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.

This newly revised and updated edition of Paul U. Unschuld's original 1986 groundbreaking translation reflects the latest philological, methodological, and sinological standards of the past thirty years. The Nan Jing was compiled in China during the first century C.E., marking both an apex and a conclusion to the initial development stages of Chinese medicine. Based on the doctrines of the Five Phases and yinyang, the Nan Jing covers all aspects of theoretical and practical health care in an unusually systematic fashion. Most important is its innovative discussion of pulse diagnosis and needle treatment. This new edition also includes selected commentaries by twenty Chinese and Japanese authors from the past seventeen centuries. The commentaries provide insights into the processes of reception and transmission of ancient Chinese concepts from the Han era to the present time. Together with the Huang Di Nei Jing Su Wen and the Huang Di Nei Jing Ling Shu, this new translation of the Nan Jing constitutes a trilogy of writings offering scholars and practitioners today unprecedented insights into the beginnings of a two-millennium tradition of what was a revolutionary understanding of human physiology and pathology.

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.

What Is Medicine? Western and Eastern Approaches to Healing is the first comparative history of two millennia of Western and Chinese medicine from their beginnings in the centuries BCE through present advances in sciences like molecular biology and in Western adaptations of traditional Chinese medicine. In his revolutionary interpretation of the basic forces that undergird shifts in medical theory, Paul U. Unschuld relates the history of medicine in both Europe and China to changes in politics, economics, and other contextual factors. Drawing on his own extended research of Chinese primary sources as well as his and others' scholarship in European medical history, Unschuld argues against any claims of "e;truth"e; in former and current, Eastern and Western models of physiology and pathology. What Is Medicine? makes an eloquent and timely contribution to discussions on health care policies while illuminating the nature of cognitive dynamics in medicine, and it stimulates fresh debate on the essence and interpretation of reality in medicine's attempts to manage the human organism.