Abstract
This paper analyzes the influence of forensic medicine on therapeutic medicine through a case study of Qian Xiuchang and Hu Tingguang, two Chinese doctors who specialized in treating traumatic injuries. During the early nineteenth century, both men compiled medical treatises that sought to improve on a scholarly model of “rectifying bones” articulated in 1742 by the Imperially-Compiled Golden Mirror of the Medical Lineage. Both texts also incorporated information from forensic medicine, including official inquest diagrams and checklists promulgated by the Qing government. I show that they drew on these forensic materials to help address two interlinked medical issues: understanding the effects of injury on different parts of the body, and clarifying the location and form of the body’s bones. Overall, I suggest that the exchange of ideas between the realm of therapeutic medicine and forensic medicine was an important epistemological strategy that doctors and officials alike employed to improve their knowledge of the material body.
Introduction
How do you assess an injury when you cannot directly see the affected body part? This was a concern for the doctor Qian Xiuchang, an expert in treating injuries. In his 1808 text Supplemented Essentials of Medicine for Injuries, Qian pointed out that “when someone has a dislocated or fractured bone, the bone and joint are wrapped in flesh. Looking at it from the exterior, it is hard to get a clear understanding, and there is the danger of making an error.” In China, as elsewhere in the world, there were historically many healers like Qian who treated wounds and traumatic injuries: bashed skulls and snapped legs, contused and lacerated flesh, torn ears and protruding intestines. Such injuries required the doctor to restore the body’s structural integrity as well as its healthy functioning. In assessing injuries obscured by skin and flesh, furthermore, Qian and his global counterparts in the pre-X-ray age relied on their expert reading of externally discoverable signs, collated with their knowledge about the forms and functions of the body’s normal structure. But where did this bodily knowledge came from?
In the history of Western European medicine, an important source of information came from dissecting dead bodies and extrapolating these findings to the bodies of the living. Prior to the mid-nineteenth century, much of this knowledge had little direct impact on improving general therapeutics; despite some advances in surgery, the limited ability to control pain and infection circumscribed what the surgeon could do. However, many other cultural forces also motivated anatomical study in Europe, and people used knowledge derived from dissection to serve a wide range of artistic, religious, philosophical, scientific, or political ends. In the medical realm, furthermore, access to anatomical training constituted a form of professional capital that different groups of physicians and surgeons used to claim superiority over their competitors.
Resource: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Resource: http://www.nutritionforest.com/
This paper analyzes the influence of forensic medicine on therapeutic medicine through a case study of Qian Xiuchang and Hu Tingguang, two Chinese doctors who specialized in treating traumatic injuries. During the early nineteenth century, both men compiled medical treatises that sought to improve on a scholarly model of “rectifying bones” articulated in 1742 by the Imperially-Compiled Golden Mirror of the Medical Lineage. Both texts also incorporated information from forensic medicine, including official inquest diagrams and checklists promulgated by the Qing government. I show that they drew on these forensic materials to help address two interlinked medical issues: understanding the effects of injury on different parts of the body, and clarifying the location and form of the body’s bones. Overall, I suggest that the exchange of ideas between the realm of therapeutic medicine and forensic medicine was an important epistemological strategy that doctors and officials alike employed to improve their knowledge of the material body.
Introduction
How do you assess an injury when you cannot directly see the affected body part? This was a concern for the doctor Qian Xiuchang, an expert in treating injuries. In his 1808 text Supplemented Essentials of Medicine for Injuries, Qian pointed out that “when someone has a dislocated or fractured bone, the bone and joint are wrapped in flesh. Looking at it from the exterior, it is hard to get a clear understanding, and there is the danger of making an error.” In China, as elsewhere in the world, there were historically many healers like Qian who treated wounds and traumatic injuries: bashed skulls and snapped legs, contused and lacerated flesh, torn ears and protruding intestines. Such injuries required the doctor to restore the body’s structural integrity as well as its healthy functioning. In assessing injuries obscured by skin and flesh, furthermore, Qian and his global counterparts in the pre-X-ray age relied on their expert reading of externally discoverable signs, collated with their knowledge about the forms and functions of the body’s normal structure. But where did this bodily knowledge came from?
In the history of Western European medicine, an important source of information came from dissecting dead bodies and extrapolating these findings to the bodies of the living. Prior to the mid-nineteenth century, much of this knowledge had little direct impact on improving general therapeutics; despite some advances in surgery, the limited ability to control pain and infection circumscribed what the surgeon could do. However, many other cultural forces also motivated anatomical study in Europe, and people used knowledge derived from dissection to serve a wide range of artistic, religious, philosophical, scientific, or political ends. In the medical realm, furthermore, access to anatomical training constituted a form of professional capital that different groups of physicians and surgeons used to claim superiority over their competitors.
Resource: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Resource: http://www.nutritionforest.com/
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