were mild laxatives, and were related to the French word aperitif which were drinks. As a laxative, it is linked to Western medical ideas of purging the body of toxins. But aperients are a good example of how concepts can change radically in the course of the history of medicine. It is a term that is modernly obscure although it was once rather popular. Can also look to Tarrant’s effervescent seltzer aperient, an early cousin of Alka Seltzer. From advertisements, we see the belief that the stomach and bowels impacted the brain and nerves, causing headaches or impacting mental function, all which can be cured by aperients. Aperients faded away as the use of these beverages changed from cathartic purgation to the treatment of digestive problems. (Lecture 10/26 and 10/28)

developed by Johannes Schulz, its techniques (centered breathing, heart regulation, etc) aim was to treat emotional disorders through muscular exercises. Its significance to the course arises through the influence of Emile Coue on Schulz. Coue believed in optimistic autosuggestion, which believed that willpower could influence your physical health. The Coue method, which included exercises such as repeating “every day, in every way, I’m getting better and better,” was aimed towards concentrating the power of the human imagination (Law of Concentrated Effort). After Coue, it was agreed that the emotions and the mind could influence physical health, such as muscular pain, heart rate, blood pressure, etc. . Schulz argued that the muscles could influence the emotions as well. Autogenic therapy draws parallels to Jacobson’s progressive relaxation techniques which help eliminate tension in the body through the muscle sense. Kuriyama argues that autogenic therapy was significant because it helped change the idea of muscular tension as a virtue into a pathology that needed to be treated. Also, it was significant to the idea of zhuyi, that the mind can be diverted towards different parts of the body --> the imagined can be manifested in reality.

Adolph Quetelet’s idea that the ideal man was the “average man” based on a number of statistical index’s (Quetelet’s index is a precursor to the body mass index). It arose from concepts of subjectivity in something like pulse diagnosis (west wants precision, east seems more fluid definitions).It is significant to the course because it is an example of the rise of statistical analysis in medicine, and the move (later linked to insurance companies) of analyzing health through mechanized measures (like blood pressure) in order to make medicine quantitative. It represented the larger movement towards alienation from the human body, which helped later influence organ transplantation since organs became seen as something biological and impersonal. (Lecture 11/18/09)

a recurring theme in the course, it is the question by Baby Bob of why Chinese medicine seems familiar to us while western medicine seems alien. Baby Bob argues that while acupuncture and Chinese notions of qiemo are still popular, purgation and bloodletting seem distant and destructive. Kuriyama tells us the answer to this problem in the October 28th lecture: in the West, the shift from classical to modern medicine represented the decline of the body-toxin duality key to humors theory as modern circulatory theory (heart as pump) and nervous theory (stimuli/excitement, key role of electricity) were developed. The West converged with the East since in the West the monism of the energetic body became the accepted norm. This has similarities to traditional Chinese notions of qi and xushi (finite life force).

The paradox also relates to many key themes in the course, like that culture shapes medicine, or that there are certain apparent differences between classical western and eastern medicine that appear to erode over time, or that medicine is often based on the means of how one thinks about and views the body (humoral medicine and crisis vs. flowing qi and depletion/repletion), etc. It is also similar to our final projects in that something that is familiar (Western medicine) is discovered to be unfamiliar in its history, or something that is initially alien (Eastern Medicine) appears to becomes more familiar and reasonable.

 investigated primarily in the Margaret Locke article, the issue of brain death exemplifies different approaches to medicine between the Western view and the Japanese view. The west sees death as an event, and so can define the moment when “brain death” occurs; this allows for organ harvesting. In Japan, death is a process and not event (loss of qi over a lifetime), so they are more reluctant to accept the concept of brain death, impeding organ transplantation. Japan feared the dilution of their culture by Western practices, and so were reluctant to adopt the idea of brain death since they believed it to be something invented by the medical profession. The issue alludes to the role that technology plays in mediating medicine, and how as technology blurs the line between death and life (there wouldn’t be brain death without the invention of a respirator). This can also be linked to the need for preservation efforts like freezing brains, hungry ghosts, Japanese dolls, and the development of the idea that the human mind (the continuity of memory) shapes the identity. 

From the Lynn Payer book, she uses the example of the German culture as a direct influence towards the views on the circulation and the heart; more generally, culture affected how Germans perceived the human body. West German doctors prescribe several times more heart drugs than their French or American counterparts, and Payer links this to the influence of romanticism. Romanticism emphasizes emotion and feeling centered in the heart, and the German concept of the heart is more metaphorical than an American view of it as a pump. Therefore, Germans often focus on heart in diagnosis, often sighting Herzinsuffizenz, roughly translated as heart insufficiency, often in medical practice even with little to no evidence. In class, this was also linked to katakori as evidence for cultural influence on the practice of medicine and how you approach the body. (Just in book, although payer is mentioned in lecture 10/14/09) It also makes strong connections to Chinese notions of the holistic body, since it took a less mechanical view of the body in favor of a view of the body dominated by many forces.

Refers to the often required the “filling in” of information in the gutter between panels of a comic book by the reader. It is significant in our course because McCloud emphasized the different approaches to closure in Western vs. Eastern Comics. The Western comic is very goal oriented, and there is little closure required by the reader between panels. Eastern comics, conversely, sometimes emphasize closure and what is not presented to the reader, and often present labyrinthine or cyclical progressions. This can be applied to the history of medicine by understanding how different expectations might impact the influence of the seen vs. the unseen. As argued by McCloud, comics are a way of seeing, and the same can be said for how one approaches medicine. (Lecture 10/6/09 and the book)

 Émile Coué developed the method of optimistic autosuggestion from the early observation of the placebo effect. It was a technique of self-cultivation. He believed in the law of reversed effort, i.e. the harder a person tried to cure himself or herself, the less likely it was that they would succeed. Rather, one had to believe in the cure; i.e. curing oneself must pass through the imagination. Through the law of concentrated attention, an idea that exclusively occupied the mind would in turn become reality. The Coue method involved the person constantly telling oneself that they were getting better. The Coue method fits into the larger argument of the course that modern times eroded the differences between Western and Eastern Medical thought, because in this case agency and willpower is actually an obstacle to cure, and it appears that effortless action similar to wuwei is the means for improvement. (Lecture 11/18/09)

Affecting men whose wives are pregnant, this syndrome involves the male presenting many of the signs of pregnancy like food craving, breast enlargement, and even large bellies. This is thought to be due to the sympathetic alignment of the men to their wives with whom they identify. This ties into the larger issues of the imaginary affecting the reality, and the idea that our psyches can change our bodies (link to voodoo death: if you truly believe that you will die, then you can actually die) and to Understanding Comics in the idea that we often identify and intertwine our inner feelings with our external perceptions of an abstract cartoon face. (Lecture 10/19/09)

One of the defining features of Classical Western humoral medicine, it is the belief that in the course of the progression of disease, there is a critical turning point where the body goes through a crisis (nosebleed or epistaxis as an example, Solano de Luque became famous for being able to predict epistaxis through the pulse) after which the person will either recover or die. Crises were seen as a natural process, one that should not be interfered with by the physician. Crisis transformed in modern times as it becomes important socially and economically as industrialism puts a price on labor and the human body (similarities to measles prints) and sees the body as a template for natural processes: Clement Juglar develops a theory of tracking cycles of natural financial crisis, Karl Marx used crisis to explain the eventual collapse of capitalism. Puysegur called magnetic sleep the “perfect crisis”, even linked to laissez-faire and the “rule of nature”. In terms of the larger themes of the course, crisis is an example of one of the basic differences in theories of balance vs. theories of vulnerability, it falling into the category of theories of balance in Western medical thought. (Lecture 9/21, 9/23, 9/28, kind of all over throughout the course)

cunsi - a form of meditation in which the adept directs the mind to different localities within the self, and thereby induces the local presence of divinities. There is a constant fear of divinities will float away (theories of vulnerability), so the effort is to ensure the presence of vital spirits inside you. Cunsi speaks to the two ways of centering the self in the body presented in the course. In Chinese medicine, because the body is in continuity with the natural world, you must find a way to create a self identity; Zhuyi, or the “pouring of the mind” is the essence of presence. In Western Medicine, attention (=tension) is the essence of presence, and ideas of stress, and muscular tension and agency are central for defining the body and self.   (Lecture 10/6/09)

There is a movement in the modern world to deodorize everything. Smell was often important for erotic suggestion, and the example we got in class was that Napoleon requested that his wife not bathe before he returned home because he was aroused by her smell. There is also the sense that one’s smell is connected to one’s identity, but the modern trend was to eliminate odor through deodorant and in a sense remove part of one’s identity. Freud spoke to the idea that a lack of smell had been associated with being more civilized and hygienic, but in removing scents you were alienating yourself from your body and that this was one cause of mental illness. This was part of the number of lectures Kuriyama gave on the evolution of sensory experience. (Lecture 9/4/09)

depletion represented the main medical concern of Classical Chinese medicine. Life was marked by a depletion and loss of vital force like qi. Xu meant emptiness, and depletion was vulnerability to the threat of external forces like wind or cold which caused disease. Shi was the opposite, or fullness. These external forces re-entered through repletion and filled the emptiness, causing disease. Ideas of depletion and repletion are examples of theories of vulnerability that defined one of the primary differences between Eastern medicine and the theories of balance that defined Western humoral medicine. In other words, one was focused on the evils of retention while the other was focused the vulnerability caused by dissipation (Lecture 9/23/09)

 Buddhist concept

Network of orbs in which you can see all the other orbs reflected in it at once, metaphor of a spider web with dew drops

Significance: All life is interconnected; this is an argument for the contextual body in China. Nevertheless, identity is constructed by looking outside the body, since you can only see each orb in the reflection of other orbs => again, looking at nature to explain the mysteries of the body. Finally, indra's net can't be artistically represented => impossibility of knowing everything about the human body.

(Lecture 11/18) changed the traditional view of the connection between emotions and the body. Whereas it was previously thought that emotions resulted in changes in the body (muscle tension, heart rate, respiration, dryness in mouth), William James and Carl Lange posited the reverse: changes in the body could cause a change in mood. Example is the use of Botox as a cure for depression – if you can’t frown, you won’t have feelings of sadness. “All tension is muscular tension.” This was similar to Swammerdam and autogenic therapy. It also makes connections to the ideas of self-cultivation; that if you work towards building the body through voluntary exertion, the culture of the nation will be strengthened as well (similarities to tiyu – daily exercise regimen to improve the health/mind).

(Numerous lectures, introduced in 9/09, mentioned in 10/14, 12/2) the single most common complaint in contemporary Japan, but there is no equivalent in the medical dictionaries of other countries. Relationship between felt experiences and theoretical ideas. Kori means to coagulate/congeal. It symbolizes a blocked flow, specifically qi in the body. In ancient Western medicine, the circulation of qi is sustained by human activity, especially working. Stagnation of qi is the most pervasive sickness. Major theme: modern transition from a pathology of indolence (laziness) to a pathology of overwork; life as action to life as reaction. Also, the puzzle of katakori: how certain medical conditions / complaints are particular of a certain culture / time period. 

One of the pre-Huangdi Neijing (Yellow Emperor’s classic) sources on Medicine. From the last three centuries, BCE. These tomb texts spoke of moxibustion (putting something on an acupuncture point, and then burning that thing), but not acupuncture and spoke of conduits (paths where blood flows), but not points. Tomb was closed in 168 BCE, but opened in 1973. It tells us about pre-classical Eastern medicine and its similarities to Hippocratic writings. 

(Lecture 10/14) reaction to a measles epidemic in Japan in 1862, which killed thousands of people. Prints showed certain business owners killing the measles demon, while others were trying to protect it. It reflects the new supremacy of money (money > life?). People who own bath houses, geishas, etc were killing the demon because it was losing them money, while doctors, pharmacists, and gravestone makers were protecting it, because they would lose money if it was cured. It touches on importance of money in life. Money must be made to work; money as a living force; “time is money”; association of money with excrement “filthy rich”; inseparability of money and debt.

In the 19th century, focusing more on food and energy. Today, the five pounds of insensible perspiration are considered to be consumed as fuel or energy. 1840s: the principle of the conservation of energy. There was the creation of the concept of energy and the mutual convertibility of all its forms. People knew that things did work (chemistry, mechanical, electrical). 1890s: energy conservation in biology: Carbohydrates, fats, and proteins mutually exchangeable in accordance with their calorie equivalents. We think about calories and not yellow bile or black bile. We convert or reduce food to energy. Broader cycle of conversions: energy -> labor -> money -> back to energy. 

G. Stanley Hall - a 19th century movement, and as the YMCA article presents, is rooted in the idea of the mind, body and soul as inseparable. Thus, building good muscles develops soul and mind and what it means to be good Christian. This idea was also influenced by Herbert Spencer’s idea of the correlation of fitness with the musculature of the body and with physical education. He draws on social Darwinism, making a literal interpretation of “survival of the fittest” to support his promotion of physical education. This discussion fits in with the larger theme of muscle consciousness and the classical Western perception of health and the strong, defined, body. But this value of physical education is also seen in the East, with the Chinese national consciousness about having strong bodies in order to fight to combat Western influences. This points to our greater theme of East-West convergence.

A phantom limb is the sensation that an amputated or missing limb is still attached to the body and is moving appropriately with other body parts. Often these sensations are painful, and the limb is described as not being able to move, or in an uncomfortable position. V. Ramachandran invented a mirror box to allow the patients to ‘see’ their phantom limb, and allow them to recover mobility in their phantom limb.

Themes in the Course: Medium/Mediation

Greek phlebes and Chinese mo are significant in physiology (carrying blood and pneuma or qi) and pathology (carrying noxious matter, inducing disease). Their supposed paths do not exactly coincide, but several are broadly similar, and more similar to each other than either is to the observed paths of arteries and veins. They are more paths of bloodletting in phlebes, much like the conduits for qi in acupuncture. The similarities between the pathways of the phlebes and mo conduits gave rise to the hypothesis that there could have been some cultural exchange between blood letting and acupuncture.

Themes in the Course: Cultural influence on the practice of medicine, Theories of Balance/Vulnerability, Empty/Full

The economic belief of “Laissez-faire,” where the state’s role was ONLY to uphold the NATURAL order. The physiocrats were a group of French economists in the 18th century led by Francois Quesnay. They were, for example, against trade regulation, as it interfered with natural market forces. Although physiocracy deals with economics, it can be related to medicine. For example, some may consider bloodletting to be an interference with the natural order of the body.

Themes in the Course: Cultural influence on the practice of medicine, Theories of Balance/Vulnerability

The Galenic idea of excess blood in the body. Europeans considered it best to prevent plethora through methods such as bloodletting and fasting. Since, during this time period, there was no notion of circulation, it was believed that blood travelled from the heart to the body, and needed to be released through bloodletting. Plethora is important to crises theory, which itself was opposite to Chinese ideas of preserving blood and life. Instead, Chinese medicine advocated a natural removal of accumulates (similar to plethora) through an emptiness of lifestyle/diet that would result in fullness of vitality.

Themes in the Course: Cultural influence on the practice of medicine, Theories of Balance/Vulnerability, Empty/Full

The Greek word for pain, and for exercise. Exercise has been understood as a combination of physical exertion and pain in the Western world since antiquity. As ponos has two definitions, it introduces the idea of “no pain, no gain.” It also introduces the issue of voluntary action, such as exercise, versus involuntary action, such as a pulse. This connects acts of will to our bodies; our selves and our identities. Also, ponos allows us to consider the cultural influences on the perception of the body: The classical European view of the body is focused on muscles, while the traditional Chinese view of the body is focused on the flow and circulation of qi. In China, exercise involves self cultivation (yangsheng) and wuwei (effortless action).

Themes in the Course: Cultural influence on the practice of medicine, Voluntary/ Involuntary, Self Cultivation and Relation to Identity

A technique of relaxation where the individual is to learn how to relax the principle muscle groups of his body to any extreme degree. One can do this by tensing and relaxing your muscles. This practice is associated with stress, and anxiety, as by focusing on relaxing your body, you can relax your mind. This technique was developed by Dr. Edmund Jacobson in 1912. Important to the idea of the transformation of tension as virtue to tension as pathology. This technique connects to the ideas of voluntary and involuntary motion, as well as self-cultivation.

Themes in this Course: Voluntary/Involuntary, Self-cultivation, Tension/Relation/Flow

Traditionally, Chinese doctors have focused on qiemo, the palpation of the various mo (mo is the feeling of the qi in the body), or a procedure for tracking changes in the conduits that so powerfully affected the body’s pains and powers. Although pulse diagnosis and qiemo appeared to be the same thing, as both Chinese and European doctors would feel the wrists of their patients, Chinese writings insist that the two are different. Through qiemo, doctors can diagnose illnesses for specific parts of the body, and not only the heart. This differentiates qiemo from pulse diagnosis. This conflict between qiemo and pulse diagnosis displays how perception and cultural beliefs can so greatly affect knowledge.

Themes in the Course: Cultural influence on the practice of medicine, Pulse/Qiemo

Student of Confuciansim. Also the name of the work. Mencius develops particular interpretation of Confucianism that is now the mainstream. Mencius’ 3 parables illustrate that people are essentially good; we have the seeds for goodness, but just as plants that have to grow over time and be nourished, the goodness has to be nourished within us. Evil happens when we don’t cultivate these roots.

Three Parables:

1.) child approaching a well. Impulse shows inherent goodness. Before we are ready to make a decision, we have an uncontrollable impulse to jump out and save the baby. However, an evil person will not cultivate this impulse. Significance: proper cultivation -> effortless action -> yangsheng

2.) foolish man of song. A man’s crops are not growing well, so he pulls his crops out of the ground to help them. This parables shows that there is a technique to self-cultivation. This technique is effortless in that you don’t strain self to develop, it’s not forceful, but at the same time it is an active process. This particular technique of goodness cultivation = yangsheng. moral component to yangshang: if you act immorally you lose qi and vitality and that can lead to earlier death and so on.

3.) the tale of ox mountain. Mencius uses this parable to respond to people saying that bad people do exist in the world. He points to the situation of ox mountain, saying that because the woodsmen have been cutting down trees for a long time, the mountain is now barren. However, this was a process, since the mountain used to be full of trees. Thus, because people didn’t cultivate it in the appropriate way, the mountain is barren. Significance: theories of cosmic balance, natural restoration