EARLY CHINESE MEDICAL LITERATURE

First published in 1998. This study uses the Mawangdui Medical Manuscripts to form a basis for information about early Chinese medical literature. Since the 1970S there has been a succession of manuscript discoveries in late-fourth to second century B.C. tombs in several regions of China, the provinces of Hubei and Hunan being particularly fertile ground for manuscripts. The medical Mawangdui manuscripts are part of a large cache of manuscripts discovered in 1973 in Mawangdui tomb 3, situated in the north-eastern part of the city of Changsha, Hunan.

Section One: Mawangdui Medical Manuscripts; Manuscript Discovery, List of Mawangdui Medical Manuscripts and Texts, Other Excavated Manuscripts Related to Medicine, Provenance and Hermeneutic Issues, Section Two: Medicine, Medical Literature, Medical Men; Recipes, Techniques, Calculations, Arts, Readership and Transmission Section Three: Medical Ideas and Practices: Illness, Physiology, Therapy, Materia Medica Section Four: Macrobiotic Hygiene: Intellectual Background, Body and Spirit, Techniques, Philosophy and Macrobiotic Hygiene Section Five: Magic: Magical Recipes, Varieties of Magic, Recipes of Yue; Translation