Description

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An illuminating account of how early medicine in Greece and China perceived the human body
Winner of the William H. Welch Medal, American Association for the History of Medicine

The true structure and workings of the human body are, we casually assume, everywhere the same, a universal reality. But when we look into the past, our sense of reality wavers: accounts of the body in diverse medical traditions often seem to describe mutually alien, almost unrelated worlds. How can perceptions of something as basic and intimate as the body differ so? In this book, Shigehisa Kuriyama explores this fundamental question, elucidating the fascinating contrasts between the human body described in classical Greek medicine and the body as envisaged by physicians in ancient China. Revealing how perceptions of the body and conceptions of personhood are intimately linked, his comparative inquiry invites us, indeed compels us, to reassess our own habits of feeling and perceiving.

About the Author

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Shigehisa Kuriyama is the Reischauer Institute Professor of Cultural History at Harvard University, where he is faculty director for the humanities at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.