Elisabeth Hsu

Peregrine Horden

Focusing on practice more than theory, this collection offers new perspectives for studying the so-called "humoral medical traditions," as they have flourished around the globe during the last 2,000 years. Exploring notions of "balance" in medical cultures across Eurasia, Africa and the Americas, from antiquity to the present, the volume revisits "harmony" and "holism" as main characteristics of those traditions. It foregrounds a dynamic notion of balance and asks how balance is defined or conceptualized, by whom, for whom and in what circumstances. Balance need not connoteegalitarianism or equilibrium. Rather, it alludes to morals of self care exercised in place of excessiveness and indulgences after long periods of a life in dearth. As the moral becomes visceral, the question arises: what constitutes the visceral in a body that is in constant flux and flow? How far, and in what ways, are there fundamental properties or constituents in those bodies?

Humoral Medicines in Practice

The Body in Balance

This is a study of traditional medical education in the People's Republic of China. The author became a disciple of a scholarly private practitioner, a Qigong master; attended courses given by a senior acupuncturist and masseur; and studied with undergraduates at the Yunnan College of Traditional Chinese Medicine, where the standardized knowledge of official Chinese medicine is inculcated. She compares theories and practices of these different Chinese medical traditions, and her fascinating insider's account of traditional medical practices brings out the way in which the context of instruction shapes knowledge.

The Transmission of Chinese Medicine

A study of the earliest extensive account of Chinese pulse diagnosis, focusing on a biography of Chunyu Yi.

Elisabeth Hsu

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