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Hsiu-yun Wang, Chinese Medicine and Healing: An Illustrated History, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, Volume 70, Issue 1, January 2015, Pages 140–142, https://doi.org/10.1093/jhmas/jru015
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Chinese Medicine and Healing is a comprehensive and admirable book on the subject, covering from the pre-Han period (1200 BCE) to the present-day world. It has been almost two decades since Paul Unschuld published his notable but much criticized individual contribution, Medicine in China: A History of Ideas. This new arrival is much needed and a great improvement, in terms of scope, theoretical sophistication, and scholarship.
In their explanation of the use of “healing” in the book title, the editors remark that it is “shaped not only by clean lines of theory but also by the messy contingencies of practice” (1). This declaration sets the tone for the rest of the book, and they deliver on their promise of theoretical clarity and complexity of detail throughout most of the book. They have accomplished this challenging task by bringing together the essays of an impressively large number of authors from all over the world. The fifty-eight authors include practitioners of Chinese medicine working in disparate global locations and scholars from a broad range of disciplines, including history, anthropology, literature, religion, and medicine. This treasure chest of contributors provides a rich variety of theoretical approaches and cultural perspectives.
