The Art of Medicine in Early China

Miranda Brown is an associate professor of Asian languages and cultures at the University of Michigan. She has published numerous articles on various aspects of Chinese medical and cultural history in both English and Chinese. She is the author of The Politics of Mourning in Early China (2007) and the coauthor of A Brief History of Chinese Civilization (2012, with Conrad Schirokauer). She is the editor of Fragments: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Ancient and Medieval Pasts, a journal that she founded with leading US scholars.

• Part I. Before Medical History: 1. Attendant He: innovator or persona?; 2. Bian Que as a seer: political persuaders and the medical imagination; 3. Chunyu Yi: can the healer speak?; Part II. Medical Histories: 4. Liu Xiang: the imperial library and the creation of the exemplary healer list; 5. Zhang Ji: the kaleidoscopic father; 6. Huangfu Mi: from innovator to transmitter; Epilogue: ancient histories in the modern age; Appendix: a problematic preface.

'The great strength of this book lies in its deep examination and unearthing of the key method of historiography of Chinese medicine … The book also greatly contributes to our understanding of the modern retelling of Chinese medical history since the early twentieth century. Brown argues that this narrative was not a European invention, as historian of science Joseph Needham (1900–1995) interpreted it to be. The book also urges scholars to examine a fundamental question concerning the origins and evolution of the historiography of traditional Chinese medicine in post-1949 China. All in all, this book will be of great interest to scholars in the fields of Chinese history, Chinese medical history, Chinese historiography, and the history of science and medicine in general.' Xiaoping Fang, The American Historical Review