GEC1044 Lecture One Part 2 Beginnings

[Music] the history of Chinese medicine from its early Beginnings 5,000 years ago to the present reveals a truly remarkable and fascinating story in this lecture we will go back to the ancient times to find out about the beginnings of the different methods of healing and how these eventually transform into Chinese medicine as the history of Chinese medicine began so did the history of Chinese culture the Primitive culture of China also plays an indispensable role in the origin and history of culture of this world the evolution of mankind is closely related to the natural environment and

the formation of a culture and this culture also includes A Primitive culture of hygiene if we wish to trace this culture of hygiene in China we will find its beginning in the Paleolithic Age as the Chinese people evolv into anatomically modern humans who form bands gathered plants and hunted animals for food creating primitive works of art and engaging in religious or spiritual activities humans at this time develop a Keener sense of their environment and their relationship with one another that's understandable since life was really tough by the time of the Neolithic Age life did not

improve much as excavated skeleton remains of Chinese people suggested that the adults in general did not live beyond 30 years of age and many children died before reaching adulthood this can be proven by the large number of child barrier earns une earthed at various archaeological sites a harsh living environment unpredictable natural conditions the contest between humans and animals ruthless war between tribes and even cannibalism all explain the short average lifespan of the primitive human simply put survival was clearly not a matter of avoiding the tangible enemies human or animals or even the environment a person's

life was also threatened by invisible forces that like human enemies were lurking everywhere and had to be watered off one of these invisible forces was unus a common ailment back in those days was bone disease signs of bone tumors were found on remains of primitive human beings here's an example of bone tumor found on the thigh bones of the Java Man the famous early human fossil discovered on the island of Java Indonesia in the late 19th century even the nandor have been found to have suffered from arthritis spinal tuberculosis osteomylitis congenital hip dislocation and other

diseases have also been detected on human fossils Stone Age skeletal remains that were une earthed from an ancient tomb in Germany bore the marks of malignant tumors some were breast cancers and some from lung or prostate cancers sickness and injuries also happened to prehistoric Chinese people it has been found that marks of heating were left on the scal of the famous picking man trauma and fractures were common in neic human skeletons excavated in China fact is if uness did not claim one's life in prehistoric times your enemies in the form of people from other tribes

or wild animals will do the job now here's another interesting fact that requires our attention and that is the rare occurrence of marks of japaning now why exactly is the marks of traning traning was commonly carried out among primitive humans from the Western Mediterranean South and North America and the South Pacific Islands this was done to expel the evil spirits out of the he and to cure such diseases as refractory headache thethy epilepsy see idy insanity and convulsions many ancient cultures shed the same beliefs about the causes of illness related to the hate and that's

another interesting point this surgical procedure uh to expel the evil uh spirit from the head was an early type of healing and also probably one of the earliest examples of surgery however there's no evidence of japaning among Chinese primitive human fossils which then leaves behind a mystery perhaps there was another healing used by prehistoric Chinese people or what if the early Chinese had a different idea of the cause of uness of the hate in the first place primitive humans understood the harshness of their own lives and they tried their best to survive and seriously every

human feel pain when pain happens our first instinct is to make it stop and we will want to understand the pain how it happens so that we may hopefully prevent it from happening in the future well it was the same for the ancient Chinese people their primitive conditions of hygiene came through striving for survival and gradually a culture of health and hygiene was formed early Chinese people once day began to live as tribes with extended families all sharing the same space or territories began to build structures that could keep them safe from the elements from

the animals and human enemies this was a far cry from dwelling in caves the excavations of the B Village um a prehistoric Village that lies um east of San City in The shansi Province in China reveal a ditch around five or six meters in depth and as well as weave this ditch was duck around the village and was created for the purpose of keeping away wild animals and defending the village against armed attacks from other tribes at the same time the dish also served to drain off water and to keep the area dry and so

this particular ditch also the precursor to a mold had both a strategic and hygienic significance now the ancient people belonging to the hudu culture and another prehistoric culture um that's that lies in the south of China they actually built their hearts above ground this um empty space that they created by building the the hearts above ground uh meant that the upper rooms uh were kept dry and ventilated which was important in humid areas to the south of China the waren state's text M mentioned that people in ancient times before they knew how to build houses

lived in cas in nearby Hills but found the dam on the ground often caused uness and injured Dam these early Chinese were aware of the units that the environment could produce and so they tried to find ways to modify the environment if they could not conquer or modify the environment successfully these ancient Chinese would abandon their habitat and relocate to other places um this happened uh especially when plates occurred all these are evidence that the prehistoric Chinese people were aware of unus possible causes of unus and um thought of ways to deal with them and

this involved prevention or healing from this a culture of hygiene gradually developed this culture of hygiene is necessary for the development of Medicine we had no idea when exactly primitive people began to feel strongly a kind of Supernatural mystical power which dominated everything the idea of a soul developed out of human consciousness that there was more to the physical body that all humans possessed that's the x that augmented the body primitive people step out of the Shadows of collective prent presentation away from their style of group living although um this was still their dominant lifestyle

Collective representation still control their thinking but they gradually um began to reflect on their own independent existence as individuals now this sort of paradigm shift in thinking might have been triggered by the observation of the dead and asking the question what separates the living body and the dead crops they began to realize that there was a gap between life and death and that only the soul was Immortal the soul would attach itself to something and thereafter gave life to it during the later Paleolithic Age and after animism began to um become fully formed and probably

was the main trend of primitive thought also the harsh realities led to the conclusion for the Chinese people of the time that it was almost impossible to be in control of your own life the length and quality of one's Earthly existence depended on forces over which humans had only uncertain influence whether and when you might become ill or even die of illness was out of your own hands people became convinced that besides the human Souls there were other Supernatural entities that existed outside of the physical body this sort of thinking continued in the Neolithic age

and Beyond as China departed um from the Prehistoric Age and arrived um in an age where historical records began to appear the the Shang Dynasty is the second of the three dynasties of sandai of China it was um preceded by S and followed by Jo the concept of the three dynasties was an important part of Chinese tradition where it helped to provide um the origin and foundation of the Chinese civilization the Chinese people their identity their culture all these were first created during the suai and evolv into what the Chinese civilization is today among the

three dynasties Shang was um special because it was the beginning of historic China the preceding s Dynasty though being considered as the first dynasty um for many centuries did not provide any texture historic evidence it was the Shang that gave us the written text um enabling Scholars to reconstruct its history with um greater certainty we know that the shang's power was built um on agriculture it was a society with a strict hierarchy with the king at the top followed by um the nobility The Peasants and the slaves the King was also the high priest as

he acted as a conduit between um the living and the dead the worldview of the Shan encompassed a community um composed of the living and the dead existence of the de was a certainty um to the Shang people the DAT lived alongside the living the date ancestors actually root the world but they were dependent upon the living for Provisions the Shang people also worship um the likely the most powerful um of all these State ancestors and was closely related to the royal family these St ancestors had power over over the living descendants now if um

the living fail to honor the the ancestors by um offering food and wine expressions of this pleasure will be shown by the de ancestors one of the ways that angry de ancestors demonstrate their displeasure was to make someone sick here's a picture of an oracle bone in the form of a turle plastron which is the flat part of the turle shell there are writings on the plastron and these writings um are supposed to be questions asked by the priests and also answers given by the date ancestors these are known as definition text or B in

Chinese there are many examples of these Oracle bones um that have been excavated um and studied here's an example of a definition text containing the name fua now fua was the queen consort of the Shang King who lived um 3,000 years ago uh she's very famous because uh she's known as not just as a queen but also as a great warrior she she led Army into Batts um so in this uh particular divination text is written in Chinese um [Music] f so in English it means will Full House tooth unit be cured and then um

the king asked another question truth unus is there a curs perhaps from the disease father e now who is this who was this father e he was actually um the ancestor of uing so um in this definition text we can see that W is um we was trying to find out what was the cause of his wife's uh two8 uh and and how he may actually Remedy this whole situation um so in this example we can see the that the ancient Chinese of the Shang period really believe that um ancestors or the ancestors were the

cause of unus um like TOA here's another example where the cause of Unice was identified and some possible um remedies um were suggested so severe tooth units should a dog be offered to the depart departed father gun and a ship be ritually slaughtered like the prehistoric Chinese people the Shan people were familiar with many different forms of unus or symptoms but they recognize only a very limited number of diseases or causes and the most important by far being the curse of an ancestor now if you were sick during that time you were likely cursed by

an angry ancestor and I suppose it was impossible to really know what um the exact reasons behind the ancestors displeasure were but it's always better to be safe than sorry and so offerings had to be made if one desired healing as I have mentioned earlier the Shang people um they were aware of unus as being symptoms of some underlying cause we can find the character G appearing many times on Oracle bones the original form was a pictograph of a man lying on the bed um perhaps sweating a divination text uh might read um translated into

English it means divining perish his or her Unice that's actually forecasting if one would die because of um his or her unit by the time of the Waring States period which was the end of the Joe Dynasty the last of the three dynasties the character G had evolved into um a man being hurt by arrows now this transformation of the character and semantics um is understandable since the Waring States period was a violent violent ERA with incessant Warfare fought between states the combination of the two characters during the subsequent Ching Dynasty produced the modern version

of z uh that we know today this was due to uh the orthographic reform by the first emperor of China S as the Chinese people became more aware of the relation between illness and disease Z was used together with P to form G um unit Bing also um supposed to mean serious Unice um um Unice that's much more serious than Z however however besides the curse of the ancestors the Shan people also recognize other causes for Unice an example of divination text has the princess how Fallen you because of an evil wind hey evil wind

um this is um supposedly a unus causing spirit and it may have acted in its own right or it may have been considered to be a tool of the Mighty the win of one of the most important uh ethological principle was in traditional Chinese medicine it eventually evolved into uh pathogen as medical knowledge began to try to disassociate itself from Supernatural elements however some of these uh Concepts medical Concepts remain to to be an integral part of the Chinese medicine up to today Chinese name for uh cerebral vascular event um better known as stroke is

the Chinese name was originally from the Chinese medical Classics um the inner Classics of the yellow emperor that was completed in the Han Dynasty the Chinese people believe that the brain was attacked by external external pathogenic wind causing uh the Hem fgure of the limbs or so to um Mii now this is remarkable because the Chinese already recogn recogniz the symptoms and its relation to brain damage and and actually attempted to explain the cause um 2,000 years ago of course Str phone continue to be used in the present day as the official name for stroke

in Chinese medicine now since the ancient Chinese to some extent uh recognize uness and disease who then did they actually go to U for healing during the Shang it was the priest and at the top um it was the king who who was also the high priest they would negotiate or this priest would NE negotiate on behalf of The Afflicted with uh their ancestors after the Shang was replaced by the Joe Dynasty it was the o or or shamans or witches o who took on the road of healers the original character for doctor was o

or where the lower half of the character is who or which it eventually transformed into e um by the Han dasty concepts of the relationship between uh the living and the dead became increasingly sophisticated as early as the Shang it was agreed um that there were nine generations of ancestors still active in the after life the idea that ancestors would punish their living descendants for their sins evolved over the centuries into the idea that um living descendants would have to bear the punishments for the passings of their ancestors as well as for their own transgressions

they were held uh to account for all um the offenses they had committed while alive and every indictment in the Underworld led to a newness among their living descendants now bear in mind that the uh was not um Karma as Buddhism uh had yet to arrive in China from India the Shang Dynasty was replaced by the Jo um in a violent Uprising the new regime in China continue um the tradition of ancestor worship um that they uh adopted from the Shang um and as such ideas about Unis um were largely the same there was a

major difference however in terms of cosmological Concepts as the Joe people introduced t or Heaven um being the most powerful cosmological force and it actually replace the D of the Shan now if D was the collective force of all the ancestors now there's a even more powerful impersonal force in the world and Beyond ten or Heaven would eventually become a moral force with the arrival of confusion ISM but the ancestors were still important in Chinese culture they're not gone they continue to have power over the living but this power was now shared with other spirits

who could make things difficult for the living beginning in the Waring States period the ancestors had competition in the form of demons and the character demons Oru entered into the Chinese lexicon it is now used as a character for ghosts demons were not identified by their family connections to the living but rather having died an unnatural or violent death bore a grudge against all Humanity or of humanity they express this resentment by um causing all kinds of malicious damage the most common being humanness and physical suffering demons were more formidable than the ancestors um as

they were harder to play Kate you could at least negotiate with your own de ancestors but not so much with um qu people of the Waring States used various strategies against um such demonic adversity or C in Chinese the only thing the people of the Waring States knew how um to use against such Spirits was violence um of the form of the kind that they had learned to use against their own human enemies resistance could be initiated through an alliance with a powerful deity such as the moon the Sun or the star or through the

invocation of a particular powerful Spirit um or spirits who were known to specialize in devouring lower rank demonic beings um in this case medical healing continued to have a strong Supernatural element in it the creativity um the early Chinese brought to devising words gestures objects and substances to reflect um the increase diversity of Concepts such as how evil spirits cause harm and um how most effectively one could protect oneself from them has contined largely unabated uh into the present now this creativity was necessary because human life uh was still uncertain uh and frequently short maybe

even more so than ever before um this development um mired the sociopolitical uphe of that period eventually such violent attacks on demons causing Unice led to the development of Herber medson um it's a more of using herbs um as poison as a weapon against the demons and also a technique where needers were inserted into the body of the affl uh which became of course um you know acupuncture eventually healing was a fight a battle against non-human adversaries um Scholars call this demonic medine and it mirrors human experiences During the period of the Waring States the

concept of demonic medon continued into the the Imperial ching and Han period um after the end of Jo and greatly influenc the subsequent development of Chinese medicine during the Waring States period besides the development of demonic mson there was a small band of philosophers who shared similar ideas about the natural world and Cosmos that became known as the inyang school or the inyang or in English is they're known as the school of naturalist they were thinkers who sought to free themselves from the power of the spirits and demons they were also quite heavily influenced by

um the darwis philosophy that was uh a nent school of thought at that time some even considered inyang school or inyang as a branch of DSM um but um not so sure about that anyway the inyanga retain the word for Spirits sh right we know that this came from earlier time but they tried to redefine it in two different ways first the spirits were newly identified no longer as invisible beings in the human environment but rather as the concrete substances blood and tea that were necessary for human life BL and tea are the spirits within

humans one must nourish them care the literal translation of the character T basically means steam rising from Rice as you can see in the picture see like blood flow throughout the organism and whose obstruction counterflow or excessive discharge could lead to uh unus and disease the most visible form of tea is of course the human breath however in the following centuries the word t was um invested with various new meanings so that it is no longer possible to translate it one to one with any single appropriate word in a European language T could be the

invisible force energy breath that flows inside the human body and together with blood brings life to the body blood sh is produced by the S A Hearts the Chinese discovered that blood must be circulated in um the body but so must te the two combine to produce and maintain Shen in the body Shen became closely related to um the mind and so when someone has me unus Chinese medicine always relates it um to the heart blood and tea now let's get back to the reinterpretation of the spirits San by these U philosophers known as Ina

a second reinterpretation of the spirits was that um the spirits would no longer have power over humans right that's a very big um change on the contrary humans had power over the spirits this idea would influence medical thinking into uh the imperior era after the the end of the Waring States period um the new medson provide or rather it provided an explanation for this within the human organism attached to one or more organs is a spirit oan the Chinese character for such organs is z which means long-term Depo or in this context long-term storage organs

in other words long-term depos are where important goods are protected for extended periods think Treasure Trove in Chinese that's bang the organs and um theang of treasure both share the same ethology besides Sun there's another category of organ in the body which is the food um or short-term repositories now there are no Spirits trapped in this organs in the food right that's very different from Z they take in Goods one day and release them again the next day if not before so think of the food as maybe pop station all right where your online shopping

goods are temporary um start for collection um you know as soon as possible while the Tang is like extra space long-term storage the spirits are retained securely within um the body if the long-term storage organs have sufficient reserves of tea each organ has a natural endowment of healthy tea which keeps the spirit healthy but if this tea is carelessly overspent it may become insufficient to retain um the organ's spirit once the organ's spirit Escape it's bad right it's really really bad the ancient medical text mentioned to hold um the spirit is to prosper losing the

spirit is um to perish it is therefore within each person's part power to control these Spirits within the body or to let them Escape like it's up to you this personal responsibility to one's body was something that developed out of the chaos of the war States period where every man had to fan for himself and how does one control and guide the spirit this control operates through emotions and and this disciplined approach to one's own emotions will quickly use up the resources of whichever long-term storage organs are responsible for maintaining those emotions Now Chinese medicine

list seven different emotions they call teaing they are Joy anger worry grief fear fright and pensiveness if one drive these emotions um to the extreme it will hurt the spirits of various organs with the heart and mind suffering the most the Chinese expressions of mental uness and mental afflictions are always associated with SH or spirit so take for example that's this expression heart and spirit not at EAS or at peace basically means anxiety Essence and spirit is in disarray um and very serious condition which basically means seriously deranged thus emotions are the only internal causes

of the exor of the body's organic resources the displacement of the internal Spirits uh leading to the vulnerability of the body that opens the door to external pathogens attacking or invading resulting in all kinds of diseases now this Chinese medical Theory would go on to influence the rest of um East Asia even up to today e Asian in general give the impression of being better at controlling uh or quing their emotions than their European counterparts due to the enduring effects of this ancient Chinese theory about the intimate causes of disease balance is good balance is

always good but extremes are bad so for 2,000 years until the encounter with European medson this Theory determined the culture of at least um you know the educated Elites this theory of the localization of spirits in the various organs is not just important for understanding ancient Chinese medicine and the alternating power relationships between humans and Spirits it also highlights the um the traumatic effects of the previous hundreds of years of military conflict and violence during the war in States period now if you think about the um 30 years war in Europe um that happened in

the 17th century it was probably the longest continuous military conflict um in European history all right that's 30 years but the Waring States lasted for 250 years the resources of the long-term storage organs may be reped uh in this case is sh or depleted sh all right sh and Sh repete and deplete depleted but replete does not refer to a healthy normal state which was um described differently an emptiness or depletion occurs when the resources are used up a long-term storage organ is then no longer able to perform its various functions so for example a

healthy uh gleam in the eye SI depends on on um there being um sufficient resources in the liver because eyes and liver are closely related in Chinese medical uh thought the depiction of a long-term Deo in the human body is uh analogous to a bridge in the defensive walls of a city it allows um neighbors or foreign States who learn of it to take immediate advantage and invade the foreign states are the same um to the harmful pathogens so one can readily link Chinese medical concepts with those Concepts that belong to the military so where

else can you find sh and in Chinese culture outside of Chinese medicine you just have to read Art of War and you'll find sh and in it by the time China became an Empire first under the tin Then followed by the longer lasting Han Dynasty the Chinese people had organized the world according to two categories the proper Orthodox or correct um in Chinese it's known as J on the one hand and the evil improper um barent C on the other the Chinese also recognized that human beings are closely linked to Nature even though the supernatural

wasn't that far from their belief system wind cold dampness and other natural phenomena are basically normal but if wind and dampness takes advantage of the depletion of an organ to invade the human body and cause all kinds of pathological processes then the formally J or correct state of this natural phenomena has become evil or see it it is necessary to drive them out now this sort of medical thinking actually corresponds to the two kinds of behavior in the Society of that time the correct or upright and the evil incorrect or apparent the presence of this

evil in the body is disease now I have mentioned previously that mson is a social cultural construct and as such its development cannot be independent of the environment that gave birth to it in the first place the classical age of China um which you know it's from 500 BC to 6008 help to produce ideas that Define um Chinese culture it is not coincidental that so much that you know that we know um as Chinese medicine actually um owed its theoretical Foundation to this period by the end of the Han Dynasty and before the beginning of

the Tang Dynasty the framework of the knowledge uh system that belongs to Chinese medicine was already in place [Music]