Case Records as Medical Stories: A Song-dynasty Doctor’s Narration of His Own Medicine-Xu Shuwei (1080-1154)

The key point in studying or teaching the history of Chinese medicine is on the doctrines underlying it and on its perception of the body,physiology,pathology,and its treatment.Namely,there is often a tendency to focus on reading and analysing the classical canons and therapy-related texts including formularies and materia medica collections.However,focusing on these sources provides us with a one-sided presentation of Chinese medicine.These primary sources lack the clinical down-to-earth know-how that encompasses medical treatment,which are represented,for instance,in the clinical rounds of modern medical schools.Our traditional focus on the medical canons and formularies provides almost no clinical knowledge,leaving us with a one-sided narrative that ignores how medicine and healing are actually practiced in the field.This paper focuses on the latter aspect of medicine from a historical perspective.Using written and visual sources dating to the Song dynasty,clinical encounters between doctors and patients including their families are depicted based on case records recorded by a physician,members of the patient’s family,and bystanders.This array of case records or case stories will enable us to narrate the interaction between physicians and patients both from the clinical perspective and from the social interaction.This paper will also discuss visual depictions of the medical encounter to provide another perspective for narrating medicine during the Song dynasty.Medical case records and paintings depicting medical encounters are exemplary of the potential of Chinese primary sources for narrative medicine.

Reacting to Epidemics:The Innovative Imperial Public Health System during the Late Northern Song Dynasty

Song China was a period in which China experienced a great increase in its population.Concurrently,the Song dynasty also experienced a rise in the frequency of epidemics and two major wars with the Western Xia and Liao dynasties during the 1000s and 1040s.The consequences of these changes were exacerbated by the increased geographical mobility of certain social groups such as traders and examinees attending civil service examinations.Thus,casualties of wars,epidemics,or disease,especially of people whose families were far away and could not care for them were left without care and“their corpses often lay bare along the roads.”This new social environment created a need for general relief.The Northern Song government(960-1127 CE),especially during the reign of Emperor Huizong,established an innovative public health system to address this issue.The public health system included poorhouses,public hospitals,and pauper’s cemeteries.The first were more of charity organizations,whereas the latter two promoted public health by providing medical services for the poor and burial for those that nobody cared for.In terms of rationale behind these institutions,on the one hand,they constituted an attempt to get the poor and homeless off the streets while providing them relief or burial.On the other hand,it seems that Huizong’s deep concern with medicine propelled him to design and implement a comprehensive public health system oriented to prevent contagion and outbreak of epidemics.This article depicts the background,the organization,and the functions of the system.The article also discusses the conditions and reasons that gave rise to such a unique undertaking by the Northern Song government.