Systems in India, China

• Health
• balance, harmony of humors; hence all in moderation
• Disease
• imbalance: excess/deficiency
• Causes
• Gods, spirits, demons, ancestors, sorcerers, stars, bad environment, witches, sin, self behavior
• largely supernatural
• Diagnosis
• 5 senses
• history
• auscultation
• succussion
• sphygmology [pulse]
• urine
• color, smell, taste, clarity, texture.
•  divination, confessio, haruspicy, hepatoscopy
• Treatment
• diet
• regimen
• drugs [herbal>mineral]
• ethical to refuse
• cleanliness important
• psychological, important: ritual, confessio,
• purgatives, emetics, enemas, cathartics;
• bleeding [not China], cupping, moxibustion, acupuncture, cautery,    inoculation [India],
• pessary, speculum
• Rx
• ephedra, opium, coca [cocaine]; hypnosis, quinine, cod-liver oil, tea;  mercury,
• masticatories, fumigants
• Surgery
• trepanation, C-section, lithotomy, rhinoplasty, plastic surgery, cataract, tonsillectomy
• Indian surgical prowess
• Metaphysics
• Yin-Yang with Qi, 5 “elements”  [China]
• Chinese belief in circulation of blood
• 5 phases (elements) [India]
• channels  [Egypt]
• Eminents
• Imhotep; Women practitioners, professors, and Empresses in Egypt;
• Iri, Keeper of the Royal Rectum;
• Ayurvedic Canon: Susruta, Caraka, Vaghbata
• Chinese canon: Fu Hsi [Yellow Emperor?], Shen Nung?, Huang Ti
• Evidence
• Texts:
• cuneiform [1000s]
• papyri [8]
• books [e.g. 4 Vedas; Imperial  College 12,000 volume medical library China]
• pottery, art, monuments
• Instruments
• mortars, mills, sieves, balances, amulets, talismans, splints, fire drill, bandages, poultices, rectal speculum, forceps, knives, saws,
• Pharmacopeia
• extensive from 100s, to 1000s of herbal preparations;
• Hospitals
• after 600 B.C. India  [Aztec predate by 1000+ years]
• Medical Schools
• Egypt; China.
• Profession/Status
• Hierarchical social structure develops elite priestly-scribal class
• physicians caste-free profession in India
• popular medical practitioners highly varied.
• Some laws governing malpractice  [cf. Hammurabi]
• Major diseases
• malaria
• typhus
• measles
• tuberculosis
• rickets,arthritis
• Agricultural Revolution and Urban Revolution ushered in the Era of  Epidemics.
• Pathogens multiply.
• Diseases become endemic in cities.
• Neolithic skeletons are shorter than Paleolithic!
"freeze” after ca. 600 A.D. in India, China.