: to 
show that Europe was never the sole agent in forming modern science. At the 
beginning of his remarkable book, Huang argues from the perspective of 
biochemistry that the fermentation processes required for making products such 
as “rice wine, vinegar, soy paste, soy sauce and related fermented products” are 
“ancient prototypes of modern bio-technology” (p. 14). Huang’s work is a 
thorough analysis of the archeological, classical, historical, medical, literary, 
scientific and secondary literature on food processing in China and the reader 
will find here all he needs for his research. For anthropological, sociological, 
cultural, literary or even post modern interpretations of food in Chinese culture, 
he must look elsewhere. 
All in all, this large volume is a most welcome contribution to the study of 
Chinese food science and culinary history and it can be seen as the definitive 
work in any language on Chinese food science. 


H. T. Huang, Science and Civilisation in China, Vol. 1, Part 5, Fermentations and Food Science

Bretelle-Establet, Florence

102 EASTM 29 (2008) 
Paul U. Unschuld, Chinese Life Sciences: Introductory Readings in Classical 
Chinese Medicine (rev. ed. of Introductory Readings in Classical Chinese 
Medicine, 1988). Taos, New Mexico: Paradigm Publications, 2005, xii, 475 
pp. 
 
Florence Bretelle-Establet 
 
[Florence Bretelle-Establet is researcher at REHSEIS (C.N.R.S & University 
Paris Diderot) and co-editor of Extrême-Orient Extrême-Occident. She obtained 
her Ph.D. at Université Paris Diderot in 1999. She published, in 2002, La Santé 
en Chine du Sud, 1898-1928, in which she analyzed how the different institutions 
and actors involved in medical assistance in the provinces of Yunnan, Guangxi 
and Guangdong interacted with the French physicians appointed there at the 
end of the nineteenth century. Her current research focuses on the medical prac-
tices and theories in these three provinces in the Qing empire. By studying medi-
cal texts from this part of the empire, she is investigating what it meant to be a 
physician and an author of medical texts in remote and rural areas, and how 
knowledge circulated from heartland to hinterland.] 
 
 
The 2005 re-edition of Paul Unschuld’s 1988 Chinese Life Sciences: Introduc-
tory Readings in Classical Chinese Medicine is a particularly welcome initiative 
by Paradigm Publications. When the book was first published it was unique in its 
genre; and at the time of its second edition, it still has no equal.  
This book is a primer for English-speaking students interested in Chinese 
medicine and it follows the general rules of any primer. It is made up of lessons, 
vocabulary lists, Pinyin transcriptions with tone markers, English translations, a 
glossary, and an annotated bibliography which has been updated for this second 
edition. The book was conceived to fill the gap in textbooks for foreign students 
studying Chinese Life Sciences at a time when an increasing number of people 
were developing an interest in Chinese medicine. This interest was either in clini-
cal practice or academic research, as medicine, in general, became increasingly 
recognized as an important crucible of knowledge relevant for research in the 
humanities. The aims of this primer are thus twofold: on the one hand, it seeks to 
give students the linguistic tools to allow them to work directly with Chinese 
primary medical sources; on the other, to teach the basic principles underlying 
Chinese medicine by relying on a set of primary texts that the author considers 
particularly suitable for students. 
Based on the author’s own teaching experience, this primer brings together 
sixty excerpts, selected from thirty-two medical books, written during the last two 
millennia. These excerpts are presented in ten lessons to illustrate common 
themes: general values of Chinese medicine, structure and functions of the organ-
ism, pathology, general principles underlying diagnostics or treatments, and so 
on. Each lesson, illustrated by six different primary texts, begins with an abstract 
103 Reviews 
of the theme addressed in the lesson. As the author recalls in his introductory 
notes, six excerpts are far from sufficient to illustrate the concepts and principles 
in all their subtlety and depth. The author therefore gives a short overview of the 
themes addressed, and refers his students to other works written by him for a  
fuller understanding of the historical, social and cultural background of many of 
the concepts dealt with in the primer. This short introduction is followed by a 
vocabulary list of the key terms found in each text. 
In the first lesson, which relies on the most ancient Chinese texts to have been 
transmitted in the written tradition and on texts produced in the twelfth and six-
teenth centuries, we study some of the general values that underlie medicine in 
China: the paradigm of systematic correspondence that considers human life as 
an integral aspect of the all-embracing workings of fundamental laws of nature; 
the subsequent idea that humans should adopt a way of life that respects these 
laws of nature, at the risk of losing bodily harmony and falling sick if they do not; 
and in this predictable interpretation of health and disease, the emphasis put on 
prevention. From the texts written in medieval China, we see also how medicine 
was not viewed as a field of knowledge separate from the other fields of knowl-
edge that reflect on man and society, but, on the contrary, drew largely on clas-
sics such as the Book of Change and Confucian writings.  
The second lesson provides basic tools for understanding how the body was 
understood in Chinese medicine from the earliest theories until the introduction 
of Western anatomy. The different texts used in this lesson give descriptions of 
the parts of the body—palaces and depots, conduits and vessels, and so on—and 
their assumed functions within the organism. Two texts focus on two parts of the 
body for which there was no anatomical evidence, the triple burner and the gate 
of life, which gave rise to long-lasting controversy among medical thinkers. From 
the texts selected in this lesson, we see how the understanding of the structure 
and function of the human body was grounded in the observation of the natural 
and the social environment, even if, as was very likely, the ancient authors knew 
the anatomical composition of the body. The last text in this lesson narrates pre-
cisely how capital punishment provided opportunities for observation and new 
hypotheses. 
The third and fourth lessons introduce some of the causes that were believed 
to lead people from good health to sickness. In addition to the belief that disease 
results from human behavior contrary to the laws of nature, these texts put the 
emphasis on the general idea that evil or deviant (xie 邪) qi enters the main con-
duits, invading the palaces and depots, thereby generating diseases that eventu-
ally spread to all the parts of the body. At the origin of such intrusions, there 
might be three different main causes: internal (the seven affects), external (the six 
excesses of climate) and the causes that are neither internal nor external. A fur-
ther fourth cause was a particular condition of depletion in the human body. Les-
son four puts the emphasis on particular causes that were thought to lead to spe-
cific ailments. All these texts bear testimony to the dominant representation that, 
whatever the cause, once bodily harmony was disrupted, the disease would 
104 EASTM 29 (2008) 
spread within all the interconnected parts of the body and circulate in a foresee-
able way—an idea illustrated in Bian Que’s biography, which is the only text 
included in this primer that is not a medical text.  
Lessons five and six discuss the general principles underlying the diagnosis of 
disease in humans and how to perform good diagnoses. Pulse diagnosis, in its 
theoretical and practical aspects, is treated separately in lesson six. From the texts 
drawn together for these two lessons, we learn that the first goal for a physician 
was to deduce from his patient’s verbal description, complexion and pulse where 
the disease was, where it had originated from and where it was moving to. It was 
also his job to differentiate disease bing 病 from the pathological conditions 
zheng 症 generated by the disease. The texts in these lessons illustrate how one 
could succeed in these tasks. They describe the four stages in making a good 
diagnosis and, as an aside, refer to the controversies that arose in the course of 
history about the sequential order in which a physician should perform them. 
The last four lessons focus on treatments used in Chinese medicine—lesson 
seven centering on their general values, lessons eight and nine on drug use and 
lesson ten on needling or acupuncture. The texts selected in these lessons thus 
shed light on the major healing strategies that were adopted by literate physicians 
in the course of history. They notably underline how the needling and pharma-
ceutical approaches were understood by medical thinkers, and how and when 
these therapeutic approaches were integrated into the science of systematic corre-
spondence. The texts also underline that if etiological or physiological beliefs 
were controversial topics among physicians, treatment, in particular, was at the 
center of fierce debate. While physicians all agreed that the identification of a 
disease was the first step in the curative process, they often disagreed, however, 
on which therapeutic solutions should be provided. This is illustrated here in 
texts advocating particular methods for treating illnesses and those contesting the 
established order, and more generally by the criticism formulated in nearly all 
these texts that physicians habitually misunderstood the complexity of drugs and 
prescriptions, using them in wrong and dangerous ways. Another criticism, ap-
pearing in two of the texts and directed toward physicians who used the needling 
strategy, was that of ignoring the traditions that had once made this healing prac-
tice particularly useful. 
On the whole, this primer gives a good introduction to some of the major 
concepts and practices used in Chinese medical history and to the vocabulary 
typically used in Chinese medicine. It succeeds, I think, in highlighting the fact 
that medicine in China was not a monolithic, unchanging system of thought that 
has so often been described in works intended to introduce Chinese medicine to 
Westerners. The texts selected for the purpose of this primer underline the fact 
that medicine in China not only consisted of a set of theories and practices that 
evolved continuously over time, but also of theories and practices that conflicted 
with each other, giving rise to fierce debate between medical thinkers. These 
tensions appear very clearly in the literature selected from the late imperial pe-
riod. Maybe this historical change could have been shown in a clearer way if the 
105 Reviews 
dates of the excerpts selected in each lesson were reproduced on the same page 
as the Chinese excerpt, rather than being mentioned only once in the first pages 
of the book. Similarly, it would have been useful to have a short note about each 
author in order to better contextualize the literature selected and qualified by the 
author as “classical”. 
Regarding terminology, this book introduces the meanings of more than two 
thousand different characters, including general and medical terms. As the primer 
does not introduce the basic principles of classical Chinese, nor provide explana-
tions of how to write the characters, we remain skeptical that novice students of 
Chinese will benefit from it. However, this primer will be very useful for teachers 
as well as for students in undergraduate and graduate classes. 
 
 


Paul U. Unschuld, Chinese Life Science: Introductory Readings in Classical Chinese Medicine

Contents 
 
 
 
Note from the Editor 7 
 
Obituray – Prof. Xi Zezong (1927-2008) 11 
—GAO JIE 
 
Narrating a History for China’s Medical Past: Christianity, Natural 
Philosophy and History in Wang Honghan’s Gujin yishi 古 今 
醫 史 (History of Medicine Past and Present) 
—CHU PINGYI 14 
 
Reforming Astronomy and Compiling Imperial Science in the Post-
Kangxi Era: The Social Dimension of the Yuzhi lixiang kaocheng 
houbian 御 製 曆 象 考 成 後 編 
—SHI YUNLI 36 
 
 
Reviews 
 
H. T. Huang, Science and Civilisation in China, Vol. 1, Part 5, 
Fermentations and Food Science 
—reviewed by Ute Engelhardt 82 
 
Ofra Anson and Sun Shifang, Health Care in Rural China: Lessons 
from HeBei Province 
 —reviewed by Sascha Klotzbücher 85 
 
Ole Döring and Chen Renbiao (eds.), Advances in Chinese Medical 
Ethics: Chinese and International Perspectives 
—reviewed by Georg Marckmann 91 
 
Ho Peng Yoke, Reminiscence of a Roving Scholar: Science, Huma-
nities and Joseph Needham 
 —reviewed by Nakayama Shigeru 94 
 
Needham, Joseph, with the collaboration of Lu Gwei-djen, Science 
and Civilisation in China, Vol. VI, Part 6, Medicine 
 —reviewed by Frédéric Obringer 96 
 


Li, Hui

 84 
REVIEWS 
 
 
Cecilia Braghin (ed.), Chinese Glass: Archaeological Studies on the Uses and 
Social Context of Glass Artefacts from the Warring States to the Northern 
Song Period. Florence: Leo S. Olschki Editore (Orientalia Venetiana XIV), 
2002. 128 pp. 
 
Li Hui 
 
[Li Hui received her Ph.D. from Tübingen University in 2008. Back now in Wu-
han she works in the School of Fine Arts of the Central China Normal Univer-
sity, and specializes in the history of Chinese art.] 
 
 
The book, Chinese Glass, will be of interest to all those desiring to gain a deeper 
insight into the subject of glass in ancient China. Consisting of three independent 
articles, it supplies some information about the characteristics of the development 
of ancient glass in China from the Warring States (475-221 BC) and Han (206 
BC-220 AD) periods to the Northern Song (1127-1279). 
The first part, written by Cecilia Braghin and entitled “Polychrome and 
Monochrome Glass of the Warring States and Han Period”, is devoted to poly-
chrome glass with stratified eyes and monochrome white glass. She first consid-
ers the glass eye beads that are the earliest glass finds in China to date. Investi-
gating their distribution in China and comparing them to the beads found in the 
Eastern Mediterranean and Western Asia, Braghin concludes that the glass eye 
beads of the Eastern Zhou were introduced into China from outside via Central 
Asia. Based on the beads found at Hougudui 侯 古 堆 in Henan province, she 
then states that by the late fifth century BC glass eye beads had spread further 
south to the region of Hubei province, presumably via Henan. Considering the 
historical context of this period, however, more evidence is needed to prove this 
assumption.  
Some of the beads dating from the middle and late Warring States period 
were made of glass containing lead and barium oxides. In contrast to the compo-
sition of glass made outside China, these are characteristic components of raw 
materials from China, leading Braghin to point out the possibility that these eye 
beads were produced locally rather than imported from outside China. 
She also notes that these glass eye beads were concentrated in Hunan and 
Hubei provinces and had a close relationship with the Chu state. She comes to the 
conclusion that due to this close connection with Chu, the production and use of 
the glass eye beads also came to an end when Chu was defeated by the Qin ar-
mies at the end of the third century BC. 
85 Reviews 
She ascribes the fact of the occurrence and production of the glass eye beads 
in Chu to local beliefs and practices. She states that it appears that in the middle 
and late Warring States period Chu society had become particularly concerned 
with supplying the dead with objects or materials that had a clear reference to 
light and reflection. As a result, the manufacture of glass developed in Chu in 
response to these new needs. This is a very unique and novel interpretation. 
On the basis of a study of plaques for inlay, Braghin suggests that the highest 
social elite inhabiting Henan and south-eastern China were likely to have been 
the ultimate controllers of the materials, labour and technology of glass produc-
tion. Archaeological evidence, however, indicates that this conclusion maybe 
somewhat premature. We should keep in mind that besides the great number of 
glass eye beads found in Hunan province, almost 90 percent of glass bi 璧 discs 
and nearly 80 percent of glass furnishings for swords found from the Warring 
States period were concentrated in Hunan province. Both style and chemical 
composition show that they are characteristic of Chinese glass products. In light 
of the large number of glass finds in Changsha, there is no doubt that Changsha 
was the centre of glass supply in Hunan, and it also strongly suggests that, rather 
than this technology being controlled by people in another region, Changsha was 
the centre of glass manufacture. In his analysis of Chu tombs in Changsha, Gao 
Zhixi 高 志 喜 has pointed out that in Changsha most of the glass bi discs came 
from the tombs of minor shi 士 (members of the low nobility) and commoners.1 
The recent excavation report Liye fajue baogao 里 耶 发  掘 报  告 (Report on the 
Excavation of Liye) also points out that 12 glass bi discs and 8 glass eye beads 
were found in the Maicha 麦 茶 cemetery in Liye, Hunan province, and it is very 
possible that the tombs containing glass products belonged to commoners. 2 
Based on the above, it is reasonable to assume that in the middle and late War-
ring States, along with the mastery of glass manufacture by the Chu people in 
Changsha, glass in general became cheaper and more popular among shi and 
commoners and not only among the highest social elite. An additional small 
point, there is a mistake in figure 1: Changsha city is in the province of Hunan. 
not Hubei. 
Braghin then discusses the relationship between jade and monochrome. The 
monochrome glass products were produced in imitation of jade ones, offering a 
cheaper alternative to the people of Chu society who could not afford jade but 
aspired to own it. 
                                                 
1
 Hunan sheng bowuguan 湖 南 省 博 物 馆  (Hunan Provincial Museum), Hunan 
sheng wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo 湖 南 省 文 物 考 古 研 究 所 (Institute of Archaeology 
of Hunan Province), Changsha Chu mu 长  沙 楚 墓 (The Changsha Chu State Tombs), 
Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, 2000, p. 518. 
2
 Hunan sheng wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo 湖 南 省 文 物 考 古 研 究 所 (Hunan Pro-
vincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology), Liye fajue baogao 里 耶 发  掘 报  
告 (Report on the Excavation of Liye), Changsha: Yuelu shuyuan, 2007, p. 364. 
86 EASTM 28 (2008) 
The second article, by An Jiayao 安 家 瑶, entitled “Glass Vessels and Or-
naments of the Wei, Jin and Northern and Southern Dynasties Periods”, is de-
voted to Roman, Sasanian  and Indian glass in China. An compares the facet-cut 
glass vessels excavated in Nanjing city in Jiangsu province, the glass vessels 
found in the tomb of Feng Sufu 冯  素 佛 in Beipiao 北 票 county, Liaoning 
province, and four glass bowls with applied decoration, unearthed from the ceme-
tery of the Feng clan in Jingxian 景 县 , Hebei province, to the glass products of 
the Eastern Mediterranean. She assigns the origin of these glass products to the 
Roman workshops in the Mediterranean. Sasanian glass vessels have been un-
earthed in both northern and southern China. 
An, moreover, states that in the Wei (220-265), Jin (265-420) and Northern 
(386-581) and Southern Dynasties (420-589) the largest group of imported rare 
and valuable glass artefacts was confined to the upper strata of society. In addi-
tion, only seven glass objects of Chinese origin, made by the glassblowing tech-
nique, have been found in China during this period. An claims that the glassblow-
ing technique was introduced into China as a result of the migration of non-
Chinese glass craftsman to China in the fifth century AD. 
As for Indian glass, over 150,000 beads, mostly glass examples, were found 
in Yongning 永 宁 temple in Luoyang, Henan province. An ascribes them to the 
“Indo-Pacific” type of glass beads. She further points out that they may have 
been brought to China by Indian workers. 
Based on glass finds in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region in north-western 
China, An tends to hold the opinion that these exotic glass objects from the 
Mediterranean, West Asia and India reached China via Central Asia and eventu-
ally through the regions of Xinjiang. 
We should not overlook the fact that in the period of the Wei, Jin as well as in 
the Northern and Southern Dynasties China had contact with the outside world 
not only through the long-existing northern routes. According to the information 
supplied by An, the exotic glass objects were distributed from Liaoning province 
in northeast China to Jiangsu province in eastern China. The evidence does seems 
to suggest other possibilities of routes for the importation of glass, however. 
Peter Francis Jr. has done substantial research on Indo-Pacific beads.3 In his 
study he maintains that Indo-pacific beads had a wide distribution in Southeast 
Asia. The site of Oc-Eo in Vietnam, for instance, was a centre of Indo-pacific 
bead production. In China, thousands of this type of glass bead dating back to the 
Western Han (206 BC-8 AD) and Eastern Han (25-220 AD) dynasties were 
found in the provinces Guangdong, Guangxi and probably also in Hunan. These 
finds confirm the existence of contact between China and Southeast Asia. It is 
obvious that the chemical composition plays an important role in the study of 
glass provenance. Unfortunately, An does not supply details of the composition 
                                                 
3
 Peter Francis, Asia’s Maritime Bead Trade: 300 B.C. to the Present, Honolulu: 
University of Hawaii Press, 2002, pp. 17-50. 
87 Reviews 
of the analyzed glass beads found in Yongning temple. In short, considering the 
existence of the contact between Southeast Asia and many exotic glass finds in 
southeast China, the conclusion that the introduction of all the exotic glass into 
China was via Central Asia through the region of Xinjiang seems unconvincing.  
The third part, entitled “Luxury or Necessity: Glassware in Sarira Relic Pa-
godas of the Tang and Northern Song Periods” by Shen Hsueh-man 沈 雪 曼, is 
devoted to glassware from the site of Buddhist Sarira relic deposits. More than 
70 sites of Buddhist Sarira relic deposits dating from the Tang (618-907) to the 
Northern Song (960-1126) periods have been excavated in China. Shen notes that 
26 of these 70 deposits contained glass. She divides these glass objects into two 
groups. The first consists of those made as precious gifts to the relic (hence to the 
Buddha). The objects of this group are relatively large in size and often bear rich 
decoration. The second is comprised of small and plain glass vessels that were 
used as reliquaries to contain the Buddhist Sarira relics. 
The glassware was used as a necessary part of a set of reliquaries in China in-
stead of the rock crystal used in India. Based on a philological study, Shen argues 
that this change is likely to have resulted from a linguistic confusion that oc-
curred in the process of translating Sanskrit terms into Chinese. The Sanskrit 
word sphātika, meaning rock crystal or quartz, was translated into Chinese as 
either boli 玻 璃 or shuijing 水 晶 in an early Chinese Buddhist text. However, in 
the Chinese language, the two synonymous terms boli and shuijing could refer to 
either rock crystal or transparent glass. Probably, within this context, the Indian 
sphātika reliquary was misinterpreted by Chinese Buddhists as being a glass 
reliquary. As a result, glassware became a necessity as a Buddhist Sarira relic. In 
the Song dynasty, glass was gradually pushed out of the realm of luxury, and as 
demand for it increased, so the supply of glassware became abundant. Due to this 
unique association of glass with Buddhism, however, glass still played an impor-
tant part in Buddhist activities and was indispensable also in later Buddhist con-
texts. 
As mentioned above, Shen throws light on the reason why glass had such a 
close relationship with Buddhism and became a necessary element in the Bud-
dhist Sarira relics. This is very significant for the study of the characteristics of 
the development and history of glass in China. However, she does not give any 
information about other sites of Buddhist Sarira relic deposits that lack glass-
ware, nor any explanation for this phenomenon. After all, they do account for 
about 62 percent of all the sites of Buddhist Sarira relic deposits. 
In short, this book offers an important study of glass in China from the War-
ring States and Han to the Northern Song, highlighting some of the special char-
acteristics of glass development during this period. 
 
 


Cecilia Braghin (ed.), Chinese Glass: Archaeological Studies on the Uses and Social Context of Glass Artefacts from the Warring States to the Northern Song Period

Marckmann, Georg

91 Reviews 
Ole Döring and Chen Renbiao (eds.), Advances in Chinese Medical Ethics: Chi-
nese and International Perspectives. Hamburg: IFA, 2002, xxvii, 470 pp. 
 
Georg Marckmann 
 
[Georg Marckmann is Professor of Medical Ethics at the University of Tübin-
gen. He studied medicine and philosophy in Tübingen and received a MPH from 
Harvard School of Public Health. His main research interests are the philoso-
phical foundations of medical ethics, justice and priority setting in health care, 
clinical ethics, and ethical aspects of computer-based decision support in medi-
cine.] 
 
With increasing globalization the exchange between different cultures becomes 
more and more important within biomedical ethics. Traditionally, the interna-
tional exchange of concepts and ideas was limited to the Western hemisphere, not 
least because of the predominance of the English language. However, the world 
is changing rapidly. Due to the fast growth of their economies, South and East 
Asian nations gain increasing global influence. This process of globalization has 
not bypassed the field of biomedicine. There is an increasing exchange of knowl-
edge, technologies and products with the sphere of biotechnology, medicine and 
health care. New biomedical technologies open up new possibilities to intervene 
into both the human body and social life. It is widely acknowledged that these 
developments both aggravate traditional ethical problems and raise new issues, 
especially in rapidly transforming and evolving East Asia.  
Against the background of these developments, the importance of the work 
edited by Ole Döring and Chen Renbiao cannot be overestimated. China has 
become an important global player and it certainly makes sense to improve un-
derstanding of, and cooperation with, China. With their book Advances in Chi-
nese Medical Ethics: Chinese and International Perspectives they provide a 
collection of forty papers covering an impressively wide array of different health-
related ethical issues. Scholars from various countries―the People’s Republic of 
China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, New Zealand, the USA, Austria and Germany―and 
from several different disciplines provide a rich and multifaceted picture of the 
history, present situation and future of Chinese medical ethics. The book is not a 
single “stand alone” project, but rather part of a continuous effort to promote 
international exchange with China in the field of biomedical ethics. The work 
presented here goes back to a pilot research project “Medical Ethics in Contem-
porary China” at the Hamburg Institute of Asian Affairs in 1995. The underlying 
philosophy of this project has also shaped the collection of papers in the book. 
The goal of the enterprise was not to study developments in China based on re-
mote observation, but rather to engage scholars from various disciplines and 
countries, especially from China, in a mutual exchange of thoughts, concepts and 
ideas. Apparently, these efforts have been quite successful. Under the unstinting 
leadership of Ole Döring, an ongoing cooperation and dialogue has been estab-
92 EASTM 28 (2008) 
lished between biomedical scientists, social scientists and philosophers from 
China and several “Western” countries. An international and interdisciplinary 
symposium on aspects of medical ethics was held first in Hamburg in 1998 to 
initiate the debate. This book now presents the proceedings of the “Second Sino-
German Interdisciplinary Symposium about Medical Ethics in China” that took 
place in Shanghai, October 19-23, 1999 (cf. the appendix of the book for more 
information). For the organizers it was clear that China should not simply follow 
“Western” lines of thought in bioethics. Rather, China should use its rich re-
sources to create its own approaches to ethical issues in biomedicine and health 
care that take into account the specific cultural, political and philosophical tradi-
tions as well as problems of China. It was, therefore, one of the goals of the 
Shanghai Symposium to engage as many Chinese scholars as possible in a dia-
logue with “Western” colleagues, “thereby learning from and contributing to the 
experiences of the world” (p. xx). 
The Shanghai Symposium followed a hermeneutical approach to medical eth-
ics. According to this approach, the first task of ethical inquiry is to understand 
what other people say and do, and thus to provide a factual basis for the discus-
sion of the underlying normative issues: “In order to advance in medical ethics, 
we need sound empirical facts (including accurate accounts of the relevant his-
torical and present situations) as well as creative vision, which together help to 
make practical sense of the tension between what exists and how it ought to be.” 
(p. xxii) According to this framework, the primary purpose of the papers pre-
sented in this volume is not to critically evaluate their ethical arguments but 
rather to document current developments in Chinese medical ethics. Covering 
diverse perspectives, disciplines, styles and concerns was therefore more impor-
tant than developing a systematic and uniform account of Chinese medical ethics. 
The resulting collection of papers provides an enormously rich body of study 
material for philosophers as well as biomedical, social and cultural scientists, 
bringing to the fore such questions as: What are current ethical issues in the field 
of biomedicine and health care in China? How do the ethical arguments proceed? 
How are these arguments related to traditional Chinese thinking and to “Western” 
approaches to biomedical ethics? Thereby, this book is also a very valuable 
source and study object for a more general systematic issue: Is there a universal 
morality? Are at least some moral principles, norms and values accepted around 
the world? Both on a theoretical and a practical level, the papers in this volume 
provide many important insights for cross-cultural bioethics. 
The 40 papers in this volume are “loosely” structured into eight chapters. The 
first section contains four papers that provide an introduction to the history and 
place of Chinese medical ethics in the context of international ethical guidance 
issued by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Educa-
tional, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The second chapter 
provides a collection of papers that discuss different ethical issues in an interna-
tional and historical context: the epidemic spread of HIV infection and AIDS, the 
history of informed consent in Germany, the international eugenics movement 
93 Reviews 
1900-1945, and the tension between individual autonomy and community values 
in the field of reproduction. The third chapter is devoted to ethical issues in the 
field of human genetics: gene therapy and human enhancement, informed consent 
in genetic counselling in Hong Kong, European perspectives and genetic counsel-
ling and abortion, concluded by a brief report on ethical implications of genetic 
information and genetic manipulation. Chapter four proceeds further into the 
cultural roots of medical ethics. The first paper develops the ethical implications 
of a Confucian concept of personhood, the second a Confucian approach to moral 
development which may be informative for education in medical ethics, and the 
third a Confucian concept of the physician-patient relationship. Subsequent pa-
pers explore the impact of religious emotions in bioethics, approaches to health 
in ancient China, the tradition of Chinese medical ethics with medicine as a vir-
tuous conduct, euthanasia in the context of traditional Chinese culture and the 
concept of “the art of humaneness” (renshu 人 术) in medical ethics. Chapter five 
includes seven papers that discuss controversial issues in China: Abortion, homo-
sexuality, prevention of HIV infection, withholding medical treatment, public 
welfare payments for the disabled, family planning and reproductive health in 
China, and the regulation of population growth and reproduction. Chapter six is 
devoted to social issues in medical ethics. The first paper discusses Taiwanese 
experiences with medical negligence. Other papers in this section argue that 
patients are not ordinary consumers, discuss the role of the media for medical 
ethics in China, elaborate ethical issues of blood transfusion and bone marrow 
transplantation in China, and reflect on how the good of elderly patients can be 
determined. Chapter seven is devoted to the important field of medical ethics 
education. The first paper gives an overview of the history, present situation and 
future of medical ethics education in China, complemented by a paper that 
stresses the importance of humanity in medical education. The final chapter 
documents a unique feature of the Shanghai symposium and really anchors the 
book to practice. On the last day, ten cases from various fields in medical prac-
tice were presented and discussed from ethical perspectives. Five case discus-
sions are included in this volume, together with a general introduction to the 
methodological framework. They cover issues like terminal sedation in a patient 
with terminal lung cancer, genetic counselling and termination of pregnancy, 
physician-assisted suicide, caring for dying patients, and informed consent for 
psychiatric patients. 
As one can easily see from the list of topics and perspectives covered in the 
volume, the editors are certainly right when they claim in their introduction that 
this collection of papers is both evidence of the improving situation of medical 
ethics in China and itself a contribution to this process. It is my hope that this 
important book will have as many readers as it deserves! 
 


Ole Döring and Chen Renbiao (eds.), Advances in Chinese Medical Ethics: Chinese and International Perspectives

Chu, Pingyi

Narrating a History for China's Medical Past: Christianity, Natural Philosophy and History in Wang Honghan's Gujin yishi 古今醫史 (History of Medicine Past and Present)

Shi, Yunli

Reforming Astronomy and Compiling Imperial Science in the Post-Kangxi Era: The Social Dimension of the Yuzhi lixiang kaocheng houbian 御製暦象考成後編

Obringer, Frédéric

96 EASTM 28 (2008) 
Needham, Joseph, with the collaboration of Lu Gwei-djen Science and Civilisa-
tion in China, Vol. VI, Part 6, Medicine, edited and with an introduction by 
Nathan Sivin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, xviii, 261 pp. 
 
 
Frédéric Obringer 
 
[Frédéric Obringer is an assistant researcher at the Centre d’Études sur la 
Chine Moderne et Contemporaine, CNRS, Paris. His research concerns mainly 
the history of medicine in China. He has published L’Aconit et l’orpiment: Dro-
gues et poisons en Chine ancienne et médiévale, Paris, Fayard, 1997; La mala-
die dans la Chine médiévale (avec C. Despeux), Paris, L'Harmattan, 1997; 
Fengshui. L’art d’habiter la terre: Une poétique de l’espace et du temps, Arles, 
Éditions Philippe Picquier, 2001; and many articles.] 
 
It took until 2000 to finally have a volume of the great series Science and Civili-
zation in China (SCC) on medicine. For a subject as vast as this, it is something 
of a surprise to find that it is one of the thinner volumes of the series, less than 
300 pages, though this is not the least of the paradoxes of the publication. To 
understand this situation we have to give a short history of the book. 
At the end of his life, Joseph Needham was working, together with Lu Gwei-
djen, on the history of Chinese medicine, which had been a concern of his for 
some considerable time. Several articles resulted from this work, as well as the 
book on acupuncture and moxibustion, Celestial Lancets, published in 1980. The 
original intention was for all this to be updated and edited. In 1993, two years 
before the death of Needham, Nathan Sivin agreed to deal with this work, though 
not without some hesitation. For him, “The problem lay not in the book but in the 
field of enquiry” (p. 1). Thus, there was a clear difference of viewpoint between 
Needham and Sivin. 
Lu and Needham’s “gaze remained fixed on the emergence of modern bio-
medical knowledge from discoveries and concepts that originated in many parts 
of the world”, while Sivin “did not see knowledge, no matter where, as converg-
ing toward a predestined state” (p. 1). In the same way, “the issue is not how A or 
B anticipated the modern Z, but how people went from A to B and what we can 
learn from that about the process of historical change” (p. 1).  
For Sivin, as “in the near future no one is yet ready to survey the whole of 
medical history in a way that will meet the high standards of the series [SCC]” (p. 
3), the only possibility was to provide a selection of essays in which Needham 
and Lu presented their own insights as a volume of the series. This volume be-
came then only a record of their pioneering work and a guide to recent insights. 
After an introduction by Sivin, the volume contains five sections, each section 
being originally an article published in various works and here revised by Sivin, 
concluding with a large bibliography according to the model of the SCC series.  
97 Reviews 
The introduction gives Nathan Sivin the opportunity to explain the differences 
between his methodological conceptions of the history Chinese medicine and 
those of Needham, and to suggest many themes of research that should be ex-
plored before a general history can be considered. For Sivin, the recurrent themes 
of Needham works are the following (p. 6-9):  
 
• Unit of exploration: the world. 
• Two kinds of comparison: achievements of different civilisations (locating 
priorities), and items of Chinese knowledge or practice with those of to-
day. 
• Sciences in different civilisations converge to form one universal science. 
• Polymathic field to explore. 
• A constant opposition between “Taoism” and “Confucianism”; Needham 
held Taoism particularly responsible for originating scientific attitudes 
and accomplishments. 
• Economic data rarely appear, and discussions of social patterns largely 
depend on the dichotomy of Confucianism vs. Taoism. 
 
In fact, most historians of Chinese science today will readily agree with Sivin’s 
remarks about the “Needham style”, but this is true for all the subjects Needham 
studied. For many years now, volumes of the SCC series have been written by 
specialists and not by Needham and his early collaborators. Thus, the choice just 
to publish a short volume on Chinese medicine composed only of some formerly 
published articles is explained by the characteristics of the field. For example, 
Sivin says that “the nearly 10,000 surviving books on medicine written before 
1900 present a very different scale of historiographic effort. (…) For that reason, 
with great regret, I was unable to take up Needham’s challenge” (p. 3). In 
roughly the last twenty years, “new” historians of Chinese medicine, like their 
colleagues working on history of Western medicine, have aimed for an integral 
understanding of technical phenomena against the background of their time and 
place and of the social and intellectual interactions between healers and patients. 
In this context, there are still so many questions to be explored that the writing of 
a general history of Chinese medicine by one or two authors would, without 
doubt, be very difficult. In particular, as Sivin remarks, the economics of medical 
practice, medical pluralism, patronage, growth of a “national drug market”, oc-
cupational organizations, to give just some examples, are important topics insuf-
ficiently studied until now. 
The first article of the volume, “Medicine in Chinese Culture” (1966), is a 
general survey of “the position of medicine and medical doctors in traditional-
Chinese society”. For Needham, medicine was shaped by “feudal bureaucratism”, 
a concept today outdated. At the beginning of the article, Needham explains his 
ambition: “But while all the physical and some of the simpler biological sciences 
in China and Europe have long ago fused into one, this has not yet happened with 
the medical systems of the two civilisations. As we shall later see, much in Chi-
98 EASTM 28 (2008) 
nese medicine cannot yet be explained in modern terms, but that means neither 
that it is valueless, nor that it lacks profound interest. We hope that this volume 
may lead to greater mutual understanding in the intercultural and intercivilisa-
tional confrontations of our times. We shall consider (…) a number of topics 
indispensable to an overview of classical medicine: its doctrines and early his-
tory, the influence of China’s characteristic forms of government and religion, 
acupuncture as a quintessential therapy, the differences between traditional and 
modern medicine, and the prospects for their integration” (p. 38). 
The second article, “Hygiene and Preventive Medicine in Ancient China” 
(1962), is an illustration of the attitude of Needham toward Taoism: “Ancient 
Chinese medicine was closely associated with the beliefs of the philosophers who 
may broadly be termed Taoist. In contrast to the Confucians who were interested 
primarily in human society alone, the Taoists devoted themselves to the study of 
Nature (…) (p. 67). The topics of this article include conceptions of longevity, 
efforts to prevent disease, as well as principles of nutritional regimen and of 
personal hygiene. 
“China and the Origin of Qualifying Examinations in Medicine” (1962) deals 
with medical posts and examinations, with a focus on the Song Dynasty, conclud-
ing with Chinese influence on Islam and of Islam on Europe. In “China and the 
Origins of Immunology” (1980), Needham gives a history of Chinese traditional 
etiological theories of smallpox and of smallpox inoculation. In this part, 
Needham argues that Taoists secretly practiced it perhaps as early as the eighth 
century, but at least from the time of the Song Prime Minister Wang Dan 王 旦 
(957-1017), though his arguments are not fully accepted by historians of Chinese 
medicine 
The main topic of “Forensic Medicine in Ancient China” (1988) is the “great-
est work on forensic medicine prior to the Scientific Revolution”, the Xiyuan jilu 
洗 冤 集 錄 (The Washing Away of Wrongs), written by a jurist learned in medi-
cine, Song Ci 宋 慈, in 1247. Seven pages are also devoted to the Qin bamboo 
slips dealing with legal cases, and some others to the development of the subject 
in Yuan, Ming and Qing times. 
To sum up, the volume is a good introduction to the “Needham style”, but, 
except for the remarks of Sivin and for the bibliography, this is not the first book 
that young students should turn to when they want to have an updated survey of 
the history of Chinese medicine. We hope that the new generation of outstanding 
scholars from China, Japan, North America and Europe will soon be able to pro-
duce such a book. 
 


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Nanayama Jundō at Work: A Village Doctor and Medical Knowledge in Nineteenth Century Japan

Note from the Editor

H. T. Huang, Science and Civilisation in China, Vol. 1, Part 5, Fermentations and Food Science

Paul U. Unschuld, Chinese Life Science: Introductory Readings in Classical Chinese Medicine

Contents

Cecilia Braghin (ed.), Chinese Glass: Archaeological Studies on the Uses and Social Context of Glass Artefacts from the Warring States to the Northern Song Period

Ole Döring and Chen Renbiao (eds.), Advances in Chinese Medical Ethics: Chinese and International Perspectives

Narrating a History for China's Medical Past: Christianity, Natural Philosophy and History in Wang Honghan's Gujin yishi 古今醫史 (History of Medicine Past and Present)

Reforming Astronomy and Compiling Imperial Science in the Post-Kangxi Era: The Social Dimension of the Yuzhi lixiang kaocheng houbian 御製暦象考成後編

Needham, Joseph, with the collaboration of Lu Gwei-djen, Science and Civilisation in China, Vol. VI, Part 6, Medicine

370

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