Time and Text: Approaching Chinese Medical Practice Through Analysis of a Published Case
Time and Text: Approaching Chinese Medical Practice Through Analysis of a Published Case
This chapter presents a case history of Chinese medical practice. Case histories occupy a much more prominent place in Chinese medical publishing than they do in Western biomedical journals and textbooks. Cases occupy a much more central place in medical discourse, and they are difficult to understand apart from their emergence as texts in a unique social world of scholarly practice. Science and technology bookstores in the People's Republic include numerous collections of case histories among the teaching and research texts of Chinese medicine. A rapid review of the professional periodical literature of Chinese medicine reveals many short chapters devoted to discussion of a case or of a few cases. A great deal of theoretical work revolves around the interpretation of specific illnesses; and the biographies and autobiographies of senior Chinese doctors focus at length on their famous cases. However, a published case history in Chinese medicine must be considered in quite a different light from that of Western medicine.
Keywords: case history, Chinese medical practice, People's Republic, scholarly practice, texts
California Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.