Abstract
This case provides another viewpoint on the complicated medical scene in Song China. Xu was walking down an alley when he looked into the courtyard of a house and saw a sad and worried person who happened to be the father of the patient. Xu politely asked about the reason for the distress. It turned out that another physician had proposed treatment but the father was unsure and thus was hesitating. This exemplifies once again that the medical encounter regularly took place in the patient’s home and that the patient’s family had to approve the physician’s diagnosis and treatment before proceeding. The case continued with Xu examining the patient and treating him. We may well wonder why the father would trust someone passing by over the physician he hired to begin with? It is likely that he knew Xu; speaking to a stranger in a house one passes was not normal unless Xu knew him. If that was not the case, we must credit Xu’s techniques of persuasion.
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Notes
- 1.
The fact that he could see directly into the courtyard implies that it was not an upper-class house.
- 2.
Zhi is a name of a disorder or a syndrome first recorded in the Suwen volume of the Yellow Emperor’s Inner Canon, vol.1, bian 37, p. 490; vol.1, bian 45, p. 589; and vol. 2, bian 70, p. 927. The main symptom for this disorder is stiffness due to spasm of the muscles. For further information see Zhongyi da cidian, 2nd ed., p. 1622.
- 3.
This sentence is somewhat ambiguous and can also be translated: ‘The doctor was about to drain him downward, but is hesitating’.
- 4.
This formula was first recorded in the Song dynasty’s formulary, see Taiping shenghui fang, juan 62, p. 1338. It is not recorded in Scheid et al. 2009.
Bibliography
Other Sources:
Scheid, Volker, Dan Bensky, Andrew Ellis, and Randall Barolet. 2009. Chinese Herbal Medicine: Formulas and Strategies. Seattle: Eastland Press.
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Goldschmidt, A. (2019). Case Number 39. In: Medical Practice in Twelfth-century China – A Translation of Xu Shuwei’s Ninety Discussions [Cases] on Cold Damage Disorders. Archimedes, vol 54. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-06103-6_40
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