Charting remarkable medical discoveries and shifts in practice and policy from ancient China to the mid-20th century.
Curated/Reviewed by Matthew A. McIntosh
Public Historian
Brewminate
Early Influences
Overview
Before the 6th century AD, Buddhist priests from China introduced Chinese medicine to Korea and Japan. Traveling priests disseminated Chinese medical knowledge throughout these countries more widely during the Tang dynasty (618-907 AD).
Yin and Yang
Yin and Yang are the underlying principles of Chinese philosophy and medicine. Good health is believed to come from a balance of Yin (negative, dark, and feminine) and Yang (positive, bright, and masculine).
Emperors and Physicians
Huang Ti and Shen Nung
The earliest known medical text is attributed to the emperor Huang Ti. Huang-ti Nei ching (The Canon of Internal Medicine), consisting of two treatises, laid the foundations for the classics of Chinese medicine to come.
This text discusses the symptoms of the various diseases mentioned in Su wen (Questions and answers about living matter), supplemented with prescriptions. Su wen is one of the two books which make up Huang-ti Nei ching (The Canon of Internal Medicine).
The first volume of this work, shown here, includes drawings of herbs, minerals, and animals. The remaining volumes cover pharmacology and the therapeutic uses of the materia medica.
Much like emperor Huang Ti, emperor Shen Nung, now considered the Father of Chinese medicine, provided great contributions through his meticulous study of herbs which is assumed to have led to the writing of Shen-nung pen ts’ao ching (Divine Husbandman’s Materia Medica).
This legendary emperor taught his people how to cultivate grains as food, to avoid killing animals. He is said to have tasted hundreds of herbs to test their medicinal value and is assumed to be the author of Shen-nung pen ts’ao ching (Divine Husbandman’s Materia Medica), the earliest extant Chinese pharmacopoeia. This text includes 365 medicines derived from minerals, plants, and animals. The true authorship of this work is also unknown. He is believed to have introduced the technique of acupuncture.
A Japanese translation of Shen-nung pen ts’ao (Herbal and Prescriptions).
Chang Chung-ching and Li Shih-chen
Following Huang-ti Nei ching (The Canon of Internal Medicine), Chang Chung-ching, known as the Hippocrates of China, made profound influences on Chinese medicine, in particularly his writing of 校正傷寒論 or Shang han lun (Treatise on Colds and Fevers).
By the Ming dynasty, Li Shih-chen wrote one of the greatest Chinese pharmacopoeias compiling all known herbal medicines since the Huang-ti Nei ching to the late 16th century.
This volume is comprised of 32 illustrations of famous medical men, each accompanied by an admiring poem. Shown on the right side is Chang Chung-ching.
This work is a revised Song dynasty (960-1279 AD) version of Chang Chung-ching’s 校正傷寒論 or Shang han lun, compiled by the end of the Han dynasty and known globally as one of the oldest complete medical textbooks.
This work is a later interpretation of Chang Chung-ching’s classic work 校正傷寒論 or Shang han lun on the diagnosis and treatment of cold and fever syndromes. The original author’s name and the title of the book appear here on the title page.
金匮要略, or Jingui Yaolüe (Essential Prescriptions from the Golden Cabinet), is a classic clinical book of traditional Chinese medicine written by Chang Chung-ching. This book, 金匱要畧國字解 (Commentary on Essential Prescriptions from the Golden Cabinet), was written by a Japanese author and published in Edo, now Tokyo, during the Edo period when Chinese traditions and knowledge were heavily spread throughout Japan due to limited foreign trade to the country.
From The Great Herbal.
Ancient Texts
Following the works of some of the most influential Chinese emperors and physicians, other medical contributions across China, Japan, and Korea were made resulting in what is now considered traditional Chinese medicine. These books feature discoveries in acupuncture, surgery, herbal remedies, and early thoughts on communicable diseases.
These pages show the removal of tumor tissue from a patient’s breast (right) and the pathological specimen (left). This manuscript describes the surgical procedures of the Hanaoka school, which used Chinese herbs as a general anesthetic.
Seishu Hanaoka (1760-1835), a Japanese pioneer in anesthesia, performed the first breast cancer surgery using herbal general anesthesia.
This page describes how acupuncture combined with herbs can treat all kinds of diseases, including those caused by parasites.
This page describes how acupuncture combined with herbs can treat all kinds of diseases, including those caused by parasites.
In this work originally published in 1611, the renowned Korean physician Ho Chun compiled and classified the extant medical knowledge of China, Japan, and Korea. Some of the categories he used were internal environment, external appearances of the human body, miscellaneous diseases, fluid medicine, and acupuncture.
This Japanese book on surgery is based on some of the canonical books of Chinese traditional medicine, stating diagnoses, pathology, and treatments.
Shown here is the cover of this 1716 publication on acupuncture points and the fourteen meridians.
Shown here is a description of 20 acupuncture points on the arm that are used to treat colon diseases. It is written in a sonnet style for easier memorization.
Anatomical Posters
Traditional Chinese medicine understood the body in energy, or chi, that passes through channels called meridians and connect to the body’s organs and functions. This model of the body is not concerned with anatomy in the way that Western medicine is. Though, in the 1930s a series of anatomical posters produced by the Shanghai Xueyou Books and Art Club and another produced by Shanghai Xinya Bookstore in 1951 show an embracing of Western anatomy into Chinese medicine.
In the 1930s, people were trying to understand the human body and how to depict its inner workings. One theory was that the body is like a factory, which is visible in the top image of this poster. The arms appear as winches and cranes, lungs as bellows, and the liver as a furnace. The brain is depicted as an office space, the desk jobs, to illustrate where the executive functions of the body are.
This series of posters used modern day mechanical objects and tools to explain the body. This poster shows the anatomy of the eye and compares the eye to a camera. At the bottom another image shows the anatomy of the ear and compares the ear to a telephone.
This poster consists of a series of images showing the anatomy of the urinary tract, skin, kidney, finger, and how to test for senses of touching.
This poster consists of a series of images of the anatomy of lungs, thoracic cavities, pharynx, larynx, and pulmonary alveoli.
This poster consists of four images: the anatomy of heart, model of blood circulation, blood vessels, and the physiology of blood coagulation and immunity response against pathogens from white blood cells.
Mid-20th century depictions of the body in China were influenced by Western anatomy. This poster consists of four images of the anatomy of the nervous system, including the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nervous system.
This poster consists of two main images of the anatomy of the skeletal muscle system — front view and back view. Smaller images on the bottom show the anatomy of an arm, histology of striated muscle, and laborers working with their muscles.
This poster consists of a series of images of the anatomy of the lung, chest cavity, pharynx, respiratory model, and measurements of lung volume.
This poster consists of four images of the anatomy of the nervous system and the functions of brain.
This poster consists of four images of the anatomy of the nervous system and the functions of brain.
The top image of this poster shows the life cycles of parasites. The bottom image shows the routes of transmission of parasites in the human body.
Advertisements
Chinese medicinal compounds were recorded as early as the Han dynasty, 2,000 years ago. Beginning in the 1880s, Western companies—notably Bayer, Hoechst (now Aventis), and Eli Lilly and Company—challenged traditional medicines with the resources of modern capitalism. In turn, Chinese companies entered the new commercial markets. The Tianjin Pharmaceutical Factory, founded in 1921, used western methods to produce and market traditional Chinese medicines. These advertisements illustrate a shift in Chinese medicine that melds the modern and emerging pharmaceutical industries with the foundations of traditional Chinese medicine.
By the mid- to late-20th century, public health posters had become a staple of health campaigns throughout China. Pharmaceutical companies posted their ads on and below public health posters to increase their reach to growing populations.
To market Chinese medicines to a more modernized audience, ads, such as this one, used ideal masculine images to make these traditional therapeutics more appealing.
This ad features Tiananmen, or the Gate of Heavenly Peace, the monumental gate in the center of Beijing, China built during the Ming dynasty in 1420. Pharmaceutical companies used traditional Chinese imagery, like Tiananmen, to market Asian products to an increasingly modernized population.
To market Chinese medicines to a more modernized audience, ads, such as these, used ideal feminine images to make these traditional therapeutics more appealing.
By the mid- to late-20th century, public health posters had become a staple of health campaigns throughout China. Pharmaceutical companies posted their ads on and below public health posters to increase their reach to growing populations.
Originally published by the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, to the public domain.