Books by Paul U. Unschuld

This book explains the ideas and practice of Chinese medicine from its beginnings in antiquity to today. Paul U. Unschuld describes medicine's close connection with politics and society, bringing together texts, techniques, and worldviews to understand changing Chinese attitudes toward healing and the significance of traditional medicine today.

TheLing Shu, also known as theLing Shu Jing, is part of a unique and seminal trilogy of ancient Chinese medicine, together with theSu WenandNan Jing.It constitutes the foundation of a two-thousand-year healing tradition that remains active to this day. Its therapeutic approach is based on a purely secular science of nature, with natural laws serving as guidelines for human behavior and medical treatment. No other text offers such broad insights into the thinking and manifest action of the authors of the time. Following an introduction, this volume contains the full original Chinese text of theLing Shu, an English translation of all eighty-one chapters, and notes on difficult-to-grasp passages and possible changes in the text over time on the basis of Chinese primary and secondary literature of the past two thousand years and translator Paul Unschuld's own work. TheLing Shureveals itself as a completely rational work, and, in many of its statements, a surprisingly modern one. It will provide the foundation for comparisons with the nearly contemporaneousCorpus Hippocraticumof ancient Europe and today's iterations of traditional Chinese Medicine as well.

A foundation of Chinese life sciences and medicine, the Huang Di Nei Jing Su Wen is now available for the first time in a complete, fully annotated English translation. Also known as Su Wen, or The Yellow Emperor's Inner Classic, this influential work came into being over a long period reaching from the 2nd century bce to the 8th century ce. Combining the views of different schools, it relies exclusively on natural law as conceptualized in yin/yang and Five Agents doctrines to define health and disease, and repeatedly emphasizes personal responsibility for the length and quality of one's life. This two-volume edition includes excerpts from all the major commentaries on the Su Wen, and extensive annotation drawn from hundreds of monographs and articles by Chinese and Japanese authors produced over the past 1600 years and into the twentieth century.