Joseph Needham's 'Science and Civilisation' series began publication in the 1950s. At first, it was seen as a piece of brilliant but isolated pioneering. However, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, it is clear that Needham's work has succeeded in creating a vibrant new intellectual field in the West. The books in this series cover topics relating broadly to the practice of science, technology and medicine in East Asia, including China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. The emphasis is on traditional forms of knowledge and practice, but without excluding modern studies which connect the topics with their historical and cultural context.
By Ho Peng Yoke
July 08, 2011
The Daoist canon is the definitive fifteenth century compilation of texts concerning ritual, alchemical and meditation practices within Daoist religion. Many of these texts are undated and anonymous, so dating them is essential for a clear understanding of the development of Chinese alchemy, and ...
By Asaf Goldschmidt
July 01, 2011
The history of Chinese medicine hinges on three major turning points: the formation of canonical theory in the Han dynasty; the transformation of medicine via the integration of earlier medical theories and practices in the Song dynasty; and the impact of Western medicine from the nineteenth ...
By Christopher Cullen, Vivienne Lo
May 24, 2005
In recent decades various versions of Chinese medicine have begun to be widely practised in Western countries, and the academic study of the subject is now well established. However, there are still few scholarly monographs that describe the history of Chinese medicine and there are none at all on ...