Science and Civilisation in China: Volume 6, Biology and Biological Technology; Part 6, Medicine

Needham Joseph. Science and Civilisation in China Vol. 6 Biology and Biological Technology - Part 6 Medicine 2000 [pdf 280sc 261c. 9.01mb] The latest volume in Joseph Needham's magisterial revelation of China's premodern scientific and technological traditions introduces medicine. Five essays are included by Joseph Needham and Lu Gwei-djen, edited and expanded upon by the editor, Nathan Sivin. The essays offer broad and readable accounts of medicine in culture, including hygiene and preventive medicine, forensic medicine and immunology. Professor Sivin's extensive introduction discusses these essays, placing them in their historical and medical context, and surveys recent medical discoveries from China, Japan, Europe and the United States. Joseph Needham's Science and Civilisation in China is a monumental piece of scholarship which breaks new ground in presenting to the Western reader a detailed and coherent account of the development of science, technology and medicine in China from the earliest times until the advent of the Jesuits and the beginnings of modern science in the late seventeenth century. It is a vast work, necessarily more suited to the scholar and research worker than the general reader. This paperback version, abridged and re-written by Colin Ronan, makes this extremely important study accessible to a wider public. The present book covers the material treated in volumes I and II of Dr Needham's original work. The reader is introduced to the country of China, its history, geography and language, and an account is given of how scientific knowledge travelled between China and Europe. The major part of the book is then devoted to the history of scientific thought in China itself. Beginning with ancient times, it describes the milieu in which arose the schools of the Confucians, Taoists, Mohists, Logicians and Legalists. We are thus brought on to the fundamental ideas which dominated scientific thinking in the Chinese Middle Ages, to the doctrines of the Two Forces (Yin and Yang) and the Five Elements (wu hsing), to the impact of the sceptical tradition and Buddhist and Neo-Confucian thought.--Publisher description. The latest volume in Joseph Needham's magisterial review of China's premodern scientific and technological traditions introduces the history of medicine. Following the deaths of Joseph Needham and Lu Gwei-Djen, a considerable amount of written material on the development of Chinese medicine awaited publication. This material has been gathered together by the editor, Nathan Sivin, in the five essays contained in this volume. They offer a broad and readable account of medicine in culture, including hygiene and preventive medicine, forensic medicine and immunology, and the examinations taken by some Chinese physicians for more than a thousand years. Professor Sivin has edited the essays, expanding them where appropriate and incorporating the results of recent research. His extensive introduction discusses the contributions of Needham and Lu, placing the essays in context, and surveys recent scholarship from China, Japan, Europe and the United States.

A further volume in Joseph Needham's magisterial revelation on China which introduces the history of medicine.

Journal of the American Medical Association

This volume is most highly recommended. Although written as a treatise for scholars, the story is told in a manner that everyone should enjoy. The blending of the special unique talents of the three writers—Lu's to ferret, sift, and select the relevant material, Needham's to provide perspective and global significance as only he could, and Sivin's masterful editing of biomedical science and technology with a humanistic touch—makes for interesting and educational reading for experts and nonscholars.

The latest volume in Joseph Needham's magisterial revelation of China's premodern and technological traditions introduces medicine. Five essays are included by Joseph Needham and Lu Gwei-djen, edited and expanded upon by the editor, Nathan Sivin. Professor Sivin's introduction discusses the essays and surveys recent scholarship across the world First of all it is necessary to consider the relations between the great medical systems of humanity and the cultures or civilisations in which they arose.