The Huihui Yaofang was an encyclopaedia of Near Eastern medicine compiled under the Mongol Yuan Dynasty for the benefit of themselves and Chinese medical establishments. We translate the surviving material and context it in the history and ethnobiology of the medicine described.

In covering the subject of Chinese medicine, this book addresses topics such as oracle bones, the treatment of women, fertility and childbirth, nutrition, acupuncture, and Qi as well as examining Chinese medicine as practiced globally in places such as Africa, Australia, Vietnam, Korea, and the United States.

Confluences of Medicine is the first book-length exploration in English of issues of medicine and society in premodern Japan. This multifaceted study weaves a rich tapestry of Buddhist healing practices, Chinese medical knowledge, Asian pharmaceuticals, and Islamic formulas as it elucidates their appropriation and integration into medieval Japanese medicine. It expands the parameters of the study of medicine in East Asia, which to date has focused on the subject in individual countries, and introduces the dynamics of interaction and exchange that coursed through the East Asian macro-culture. The book explores these themes primarily through the two extant works of the Buddhist priest and clinical physician Kajiwara Shozen (1265–1337), who was active at the medical facility housed at Gokurakuji temple in Kamakura, the capital of Japan’s first warrior government. With access to large numbers of printed Song medical texts and a wide range of materia medica from as far away as the Middle East, Shozen was a beneficiary of the efflorescence of trade and exchange across the East China Sea that typifies this era. His break with the restrictions of Japanese medicine is revealed in Ton’isho (Book of the simple physician) and Man’apo (Myriad relief formulas). Both of these texts are landmarks: the former being the first work written in Japanese for a popular audience; the latter, the most extensive Japanese medical work prior to the seventeenth century. Confluences of Medicine brings to the fore the range of factors—networks of Buddhist priests, institutional support, availability of materials, relevance of overseas knowledge to local conditions of domestic strife, and serendipity—that influenced the Japanese acquisition of Chinese medical information. It offers the first substantive portrait of the impact of the Song printing revolution in medieval Japan and provides a rare glimpse of Chinese medicine as it was understood outside of China. It is further distinguished by its attention to materia medica and medicinal formulas and to the challenges of technical translation and technological transfer in the reception and incorporation of a new pharmaceutical regime.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1976.

“Rich insights into how one country has dealt with perhaps the most central issue for any human society: the health and wellbeing of its citizens.” —The Lancet This volume examines important aspects of China’s century-long search to provide appropriate and effective health care for its people. Four subjects—disease and healing, encounters and accommodations, institutions and professions, and people’s health—organize discussions across case studies of schistosomiasis, tuberculosis, mental health, and tobacco and health. Among the book’s significant conclusions are the importance of barefoot doctors in disseminating western medicine; the improvements in medical health and services during the long Sino-Japanese war; and the important role of the Chinese consumer. This is a thought-provoking read for health practitioners, historians, and others interested in the history of medicine and health in China.

This book documents the relationship and wisdom of Asian cartographers in the Islamic and Chinese worlds before the Europeans arrived.

"From the perspectives of history and cultural anthropology, the authors consider problems of knowledge in Chinese medicine, the Hindu-Buddhist traditions of South Asian medicine, and the Greco-Arabic traditions of Islamic medicine.".