Searching for the Dao of medicine : landscapes of thoughtful practice in late imperial China / Volker Scheid

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Scheid, Volker, 1958- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Medicine--Practice--China--History.

Medicine.

Medicine, Chinese--Philosophy.

Medicine, Chinese.

Medicine--Practice.

China.

Genre:

History

Physical Description:

1 online resource : illustrations, color maps

black and white

color

illustrations

maps

Place of Publication:

New York : Berghahn, 2026

Summary:

"In late imperial China, debates over how virtuosity in medical practice might be cultivated unfolded within a world that connected physicians to scholars, poets, calligraphers, Buddhist monks, Daoist life-cultivation experts and military strategists. This book traces these debates, showing how medicine was imagined as akin to poetry, how clinical insight was shaped through meditative bodily practices and how practitioners pursued empirical investigation. At the same time, medicine and the body became vital conceptual resources for intellectuals seeking to address broader social and philosophical questions"-- JSTOR

Contents:

Before medicine as Dao : surveying an emergent landscape

Medicine turns on discernment : Danxi’s syncretic Dao of medicine

Embodying good knowing : medicine and the body in the teachings of Wang Yangming

Thinking with medicine in the age of Wang Yangming

Following in Zhu Xi’s footsteps : Fang Youzhi’s quest for the Dao of medicine

Revealing Zhongjing’s intentions : devotional hermeneutics and investigating things

Order and orthodoxy : Zhongjing as medical sage

Healing the world with words : Fang Yizhi and the monk Yaodi

Responding to the affairs of one’s time : Yu Chang’s path towards a poetic Dao

The poet as physician and the physician as poet : Xue Shengbai and Ye Tianshi

On the boundaries of the poetic Dao of medicine

Medicine as warfare : Ke Qin’s steps towards an evidential Dao

Antiquity is everywhere : the evidential Dao of medicine in Edo Japan and Republican-era Shanghai

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index

Online resource; title from PDF title page (JSTOR, viewed July 20, 2026)

Other Format:

Print version: Scheid, Volker, 1958- Searching for the Dao of medicine

ISBN:

9781836956365

1836956363

9781836956358

1836956355

OCLC:

1601453886

Publisher Number:

CIPO000403222

Access Restriction:

Some versions: Open access versions available from some providers open access