(25) See Luke the Physician,
by Harnack, English ed., 1907,
and W. K. Hobart, The
Medical Language of St. Luke, 1882.
CHINESE AND JAPANESE MEDICINE
Chinese medicine illustrates the condition at
which a highly intellectual people may arrive, among
whom thought and speculation were restricted by religious
prohibitions. Perhaps the chief interest in its
study lies in the fact that we may see today the persistence
of views about disease similar to those which prevailed
in ancient Egypt and Babylonia. The Chinese believe
in a universal animism, all parts being animated by
gods and spectres, and devils swarm everywhere in numbers
incalculable. The universe was spontaneously created
by the operation of its Tao, “composed of two
souls, the Yang and the Yin; the Yang represents light,
warmth, production, and life, as also the celestial
sphere from which all those blessings emanate; the
Yin is darkness, cold, death, and the earth, which,
unless animated by the Yang or heaven, is dark, cold,
dead. The Yang and the Yin are divided into an
infinite number of spirits respectively good and bad,
called shen and kwei; every man and every living being
contains a shen and a kwei, infused at birth, and
departing at death, to return to the Yang and the
Yin. Thus man with his dualistic soul is a microcosmos,
born from the Macrocosmos spontaneously. Even
every object is animated, as well as the Universe
of which it is a part."(26)
(26) J. J. M. de Groot:
Religious System of China, Vol. VI,
Leyden, 1910, p. 929.
In the animistic religion of China, the Wu represented
a group of persons of both sexes, who wielded, with
respect to the world of spirits, capacities and powers
not possessed by the rest of men. Many practitioners
of Wu were physicians who, in addition to charms and
enchantments, used death-banishing medicinal herbs.
Of great antiquity, Wu-ism has changed in some ways
its outward aspect, but has not altered its fundamental
characters. The Wu, as exorcising physicians and
practitioners of the medical art, may be traced in
classical literature to the time of Confucius.
In addition to charms and spells, there were certain
famous poems which were repeated, one of which, by
Han Yu, of the T’ang epoch, had an extraordinary
vogue. De Groot says that the “Ling,”
or magical power of this poem must have been enormous,
seeing that its author was a powerful mandarin, and
also one of the loftiest intellects China has produced.
This poetic febrifuge is translated in full by de
Groot (vi, 1054-1055), and the demon of fever,
potent chiefly in the autumn, is admonished to begone
to the clear and limpid waters of the deep river.
In the High Medical College at Court, in the T’ang
Dynasty, there were four classes of Masters, attached
to its two High Medical Chiefs: Masters of Medicine,
of Acupuncture, of Manipulation, and two Masters for
Frustration by means of Spells.
