Needles, Herbs, Gods, and Ghosts: China, Healing, and the West to 1848 - Hardcover

Barnes, Linda L

3.9

10 ratings by Goodreads

9780674018723: Needles, Herbs, Gods, and Ghosts: China, Healing, and the West to 1848

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0674018729 ISBN 13: 9780674018723

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 2005

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In "Needles, Herbs, Gods, and Ghosts", Linda Barnes leads us back to the 13th 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? 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.

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Review:

This fascinating book reveals how western conceptions of religion, race and medicine have distorted images of China and its healing traditions...Barnes's approach should not only be an inspiration to all who seek to take seriously the interpretative lenses through which western culture apprehends others; but also stimulate those interested in comparative history and philosophy of medicine to appreciate the philosophical assumptions behind Chinese medicine as a distinct philosophy radically different from its western counterpart, not merely an aspect of Chinese religion, and hence to understand Chinese medicine as it was.--Kenny Can Liao"Medical History" (04/01/2007)

About the Author:

Linda L. Barnes is Associate Professor in the Departments of Pediatrics and Family Medicine, Boston University School of Medicine, and Visiting Lecturer in Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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