Abstract
The Wisdom of the Body, the culmination of W. B. Cannon’s many scientific research achievements, is not only representative of his personal academic accomplishments but is also a prerequisite for current research on homeostasis. This work has already been translated by Fan Yuenian and Wei Youren to be published by the Commercial Press. Here I shall offer two personal comments on the book.
Journal of Dialectics of Nature IV(4) (1982) 72-77.
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Notes
The ‘Literature Section’ of Ban Gu’s History of the Han Dynasty (Han Shu) records that nine books on early Qin medicine, prescriptions, hygiene and celestial beings existed. They were External Medicine (Wai Jing (37 chapters), Internal Medicine (Nei Jing) (18 chapters), Tax Shi Huang Di Bian Que Yu Fu Fang (23 chapters), Shen Nong Huang Di Shi Jin (7 chapters), Huang Di San Wu Yang Yang Fang (20 chapters), Huang Di Za Zi Bu Ying (12 chapters), Huang Di Qi Bo An Mo (10 chapters), Huang Di Za Zi Zhi Jun (18 chapters), and Huang Di Za Zi Shi Jiu Jia Fang (21 chapters). All have been lost, with the exception of Internal Medicine which includes the 9-chapter Questions and Answers (Su Wen) and the 9-chapter Canon of Acupuncture (Ling Shu). The seventh chapter of Questions and Answers has been lost. Both Huangpu Mi of the Jin dynasty and Wang Bing of the Tang dynasty admitted this fact. Wang Bing claimed to have found the missing chapter while he was compiling Questions and Answers. However, when people later checked the book for publication they pointed out that the articles in the chapter Wang Bing found were not authentic. Wang Bing admitted that the eight chapters which survived consisted of broken bamboo fragments and incomplete articles which took twelve years to sort out. Therefore, there are many discrepancies between this new Questions and Answers (which consists of 81 articles in 24 chapters) and that of the early Qin dynasty. The new Canon of Acupuncture (which also contains 81 articles in 24 chapters) was compiled by Shi Song of the Song dynasty. In the preface, Shi noted, “I wish that the Canon of Acupuncture had not been lost.” He “rectified the work based on references from many books.” How could he correct a book that had been lost? Shi said he had “an old edition of the nine-chapter Canon of Acupuncture which had been kept in his family.” This was merely a pretext, as was Wang Bing’s “teacher’s copy.” Therefore, the Internal Medicine available today is an encyclopedia of traditional Chinese internal medicine which lasted for about 1500 years, from the early Qin to the Song dynasty. Because almost all of the early Qin medical books have been lost, historians of medicine usually regard Lei Gong, a representative of the ‘Jing Jing’ (Tendon and Nerve) School of internal medicine whose role was similar to that of Qi Bo who represented the ‘Jing Mai’ (Channels) School, as a doctor of internal medicine. Actually, this was not the case. When Qi Bo was struggling against the witch doctors, they heavily depended on Lei Gong as their ally. When Qi Bo discussed internal diseases, Lei Gong naturally participated, so the Lei Gong in Internal Medicine had a double identity. Both a surgeon and a physician, he entered internal medicine from surgery.
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© 1996 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Bu, C. (1996). Homeostasis and Chinese Traditional Medicine: Commenting on Cannon’s The Wisdom of the Body . In: Dainian, F., Cohen, R.S. (eds) Chinese Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 179. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8717-4_11
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