(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.