HISTORY: ACUPUNCTURE, BLOODLETTING, GUA SHA AND CHOLERA

Course overview

Westerners predominantly think about traditional East Asian medicine as cultural or folk medicine-based practices recently introduced to the West, unaware that many of the practices are similar to if not identical to those of Early Western medicine. In looking at the history of medicine we see similar perceptions of illness, theories of treatment as well as modalities and medicaments between East and West. What common technique in both medicines led to acupuncture? Why is ¿sha¿ also translated as ¿cholera¿? What techniques were used to treat cholera before the discovery of antibiotic therapy to treat identified pathogens? Who was C¿hi Po and what part of the Hippocratic method still holds in Chinese medicine?