Knowing Practice: The Clinical Encounter Of Chinese Medicine

by Farquhar,Judith

• ISBN13: 9780813330167
• ISBN10: 0813330165
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 1996-03-08
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

This book examines the theory and practice of traditional medicine in modern China. Farquhar describes the logic of diagnosis and treatment from the inside perspective of doctors and scholars. She demonstrates how theoretical and textual materials interweave with the practical requirements of the clinic. By showing how Chinese medical choices are made, she considers problems of agency in relation to different forms of knowledge.Knowing Practicewill be of value not only to anthropologists interested in medical practice but also to historians and sociologists interested in the social life of technical expertise and traditional teachings.

Author Biography

Judith Farquhar is associate professor of anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Table of Contents

List of Tables and Illustrations	ix
Acknowledgments	xi
Introduction: ``We Take Practice to Be Our Guide''	1	(8)
Chinese Medicine as Institutional Object and Historical Moment	9	(14)
The Institutionalization of Chinese Medicine	12	(2)
Senior Doctors	14	(3)
Scientizing	17	(2)
Chinese Medicine Beyond the Institutions	19	(4)
Preliminary Orientations: Sources and Manifestations, Unity and Multiplicity	23	(18)
Chinese Medicine's Challenge to Comparison	24	(4)
Cosmogony and Transformation	28	(4)
Sources and Manifestations	32	(4)
Understanding Clinical Action	36	(5)
The Clinical Encounter Observed	41	(20)
Three Case Histories	46	(1)
Three Illnesses: Translations of Case Histories	47	(8)
The Temporal Form of the Kanbing Process	55	(6)
Description and Analysis in Kanbing	61	(86)
Describing: The Four Examinations (Sizhen)	62	(8)
Analyzing: The Major Classificatory Methods	70	(6)
Eight Rubrics (Ba Gang) Analysis	76	(10)
Illness Factor (Bingyin) Analysis	86	(5)
Visceral Systems (Zangfu) Analysis	91	(16)
Four Sectors (Wei Qi Ying Xue) Analysis	107	(12)
Six Warps (Liu Jing) Analysis	119	(12)
Concluding Remarks on Analysis	131	(16)
The Syndrome-Therapy Pivot	147	(28)
Defining the Syndrome (Zheng3)	148	(6)
Differentiating the Syndrome (Bianzheng)	154	(7)
Determining Treatment Methods (Lunzhi)	161	(8)
The Archive, the Past, the Doctor as Agent	169	(6)
Remanifesting the Syndrome and Qualifying the Therapy: Formulary and Materia Medica	175	(26)
Remanifesting: Formulary and the Production of Prescriptions (Fang)	175	(15)
Qualifying: Materia Medica (Bencao)	190	(11)
Classification, Specificity, History, and Action: An Overview of the Clinical Encounter	201	(20)
Illness In, Drugs Out	202	(1)
Speech and Silence	203	(4)
Specificity	207	(4)
Short Forms of the Clinical Encounter	211	(6)
Yinyang Reexamined	217	(4)
Conclusion	221	(10)
Appendix A: Romanization Conversion Table	231	(2)
Appendix B: Chinese and Pharmaceutical Names of Drugs Used in Cases 1-3	233	(4)
Glossary of Chinese Terms	237	(8)
Bibliography	245	(8)
About the Book and Author	253	(2)
Index	255