Medieval Chinese Medicine: The Dunhuang Medical Manuscripts by Vivienne Lo, Christopher Cullen - 2005

Oxon: Routledge Curzon, 2005. 1st Edition 1st Printing. Hardcover. As New. 12mo - over 6¾ - 7¾" tall. Text in English and Chinese. Illustrated in color and black and white. Originally illustrated heavy paper covered boards. Light superficial marks on covers. Internally clear, tight and very good. "The primary sources for this research come from a collection of medieval manuscripts discovered in 1900 in a walled-up room in the Buddhist cave-shrines of Dunhuang, Gansu Province, west China. Dunhuang was formerly an important silk road town, and formed the base of one of the first garrisons to be established during the Han period to secure the safe passage of soldiers, officials and trades between east and west. While the majority of the manuscripts stored in the cave are copies of Buddhist scriptural texts, there are also thousands of non-buddhist texts, both religious and secular. In the collection we find the earliest handwritten copies of well-known classical medical treatises, together with hitherto unknown medical works, including illustrations and charts, text related to religious and popular healing traditions. This is the first book to discuss this fascinating material in a Western language in the century since the Dunhuang library was discovered and it is likely to remain the only book of its kind in English for a considerable time" (The precedent page before title page). "This book is among the few in English to tackle this eclectic period in Chinese History, and the only one to deal with Dunhuang medicine. For this reason alone, it is an invaluable contribution to the field" (Medical History, January 2007). It contains 4 parts "the manuscripts", "divination, iatromancy, and related arts", "self-cultivation and the popular medical traditions" and "pharmacology". Vivienne Lo researches and lectures on the early and medieval history of Asian medicine at the Wellcome Trust Centre for the history of Medicine, University College London.Vivienne's core research concerns the social and cultural origins of acupuncture, therapeutic exercise, and food and medicine. She translates and analyses manuscript material from Early and Medieval China, and publishes on the transmission of scientific knowledge along the so-called Silk Roads. She has a long-term interest in visual cultures of medicine and healthcare. Christopher Cullen is Director of the Needham Research Institute, Cambridge. He is an English sinologist. He has an MA from University of Oxford in engineering and a PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies in classical Chinese. He is Director Emeritus of the Needham Research Institute and General Editor of the Science and Civilization in China series, succeeding Joseph Needham. His own area of research is the Han Dynasty and he translated the Book on Numbers and Computation into English. Size: 6.4X9.5X1.1 inches 450 pages.