Like many aspects of Chinese culture, Chinese medicine is impressively old, but exactly how old is difficult to say. According to legend, it was invented by the emperors Huangdi and Shennong over 4,500 years ago, an amazing claim. Unfortunately, it’s not true. Not only did Huangdi and Shennong probably never exist, there are plenty of written records that prove Chinese medicine’s origins are much later.
Many of the main theories about Chinese medicine like yin-yang, five phases and qi developed during the Shang (1600-1050 BC) and Zhou (1050-221 BC) dynasties, but historical records show that in those times these theories weren’t really being applied to medicine. Instead, evil spirits and angry ancestors caused disease, so spiritual rituals were used as treatment.
In university, I had a professor who was particularly fond of a theory that the idea for acupuncture came from Shang and Zhou rituals in which shamans would jab spears into the corners of a room to exorcise evil spirits. He liked to demonstrate its link to acupuncture by dancing around the lecture theater using a modern acupuncture needle to shoo away any bad vibes. It was quite entertaining, but I think its relevance is doubtful.
What we actually know about the timeline of Chinese medical history begins with the two oldest texts still in existence today. The first is the Mawangdui Medical Manuscripts, which were sealed up in burial tombs in 168 BC in Hunan and then discovered in the early 1970s during excavation for a new hospital (a lovely coincidence). From these we learn that, by 168 BC, medical thought had begun to use yin-yang and five phases. It had also begun to understand organ function and started mapping conduits that would later be expanded into the 12 main acupuncture pathways.
However, it was still very rudimentary. Treatment involved some herbal remedies, bloodletting and quite a bit of magic, but no acupuncture.The next medical text to follow was decidedly more sophisticated. The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine is the first canonical book of Chinese medicine. We suspect it to be the product of numerous authors over a period of more than 100 years around the first century BC. From it, we learn how the human body functions, how energy and blood flow through the body, what causes disease, how to diagnose it and how to treat illness with – wait for it – acupuncture.
So, at some point in the approximately 150-year span between the Mawangdui documents and the Yellow Emperor’s hallowed work, a doctor picked up some needles, which were probably bronze, and convinced a patient that he could cure them with a new technique he had developed. Who was he? Exactly when was it? We can’t ever know. But we do know that Chinese medicine and acupuncture in their early, but reasonably complete, form are 2,000 to 2,200 years old.
It must have been a very exciting time to be a doctor in China. Though maybe not the best time to be a patient or an evil spirit.
// Jon Hanlon is a Chinese medical practitioner, raised in the US, trained in Australia, now healing the sick in Guangzhou. You can contact him for a booking on 185 0202 5594 or jon@guangzhouacupuncture.com.
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