Health Care in Eleventh-Century China

The Center for Chinese Studies at UC Berkeley presents a talk with Nathan Sivin who will discuss the whole spectrum of health care in Eleventh-Century China, and explore the interactions of ritual medicine with other kinds.

Speaker/Performer: Nathan Sivin, History and Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania

Almost everything we know about Chinese medicine before modern times is about classical physicians and their work. But most people before modern times—rural, illiterate, and poor—had no access to elite practitioners. The majority depended instead on healers who employed mostly local drugs, or on ritualists of the popular religion, Buddhism, or Daoism. This talk will discuss for the first time the whole spectrum of health care, and explore the interactions of ritual medicine with other kinds. It will also remark on the uses of this understanding in studying literature, history, and other fields.