From under the elbow to pointing to the palm: Chinese metaphors for learning medicine by the book (fourth–fourteenth centuries). (2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Hanson, Marta
• Editors: Leong, Elaine; Creager, Angela; Grote, Mathias
• Is Part Of: BJHS Themes. Volume 5(2020)
• Page Start: 75
• Page End: 92
• Publication Date: 2020
• Subjects: Science -- Historiography -- Periodicals; Science -- History -- Periodicals; Periodicals; 507.22
• DOI: 10.1017/bjt.2020.6
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2058-850X

Abstract

Abstract: This article focuses on transformations in the main metaphors in ancient to late medieval titles of Chinese medical books used to convey to potential readers their 'learning-by-the-book' contents. It finds that in contrast to the European preference for hand metaphors in the genre terms – enchiridions, manuals and handbooks – the Chinese medical archive preserves bodily metaphors within which the hand metaphor appears only rarely in the early medieval period and is then superseded by metaphors that rely on the fingers and palms more than the hands per se. This longue durée survey from roughly the fourth to the fourteenth centuries of the wide-ranging metaphors for 'handy medical books' places their historical emergence and transformation within the history of Chinese medical manuscripts and printed texts. Metaphors in medical titles conveyed to potential readers at the time significant textual innovations in how medical knowledge would be presented to them. For later historians, they provide evidence of profound changes in managing an increasingly complex and expanding archive of Chinese medical manuscripts and printed texts. Innovations in textual reorganization intended to facilitate 'learning by the book' were often creatively captured in an illuminating range of genre distinctions, descriptors and metaphors.