At the heart of medical history is a deep enigma.The true structure and workings of the human body are, we casually assume, everywhere the same, a universal reality. But then we look into the past, and our sense of reality wavers: accounts of the body in diverse medical traditions often seem to describe mutually alien, almost unrelated worlds.The Expressiveness of the Body meditates on the contrasts between the human body described in classical Greek medicine and the body as envisaged by physicians in ancient China. It asks how this most basic of human realities came to be conceived by two sophisticated civilizations in radically diverging ways. And it seeks answers in fresh and unexpected topics, such as the history of tactile knowledge, the relationship between ways of seeing and ways of listening, and the evolution of bloodletting.
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栗山茂久(Shigehisa Kuriyama)教授是哈佛大學科學史博士,曾在京都的國際日本文化研究中心講學與研究多年,專攻比較醫學史。大約三年前栗山教授被哈佛大學挖墙角,目前任教於東亞系與科學史系主任、赖肖尔文化史讲座教授。
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雖然將血液視同生命力會阻礙放血療法之發展,但血液品質與生命品質的關連則使得血液成爲重要的治療對象。血液過多、血液不足、血液過熱或過冷、流通順暢或凝結阻塞、血液分佈不均、劣質血液——這一切都會影響一個人所能做的事、他的感覺、他的人格。上述的狀況中有些能夠以放血加以治療。
這種長久以來對於明確的追求,最後終於導致脈搏測量簡單化為計算搏動次數。
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