Medical Instruction and Popularization in Ming-Qing China

Abstract

Qiu Xiaomei, a prominent woman doctor born to a modest family in Hangzhou in 1911, started to study Chinese medicine under a master when she was eighteen. Before the master decided whether or not to take her as a pupil, she was questioned on the content of four books given to her three months earlier. These four books were: Yixue xinwu (Mental comprehension of medical learning, 1732), Binhu siyan maijue (Four-character verses on vessels and pulse by Li Shizhen, 1564), Yaoxing zongfu (Verses on the general nature of drugs, fifteenth century), and Tangtou gejue (Recipes in rhymes, 1694). 2 These works were four of the most common medical introductory texts of the Ming-Qing period, spannig from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries. They tell us much about the way in which beginners were initiated in medicine, and reveal the principal historical period when such literature matured.