James Zainaldin, Vanderbilt University
Comparative studies increasingly tantalize as a way to reframe the Western Classics in a global perspective. Adopting the broader geographic, temporal, and cultural frameworks demanded by comparative work is likely not only to change our understanding of Greek and Roman civilization, but also to bear on increasingly urgent questions such as who should study the Classics today and how. One especially rich vein of comparative study to date has focused on premodern Chinese civilization as a counterpoint to Greece and Rome. In this paper, I propose a comparison between the learned Greco-Roman and Chinese medical traditions to draw out a set of larger, basically philological concerns that should interest those working in various classical traditions (and not just Western).
In the principal Greco-Roman and Chinese traditions of learned medicine, the body was thought to possess certain vessels or conduits through which vital substances passed. The physician could access the qualities or movements of these vessels or the substances that they carried by palpating the body at certain points, and from this diagnostic examination draw inferences about the patient’s health and the appropriate remedies. Earlier comparative studies have profitably examined these doctrines of ancient ‘pulse lore’ to highlight similarities and differences in the theories and their underlying assumptions (Kuriyama 1999). Here I revisit Greco-Roman and Chinese pulse lore to trace out larger diachronic issues that may allow us to see the respective medical traditions in new light.
Crucially, it was a feature of both learned Greco-Roman and Chinese medicine that the written traditions developed gradually, and that certain thinkers and/or texts came in later times to be regarded as authoritative reference points. Later writers inevitably reacted against these authorities, defending or criticizing, offering interpretation or commentary, correcting or bolstering, and so on. A closer examination of the intellectual dynamics of the development of these ‘classical traditions’ reveals interesting areas of overlap between the concerns of learned Greco-Roman and Chinese physician-authors. By way of example, this paper considers certain terminological (and hence conceptual) disputes that arose regarding pulse lore in each tradition. On the Greco-Roman side, I briefly review the evolution of terminology for the pulse through Aegimius, Praxagoras, Herophilus, and Galen, highlighting ambiguities and disagreements (Von Staden 1989, Lewis 2017). On the Chinese side, I consider terminological problems concerning pulse lore in the ‘Classic of Difficulties’ (難經 Nanjing), focusing especially on its relationship to the earlier ‘Inner Classic of the Yellow Emperor’ (黃帝內經 Huangdi neijing) (Unschuld 2010, 2016).
Philological study of the Greco-Roman and Chinese medical traditions vis-à-vis pulse lore as ‘classical traditions’ underscores the need to pay close attention to the peculiar intellectual dynamics that informed the development of learned medicine in both cultures, with specific interest not only for well-known dichotomies such as theory versus practice but also for understanding diachronic patterns of tradition, innovation, orthodoxy, and so forth. Because these dynamics are to an extent common to all classical (textual) traditions, this examination also has broader significance for other cultures and traditions.