Needles, Herbs, Gods, and Ghosts China, Healing, and the West To 1848

Author/creator Barnes, Linda L. Author
Format Electronic
Publication InfoCambridge : Harvard University Press
Description480 p. ill 09.250 x 06.125 in.
Supplemental ContentFull text available from Ebook Central - Academic Complete
Supplemental ContentFull text available from Ebook Central - Public Library Complete
Subjects

Summary Annotation <p>When did the West discover Chinese healing traditions? Most people might point to the "rediscovery" of Chinese acupuncture in the 1970s. In <i>Needles, Herbs, Gods, and Ghosts</i>, Linda Barnes leads us back, instead, to the thirteenth century to uncover the story of the West's earliest known encounters with Chinese understandings of illness and healing. As Westerners struggled to understand new peoples unfamiliar to them, how did they make sense of equally unfamiliar concepts and practices of healing? Barnes traces this story through the mid-nineteenth century, in both Europe and, eventually, the United States. She has unearthed numerous examples of Western missionaries, merchants, diplomats, and physicians in China, Europe, and America encountering and interpreting both Chinese people and their healing practices, and sometimes adopting their own versions of these practices.</p><p>A medical anthropologist with a degree in comparative religion, Barnes illuminates the way constructions of medicine, religion, race, and the body informed Westerners' understanding of the Chinese and their healing traditions.</p>
Access restrictionAvailable only to authorized users.
Technical detailsMode of access: World Wide Web
Genre/formElectronic books.
ISBN9780674023970
ISBN0674023978 (Perfect) Active Record
Standard identifier# 9780674023970
Stock number00011705

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