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

Bréard, Andrea

107 Reviews 
Luís Saraiva (ed.), History of Mathematical Sciences: Portugal and East Asia II. 
Scientific Practices and the Portuguese Expansion in Asia, 1498-1759. Pa-
pers from the International Meeting Organized by the University of Macau 
and Centro de Matemática e Aplicações Fundamentais / Universidade de 
Lisboa. Macao, 10-12 October 1998. Lisbon: EMAF-UL, 2001. 182 pp. 
 
Andrea Bréard 
 
[Andrea Bréard is Assistant Professor for History of Mathematics at the De-
partment of Mathematics, University of Science and Technology, Lille, France. 
Her research currently focuses on the history of statistics and probability in late 
Imperial China.] 
 
 
This is a compilation of 12 of 15 papers presented at the conference ‘History of 
Mathematical Sciences: Portugal and East Asia II’ held at the Faculty of Science 
and Technology of the University of Macao in October 2001. Its aim was to 
analyze the interaction between Europe and East Asia between 1498, the arrival 
of Vasco da Gama in India, and 1759, the expulsion of the Society of Jesus from 
Portugal. Three main themes were addressed, which were neither restricted to 
mathematical sciences nor to a Portuguese connection as the title of the book 
might suggest: pacing and mapping the world; transmission, translation and 
teaching; science as a political tool and its impact on Asian societies.  
The opening talk by Luís Filipe Barreto portraits Macao as an intercultural 
frontier between Europe and East Asia in the Ming period. Based on its situation 
as a port city, Barreto shows how social and commercial networks made Macao 
a major center for intellectual, linguistic, technological and textual exchange. 
The following three papers by Li Xiaocong, Liu Dun, and Wang Qianjin focus 
on cartography. The first, surveying Chinese maps in overseas collections, reads 
more like a précis of Li Xiaocong’s own book A Descriptive Catalogue of Pre-
1900 Chinese Maps Seen in Europe.1 Liu Dun’s paper focuses on the case of the 
Spanish Dominican Fray Juan Cobo (1546?-1592) who wrote a catechism in 
Chinese, the Shilu 實 錄 (published in Manila in 1593). This book also contains 
some Western knowledge of geography and cosmology for which the author 
provides translations and the Chinese original text. Liu conjectures that by com-
bining religious, philosophic and scientific knowledge, the Shilu “may have been 
a harbinger of those missionary tactics applied shortly thereafter by the Jesuits, 
namely their strategies known as “accommodation” and “knowing,” which they 
pursued in hopes of convincing the Chinese to convert to the Christian religion” 
(p. 56). Wang Qianjin makes an interesting historiographic point by showing 
                                                 
1 Li Xiaocong, Ouzhou shoucang bufen zhongwen gu ditu xulu 歐 州 收 藏 部 分 中 
文 古 地 圖 續 錄. Beijing: Guoji wenhua chuban gongsi, 1996. 
108 EASTM 24 (2005) 
through the example of José Martins-Márquez’ New Interpretation of World 
Geography (Xinshi dili beikao quanshu 新 釋 地 理備 考 全 書, 1847) that the 
Portuguese influence extended beyond the Qianlong reign.  
Catherine Jami follows some Jesuits at work teaching mathematics and as-
tronomy to a variety of audiences and in various locations and social contexts 
between the 1580s and the 1710s. In contradistinction to those Chinese literati 
who had received direct teaching from the missionaries and translated Western 
mathematical books into Chinese under Jesuit guidance, there were many com-
mentaries written on the first Chinese translation of Euclid’s Elements (Jihe 
yuanben, 1607) by scholars who had studied Western mathematics by them-
selves.2 Rui Manuel Loureiro’s following paper on the positive image of China 
in Portuguese literature of the sixteenth century, analyzes the construction of 
European perceptions of “things Chinese.” Assigning Portugal an “extraordinary 
importance … in European access to knowledge about China” (p. 112), Loureiro 
bases his argument extensively (although poorly documented by precise refer-
ences) upon Portuguese descriptions and reports on Chinese everyday life and 
civilization, which were biased by the fact that they were mainly observations 
from the maritime and thus prosperous regions of China.  
For the same century, Juan Gil reflects upon orientalization by looking at the 
attraction that India exercised on the people of Spain through the wares exported 
by the Portuguese armadas. The main part of the article consists of a list of raw 
material citations in Spanish from dowries, wills and inventories conserved in 
the Archive Notarial Protocols at Seville, showing the type of wares that found 
prestige in Spain and were recognized as being of Indian origin. 
The three papers by Keizo Hashimoto, Han Qi and Yoshida Tadashi all 
tackle the difficult question of knowledge assimilation in East Asia in the field 
of astronomy and cosmology. Hashimoto examines the partial transmission of 
the knowledge of star mapping by Jesuits in Beijing. Strongly rooted in its tradi-
tion, the Chinese constellation system remained unaltered under foreign influ-
ence, whereas the coordinate system and the methods of projection were adopted 
from European astronomy. Based on some new Chinese and Western sources, 
Han Qi’s short paper gives an analysis of the textual and social background of 
the introduction of Newton’s lunar theory into China. It describes the context of 
the compilation of the Tables of the Compendium of Astronomy (Lixiang 
kaocheng houbian 曆 象 考 成 後 編, 1734) through the correspondence of the 
French astronomer Joseph-Nicolas Delisle (1688-1768) with the Jesuits in China 
and points out that the very precise lunar tables compiled by an Italian Jesuit N. 
Grammatici on the basis of Newton’s lunar theory were used in the compilation 
of the Lixiang kaocheng houbian. Yoshida’s work on the Japanese reaction to 
Aristotelian cosmology is based upon a book that has gone through several 
                                                 
2 Jami’s contribution appeared elsewhere with nearly exactly the same wording. See: 
“Teachers of Mathematics in China: the Jesuits and their Textbooks (1580-1723),” Ar-
chives internationales d’histoire des sciences 52 (2002): 159-175.  
109 Reviews 
hands of translators and commentators before being printed as the Kenkon ben-
setsu 乾 坤 辯 說 (Discussions on the Heavens and the Earth with Critical 
Comments, preface 1650). Yoshida shows how the Japanese commentator, Mu-
kai Gensho 
向 井 元 升 (1609-1677), a Confucian scholar, criticizes Western ideas that 
Christovao Ferreira (1580-1650), an ex-Christian, had translated from a Western 
astronomical book. 
The two final papers by Park Seong-Rae and Joseph Velinkar complete geo-
graphically the picture of Portuguese connections to East Asia by looking at 
other lands. The first retraces Korean contacts with Portugal, where no Portu-
guese seems to have arrived until the nineteenth century. The last paper brings 
together many disparate details on translation between Portuguese and the Kon-
kani language spoken in Goa until the end of the seventeenth century in a first 
section and aspects of technology transferred to India by the Portuguese, such as 
the printing press, timepieces, architecture, planting techniques and shipbuilding. 
Although this collection of papers of diverse quality has not been prepared 
with editorial rigueur—some contributions do not even have a bibliography and 
many have not been revised for their English nor for their internal structure—it 
remains interesting for the light it sheds on the often neglected role of Portugal 
and Macao in the early cultural exchanges with China and other East Asian 
countries. There is a continuation of this valuable pursuit: the editor Luís Saraiva 
and Catherine Jami have organized a session on the ‘History of Mathematical 
Sciences: Portugal and East Asia III’ at The Sixth International Symposium on 
the History of Mathematics & Mathematical Education Using Chinese Charac-
ters (ISHME) in 2005.3
                                                 
3 August 4-7, 2005, Graduate School of Mathematical Sciences, The University of 
Tokyo, Komaba Campus. 


Luís Saraiva (ed.), History of Mathematical Sciences: Portugal and East Asia II. Scientific Practices and the Portuguese Expansion in Asia, 1498-1759

East Asian 
Science, Technology, 
and Medicine 
 
Number 24 
2005 
 
A journal dedicated to the study of traditional and modern  
East Asian science, technology, and medicine. 
 
 
 
Editor:  
Hans Ulrich Vogel 
 
Seminar für Sinologie und Koreanistik 
Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen 
Wilhelmstr. 133 
72074 Tübingen / Germany 
FAX: 0049 - 7071 - 295733 
E-Mail: eastm@uni-tuebingen.de 
 
 
Managing and Production Editors: 
He Heng, Seminar für Sinologie und Koreanistik, Tübingen 
Tobias Wissler, Seminar für Sinologie und Koreanistik, Tübingen 
 
English Language Editor:  
John P. C. Moffett, Needham Research Institute, Cambridge (UK) 
 
Editorial Consultant: 
Jutta Rall-Niu, Seminar für Sprache und Kultur Chinas, Universität Hamburg 
 
Local Advisory Board: 
Klaus J. Antoni, Seminar für Japanologie, Tübingen 
Dieter Eikemeier, Seminar für Sinologie und Koreanistik, Tübingen 
Viktoria Eschbach-Szabo, Seminar für Japanologie, Tübingen 
Robert Horres, Seminar für Japanologie, Tübingen 
Achim Mittag, Seminar für Sinologie und Koreanistik, Tübingen 
 
 
 EDITORIAL COMMITTEE 
Bridie Andrews-Minehan, Department of History, Bentley College 
Francesca Bray, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Edinburgh 
Christopher Cullen, Needham Research Institute and Darwin College, 
Cambridge 
Benjamin A. Elman, East Asian Studies and History, Princeton University 
Charlotte Furth, Department of History, University of Southern California, Los 
Angeles 
Hashimoto Keizō, Faculty of Sociology, Kansai University, Osaka 
Huang Yi-Long, Institute of History, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu 
Jeon Sang-woon, Cultural Properties Committee Korea, Seoul 
Catherine Jami, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris 
Yung Sik Kim, College of Humanities, Seoul National University 
Dieter Kuhn, Institut für Kulturwissenschaften Ost- und Südasiens - Sinologie, 
Universität Würzburg 
Angela Ki Che Leung, Sun Yat-Sen Institute for Social Sciences and Philosophy, 
Academia Sinica, Taipei 
Liu Bing, Institute of Science, Technology and Society, Tsinghua University, 
Beijing 
Liu Dun, Institute for the History of Natural Science, Academia Sinica, Beijing 
Morris Low, Department of the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology, 
Johns Hopkins University 
Georges Métailié, Centre Alexandre Koyré, CNRS-EHESS-MNHN, Paris 
Shi Yunli, Department of the History of Science and Scientific Archaeology, 
University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 
Nathan Sivin, Department of the History and Sociology of Science, University of 
Pennsylvania, Philadelphia 
C. Michele Thompson, Department of History, Southern Connecticut State 
University, New Haven 
Tsukahara Togo, History and Philosophy of Science, Technology and Medicine, 
Kobe University 
Paul U. Unschuld, Institut für Geschichte der Medizin, Ludwig-Maximilians-
Universität München 
Donald B. Wagner, Department of Asian Studies, University of Copenhagen 
Yoshida Tadashi, Center for Northeast Asian Studies, Tohoku University, Sendai 
 
 
 
 THE SCOPE OF EASTM 
Copyright  2005. EASTM (formerly Chinese Science) is published by the International 
Society for the History of East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine (ISHEASTM). 
Numbers 1-10 (1975-92) were published irregularly under the editorship of Nathan Sivin 
(University of Pennsylvania). Numbers 11-15 (1993-98) were issued annually at the 
University of California, Los Angeles, by Benjamin A. Elman. Beginning with Number 
16 (1999), the name of the journal changed to East Asian Science, Technology, and 
Medicine and is published at the University of Tübingen, Germany. From Number 20 
(2003) there are two issues per year. The publication of this periodical is supported by a 
grant from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). 
This journal includes studies on the science, technology, and medicine of traditional and 
contemporary East Asia. Any study based on original research using Chinese, Japanese, 
or Korean primary sources or artifacts, that elucidates the relationships and interactions of 
science, technology, and medicine with politics, society, economics, philosophy, culture, 
religion, historiography, as well as their disciplinary traditions, or throws light on the 
work of scientists, technologists, and physicians in East Asia will gladly be considered. 
SUBMISSIONS 
Potential contributors are encouraged to correspond with the editor before submitting 
manuscripts in order to ensure that their work falls within the purview of EASTM, and to 
simplify the preparation of the final copy. All contributions except invited reviews are 
refereed. The editor does not referee. For Chinese romanization, both Pinyin and Wade-
Giles transcriptions are accepted, while for Japanese and Korean, the Hepburn and 
McCune/Reischauer systems are to be used. With regard to style and format, contributors 
should refer to the latest issue of EASTM. Information on the preparation of manuscripts 
and their submission in electronic form will also be provided on request. 
SUBSCRIPTIONS 
SUBSCRIPTIONS (six issues within three years, postage paid (surface mail) anywhere): 
Individual rate: € 90.00 or US$ 105.00. Students or retired: € 60.00 or US$ 70.00. 
Institutions: € 165.00 or US$ 195.00. SINGLE BACK ISSUES: € 30.00/US$35.00. Note: 
Members of the Society (which includes all individuals holding a subscription) may 
purchase back issues at a special rate: € 20.00/US$ 23.00 for single issues. An entire set 
of back issues (nos. 1–23) is available to subscribers at € 440.00/US$ 500.00.  
Send orders or inquiries to: ISHEASTM/SIHSTMAO, Institut d’Extrême-Orient, att.: 
Vera Dorofeeva-Lichtmann, 52 rue du Cardinal Lemoine, 75231 Paris Cedex 05, France. 
Fax: 33/1/44271854. E-Mail: vera.lichtman@free.fr 
Subscriptions will remain in force until terminated, and will be billed in advance for each 
six issues. Checks should be payable to: “S.I.H.S.T.M.A.O.” Subscribers are requested to 
notify the editorial office of any changes in address, and to pay the invoice, which will be 
enclosed in the issue prior to the expiry of the subscription, promptly. Payment of 
subscriptions also enrolls individuals (including students and retirees) as members of the 
Society for three years. 
 
 
NOTICE TO LIBRARIES 
Libraries are reminded that we charge a fee (US$ 27.00/€ 27.00) for processing forms, in-
cluding claims against issues not yet published. Please note that since Number 11 (1993) 
Chinese Science/EASTM is published annually. From Number 20 (2003) there are two 
issues of EASTM per annum. 
BACK ISSUES 
Issues of Chinese Science/EASTM normally remain in print for three or four years. At the moment 
sufficient copies of Numbers 12-23 are still available. Numbers 1-11 are out-of-print and 
can be supplied as unbound photocopies on special request. 
HOME PAGE 
For more information on the journal please also consult the home page maintained at 
Tübingen University: http://www.uni-tuebingen.de/sinologie/eastm/  
ISHEASTM 
The publication, since the fifties, of Joseph Needham’s (1900-1995) monumental work, 
Science and Civilisation in China, has been followed by a rapid development of research 
on the history of science, technology, and medicine in China, as well as in civilisations 
upon which Chinese culture exerted an important influence, such as Japan, Korea, and 
Vietnam. Since 1982, International Conferences on the History of Science in China had 
been held at irregular intervals. At the sixth of these conferences, held in Cambridge in 
1990 in honour of Joseph Needham’s ninetieth birthday, participants agreed to found the 
International Society for the History of East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine 
(ISHEASTM). 
The Society’s purpose is to serve, represent and speak for scholars of the field defined by 
its name. It aims, primarily, to promote contacts and exchanges between those scholars, 
and also to establish and reinforce links with other scholarly communities, at an 
international level. The Society’s activities include: 
• The organisation of a plenary meeting every three years (Kyoto 1993, Seoul 1996, 
Singapore 1999, Shanghai 2002, Munich 2005, Baltimore 2008); 
• The publication of a journal, EASTM, on a semi-annual basis; 
• The publication of a semi-annual Bulletin. 
For more information on the society please consult the home page maintained at the 
Needham Research Institute in Cambridge: http://www.nri.org.uk/ISHEASTM.html 
 
This journal is printed on acid-free paper. 
 
 
ISSN #1562-918X 
 
 
 
 


Editorial

Ziswiler, Vincent

Roel Sterckx, The Animal and the Daemon in Early China

Raphals, Lisa

Divination and Medicine in China and Greece: A Comparative Perspective on the Baoshan Illness Divinations

Di Giacinto, Licia

Ho Peng Yoke, Chinese Mathematical Astrology: Reaching out to the Stars

Hashimoto, Keizo

Noël Golvers, Ferdinand Verbiest, S. J. (1623-1688) and the Chinese Heaven: The Composition of the Astronomical Corpus, its Diffusion and Reception in the European Republic of Letters

Scheid, Volker

Restructuring the Field of Chinese Medicine: A Study of the Menghe and Ding Scholarly Currents, 1600-2000 (Part 2)

Chang, Che-chia

Medicine and Astrology: Their Encounter on a Cross-cultural Occasion

Vogel, Hans Ulrich

7 
Note from the Editor 
 
This issue of EASTM is dedicated to the work of Prof. Ho Peng Yoke who not 
only has contributed so much to the study of the history of Chinese science, but 
has also rendered invaluable service for the promotion of our field. The editorial 
staff and editorial committee of EASTM join in presenting Prof. Ho best wishes 
for his eightieth birthday. May he remain in good health and spirits, and thus be 
allowed to continue his stimulating and profound work on astronomy, the art of 
numbers and divination, alchemy, as well as the wider aspects and ramifications 
of the history of science in China. 
Christopher Cullen from the Needham Research Institute acted as guest edi-
tor of this special issue and, moreover, wrote an introduction in this capacity. 
Furthermore we added a personal note from Nathan Sivin, University of Penn-
sylvania, about the personality of Prof. Ho, his congenial relationship with col-
leagues, as well as his tremendous scientific and academic endeavours and con-
tributions. Originally, the special issue for Prof. Ho was planed to contain six 
articles authored by Robin D. S. Yates, Yano Michio, Lisa Raphals, Chang Che-
chia, Bernhard Führer, and David Brown dealing with various aspects of the 
history of divination in China, Japan, India, Greece and Mesopotamia. Due to 
limitation of space, however, we had to distribute the articles of this Festschrift 
on two issues of EASTM. Thus, the two articles written by Bernard Führer and 
David Brown will be published in issue 25. In spite of this physical separation 
we are confident that the thematic and spiritual unity of this collection of fine 
articles is nonetheless preserved.  
As mentioned above, the next issue of EASTM (no. 25, 2006) will contain 
the two articles of Führer and Brown. In addition we will publish Dieter Kuhn’s 
(University of Würzburg) “Reflections on the State and Significance of East 
Asian History of Technology in the Present Time,” i.e. the revised version of a 
lecture, which he presented during the 11th International Conference on the 
History of Science in East Asia in Munich on August 15, 2005, and an article 
contributed by Peng Mu (University of Pennsylvania) on “The Doctor’s Body: 
Embodiment and Multiplicity of Chinese Medical Knowledge.” No. 26 (2006) 
will again be a special issue containing papers on “Global Science and Compara-
tive History: Jesuits, Science, and Philology in China and Europe, 1550-1850,” a 
workshop organized by Benjamin Elman in Princeton in 2002.  
As ever, I would like to thank my editorial staff, our consultants and lan-
guage revisers, and the anonymous referees and book reviewers for their unre-
lenting support and dedication. 
 
Hans Ulrich Vogel 
Seminar für Sinologie und Koreanistik 
Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen 


Note from the Editor

142 EASTM 23 (2005) 
Ping-Chung Leung, Charlie Changli Xue, and Yung-Chi Cheng (eds.), A Com-
prehensive Guide to Chinese Medicine. New Jersey: World Scientific Pub-
lishing Co., 2003. 356 pp., incl. bibliographic references and index. 
 
Volker Scheid 
 
[For a biographical account of the reviewer see his article in this issue.] 
 
 
The purpose of this book according to the opening sentences of its foreword is 
“to assess the place of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) in the context of the 
immense advances in scientific knowledge.” Its intended audience is defined as 
broadly sympathetic to Chinese medicine as a therapy but concerned about its 
lack of scientific grounding. Such readers are to be introduced to “the valuable 
relationship between TCM and modern medicine in recent decades” and reas-
sured that a synthesis capable of integrating Chinese medicine into a science-
based health care system may eventually be achieved. These introductory re-
marks make clear that this Comprehensive Guide is no disinterested survey but a 
text with a distinctive political agenda. It also can be read, therefore, as a histori-
cal document in its own right. The book’s editors and the majority of its seven-
teen contributors are overseas Chinese who work in academic institutions in 
Hong Kong, Australia, and the United States. Most appear to have a background 
in the natural sciences. As I will show in the course of this review, the book thus 
provides as much insight into the values and orientations that inform the culture 
of this group as it does on the subject they examine.  
In its fourteen chapters the Comprehensive Guide seeks to provide an over-
view of everything that an interested lay person may wish to know about con-
temporary TCM and its scientific development. The first three chapters introduce 
readers to Chinese medicine as a distinctive medical system, with one chapter 
each on the “Intelligent Use of Chinese Medicine,” its diverse “Modalities,” and 
its “Theoretical Framework.” These chapters seek to present Chinese medicine 
as a coherent medical system in a style familiar from a multitude of similar in-
troductory texts. No attempt is made to engage with the historical and contempo-
rary diversity of Chinese medicine, clearly betraying the authors’ modernist 
ideological orientations.  
Chapters 4 to 7, provide an overview of current research with two chapters 
each devoted to the therapeutic modalities of herbal medicine (“Problems and 
Challenges of Chinese Herbal Medicine,” “Biochemistry and Herbs”) and acu-
puncture (“How Does Acupuncture Work” and “More Theories about Acupunc-
ture”). While these chapters provide useful summaries of current research they 
make no attempt to place such efforts into their cultural or historical contexts. 
The fact that only science can validate Chinese medicine is accepted as a given 
and not further questioned.  
143 Reviews 
Chapters 8 to 10 analyse “The State of Chinese Medicine in China Today,” 
“The Globalization of Chinese Medicine” that has diffused its practice to more 
than 100 countries around the world, and “Practice and Research on Chinese 
Medicine Outside of China.” Once more, the emphasis is on the factual, while 
the construction of facts is not itself viewed as problematic. From this perspec-
tive the scientization of Chinese medicine appears to the authors not only desir-
able but also the inevitable consequence of the evolution of human conscious-
ness. Analyses like the following passage from Chapter 9 (pp. 221-222) are 
typical of this view: “During the past century, Western medicine has made major 
advances in treatments for many human diseases. This rapid rise of Western 
medicine has been driven by many factors, including: The evolution of the dedi-
cated scientific spirit that defines the essence of the inquisitive, inquiring need to 
know about the universe around us; … the enthusiastic support given by society 
and government to further our understanding of human biology …”  
The next two chapters show the essential tension at the heart of the moderni-
zation project in which the authors are engaged. Chapter 11 (“Clinical Trials 
Using Chinese Medicine”) looks at the difficulties of validating Chinese medical 
practice through the paradigm of evidence based medicine. The authors broadly 
endorse the objectives of this paradigm but are aware, too, of the difficulties in 
using it to evaluate Chinese medicine. They seek to resolve these difficulties by 
means of a process perspective. Even if at present Chinese medicine is not evi-
dence based, moving towards such practice should be seen by the wider scien-
tific community as a commitment to shared principles. Chapter 12 (“Modernisa-
tion of Chinese Medicine: An Anthropologist’s View”) by Ting Hor is the only 
chapter written by a social scientist, an anthropologist with a background in 
biomedicine. Based in France, the author has developed an acute sensitivity for 
the cultural forces that drive the development of Chinese medicine in different 
contemporary societies. In China, Ting notes, Chinese medicine could not but 
modernize if it was to survive at all. In the West, on the other hand, it was the 
appeal to tradition that helped Chinese medicine to carve out a place for itself in 
an already thoroughly modern society. Ting Hor himself endorses modernization 
but also warns of its pitfalls: if carried through to its end traditional Chinese 
medicine will disappear. In the concluding paragraphs he places this warning 
into the context of his own life story: “The author was trained as a practitioner of 
Western medicine and has grown up in a Chinese society estranged from its 
tradition, he feels the need to express more respect for Chinese medicine and 
other traditional skills” (p. 323). 
Chapter 13 is a matter-of-fact review of “Information Systems in Chinese 
Medicine” as a practical example of technological innovation. Chapter 14 (“The 
Future”) is a brief epilogue that envisages mainstream medicine as an integrated 
medical system that has assimilated Chinese medicine as one discipline among 
others. The authors unashamedly hanker after a totalitarian “system of genuine 
sharing [among specialities that] offers an unexemptable integrated treatment 
programme, rather than leaving the choice to patients” (p. 349). In this system, 
144 EASTM 23 (2005) 
so-called “pure practitioners of Chinese medicine” will be relegated to the 
fringes, their services only accessible via referral by gate-keeper experts. 
In 350 pages the book thus provides a wealth of information in a style that 
avoids jargon and remains accessible to the non-specialist at all times. The qual-
ity of this information is mixed, however. It is strongest when the authors pre-
sent facts in a descriptive manner. It is weakest when they analyze the social and 
historical processes that drive the transformations they describe. The bibliogra-
phies provide a hint as to the reasons. While authors have consulted a wide 
range of sources that present quantitative and descriptive data, their nonchalant 
disinterest in the historical and ethnographic literature on Chinese medicine even 
as they pronounce on complex issues like modernization is an inexcusable omis-
sion. The result is a curiously one-sided perspective that hides as much as it 
elucidates.  
All of the authors unhesitatingly embrace the modernization of Chinese 
medicine, by which they mean its transformation by biomedical science and 
technology as well as the forces of a liberal market economy, as necessary and 
desirable. Phrases like “science and technology have demonstrated overwhelm-
ing successes in all directions of daily living” (p. 4), and “Of the four major 
systems of traditional medicine, viz. Chinese, Indian, Greek (European) and 
Egyptian, perhaps the most sophisticated one is the Chinese” (p. 5), point to the 
roots of this perspective in May Fourth nationalist scientism. Few of the con-
tributors appear to be aware of this bias. The majority depict the historical de-
velopment of Chinese medicine through the lense of a Darwinian evolutionist 
narrative in which social actors are deprived of any input, leading to the en-
dorsement of scientific totalitarianism. The authors’ vision of Chinese medi-
cine’s future thus is as predictable as it is dated. A “future new medicine” (p. 
242; see also p. 349) will integrate Chinese medicine and biomedicine into a 
single system. The historically aware reader will hear echoes of Yu Yunxiu’s 
failed medical revolution of the 1920s, of the various other medical reform 
movements of the Republican period, of Mao Zedong’s attempts to fuse Western 
and Chinese medicine, and of the “new medicine” that was intended to emerge 
during the Cultural Revolution. This enduring vision may yet be realized—or it 
may continue to fail. For the moment, this book provides a unique insight into 
the enduring intellectual currents that drive the modernization of Chinese medi-
cine within the overseas Chinese community. 


Ping-Chung Leung, Charlie Changli Xue, and Yung-Chi Cheng (eds.), A Comprehensive Guide to Chinese Medicine

Not a member yet

Luís Saraiva (ed.), History of Mathematical Sciences: Portugal and East Asia II. Scientific Practices and the Portuguese Expansion in Asia, 1498-1759

Editorial

Roel Sterckx, The Animal and the Daemon in Early China

Divination and Medicine in China and Greece: A Comparative Perspective on the Baoshan Illness Divinations

Ho Peng Yoke, Chinese Mathematical Astrology: Reaching out to the Stars

Noël Golvers, Ferdinand Verbiest, S. J. (1623-1688) and the Chinese Heaven: The Composition of the Astronomical Corpus, its Diffusion and Reception in the European Republic of Letters

Restructuring the Field of Chinese Medicine: A Study of the Menghe and Ding Scholarly Currents, 1600-2000 (Part 2)

Medicine and Astrology: Their Encounter on a Cross-cultural Occasion

Note from the Editor

Ping-Chung Leung, Charlie Changli Xue, and Yung-Chi Cheng (eds.), A Comprehensive Guide to Chinese Medicine

370

608