Currents of Tradition in Chinese Medicine, 1626-2006 by Volker Scheid

Currents of Tradition in Chinese Medicine, 1626-2006 by Volker Scheid

In 1626, a young man named Fei Shangyou moved his family to Menghe, a small town in the Yangzi delta of China. According to family legend, he abandoned his career as a scholar and began working as a physician. In doing so, he founded a medical lineage that continues to the present day. This book describes the development, flourishing, and decline of this lineage and its many branches, as well as that of the other medical lineages and families with which it merged over time to form the current of Menghe learning (Menghe xuepai). This current and its offshoots produced some of the most influential physicians in the Chinese medical tradition during the 19th and 20th centuries. Menghe physicians, their disciples and students treated emperors, imperial mandarins, Nationalist Party generals, leading figures in the Communist Party, affluent businessmen, and influential artists. In late imperial China, Menghe medicine was a self-conscious attempt to unite diverse strands of medical learning into one integrated tradition centered on ancient principles of practice. In Republican Shanghai, Menghe physicians and their students were at the forefront of medical modernization, establishing schools, professional associations, and journals that became models for others to follow. During the 1950s and 1960s, the heirs of Menghe medicine were key players in creating the institutional framework for contemporary Chinese medicine. Their students are now practicing all over the world, shaping Chinese medicine in Los Angeles, New York, Oxford, Mallorca, and Berlin. The history of the Menghe current is relevant to anyone interested in the development of Chinese medicine in late imperial and modern China. This book traces Chinese medical history along the currents created by generations of physicians linked to each other by a shared heritage of learning, by descent and kinship, by sentiments of native place as well as nationalist fervor, by personal riv

Volker Scheid is Wellcome Trust Research Fellow in the Department of History, School of Oriental and African Studies, at the University of London.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780939616565
ISBN 10	0939616564
Title	Currents of Tradition in Chinese Medicine, 1626-2006
Author	Volker Scheid
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Eastland Press Inc
Year published	2007-01-01
Number of pages	564
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.