List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
List of Historical Figures
Timeline
Maps

Introduction

Part I: The Syncretic Dao of Medicine and Medicine in the Age of Wang Yangming

Chapter 1. Before Medicine as Dao: Surveying an Emergent Landscape
Chapter 2. Medicine Turns on Discernment: Danxi’s Syncretic Dao of Medicine
Chapter 3. Embodying Good Knowing: Medicine and the Body in the Teachings of Wang Yangming
Chapter 4. Thinking with Medicine in the Age of Wang Yangming

Part II: The Devotional Dao of Medicine

Chapter 5. Following in Zhu Xi’s Footsteps: Fang Youzhi’s Quest for the Dao of Medicine
Chapter 6. Revealing Zhongjing’s Intentions: Devotional Hermeneutics and Investigating Things
Chapter 7. Order and Orthodoxy: Zhongjing as Medical Sage

Part III: The Poetic Dao of Medicine

Chapter 8. Healing the World with Words: Fang Yizhi and the Monk Yaodi
Chapter 9. Responding to the Affairs of One’s Time: Yu Chang’s Path Towards a Poetic Dao
Chapter 10. The Poet as Physician and the Physician as Poet: Xue Shengbai and Ye Tianshi
Chapter 11. On the Boundaries of the Poetic Dao of Medicine

Part IV: The Evidential Dao of Medicine

Chapter 12. Medicine as Warfare: Ke Qin’s Steps towards an Evidential Dao
Chapter 13. Antiquity Is Everywhere: The Evidential Dao of Medicine in Edo Japan and Republican-Era Shanghai

Conclusion

Bibliography
Index

Searching for the Dao of Medicine

Landscapes of Thoughtful Practice in Late Imperial China

Volker Scheid

436 pages, 9 figs, 3 tables, bibliog., index

ISBN 978-1-83695-634-1 Hb Published (August 2026)

Details

“This book is an extraordinary work of scholarship that contributes in an innovative way to several academic fields. Sinologists and historians of medicine and science, practitioners and scholars of Chinese medicine, East Asian philosophers, Buddhists and Daoists, and sociologists/anthropologists of religion and medicine – all these fields have much to learn from this magisterial study.” • Judith Farquhar, University of Chicago

“This is a groundbreaking synthesis of anthropological insights, theoretical scholarship in the history of science and philosophy, and primary historical sources in late imperial China from the 14th century to the present.” • Marta Hanson, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität (FAU)

In late imperial China, debates over how virtuosity in medical practice might be cultivated unfolded within a world that connected physicians to scholars, poets, calligraphers, Buddhist monks, Daoist life-cultivation experts and military strategists. This book traces these debates, showing how medicine was imagined as akin to poetry, how clinical insight was shaped through meditative bodily practices and how practitioners pursued empirical investigation. At the same time, medicine and the body became vital conceptual resources for intellectuals seeking to address broader social and philosophical questions

Volker Scheid is a Visiting Scholar at the China Centre, University of Kiel. He is also a Visiting Professor at the University of Westminster, London, where he was previously Professor of East Asian Medicines and Director of EASTmedicine, a transdisciplinary research group for the study of East Asian medicines. Besides his academic career, he has been a practitioner of Chinese medicine since 1984.

Subject: Medical Anthropology Cultural Studies (General)

Area: Asia

BISAC: SOC002010 SOCIAL SCIENCE/Anthropology/Cultural & Social; SOC057000 SOCIAL SCIENCE/Disease & Health Issues; HIS008000 HISTORY/Asia/China

available as open access under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) with support from Wellcome Trust [Grant No. 088246] and the Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator Award in the Medical Humanities [Award No 097918/Z/11/Z]

This title is published as Open Access

Full Text PDF | Full Text ePUB Made available under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license with support from Wellcome Trust [Grant No. 088246] and the Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator Award in the Medical Humanities [Award No 097918/Z/11/Z]

berghahn New York · Oxford

Contents

Searching for the Dao of Medicine

Landscapes of Thoughtful Practice in Late Imperial China

Volker Scheid

Subject: Medical Anthropology Cultural Studies (General)

Area: Asia

This title is published as Open Access

Full Text PDF | Full Text ePUB Made available under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license with support from Wellcome Trust [Grant No. 088246] and the Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator Award in the Medical Humanities [Award No 097918/Z/11/Z]

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Contents

Searching for the Dao of Medicine

Landscapes of Thoughtful Practice in Late Imperial China

Volker Scheid

Subject: Medical Anthropology Cultural Studies (General)

Area: Asia

This title is published as Open Access

Full Text PDF | Full Text ePUB Made available under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license with support from Wellcome Trust [Grant No. 088246] and the Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator Award in the Medical Humanities [Award No 097918/Z/11/Z]