Vivienne Lo
Vivienne Lo is the director of the UCL China Centre for
Health and Humanity. She has also been a restaurateur and
professional acupuncturist for many decades and combines her
historical and contemporary interests in the history of food, qi
exercises and Chinese medicine. She has been teaching the History of
Asian Medicine and Classical Chinese medicine at BSc and MA level
at University College
London (UCL) since 2002. Her research concerns the social
and cultural origins of acupuncture and therapeutic exercise. She
translates and analyses manuscript material from Early and Medieval
China and the transmission of scientific knowledge along the
so-called Silk Roads through to the modern Chinese medical diaspora.
Her chosen item is medical manuscript Or.8210/S.6168.
Vivienne Lo writes:
Or.8210/S.6168is the earliest illustration of
moxibustion practice, the therapeutic treatment that uses
artemesia punk and other cautery techniques to treat illnesses.
It pre-dates the earliest Chinese bronze acupuncture models used
for teaching in the Song period by at least a century and
represents a pervasive medical culture in evidence at both the
centre and periphery of Chinese administration. I have called
this culture 'quick and easy Chinese medicine', because the
charts provide everything you need to know: the locations of the
points, symptoms of the illnesses, numbers of cautery to place
and burn on the points with little reference to the kind of
theory that requires a classical education. It is therefore a
'householder' treatment for everyday symptoms. It can be
compared and contrasted to Tibetan manuscripts in the Pelliot
collection which reveal the cross-cultural transmission of
medicine in the Dunhuang area.
I love this mansuscript and
sponsored it in the name of my late father, Kenneth Lo. When I
first began researching medicine in early and medieval
manuscript cultures I had no idea there was such a treasure just
down the road from my office. Both in my work as an
acupuncturist and as an historian I have been intrigued by what
makes an acceptable home treatment and what is properly in the
domain of the professional. In the history of Chinese therapy
moxibustion has been much more prevalent than acupuncture.
Artemesia grows everywhere and is easy to prepare into moxa.
Even though in the Chinese context historically, and in some
places still today, the moxa is applied until the skin blisters
so there is a danger of infection, in most parts of the world it
has become a much gentler practice and, in my view, is safe to
use at home with very little instruction.
Link to original post on IDP blog.