Moving beyond one worldview into another is difficult and requires effort. It is possible to learn to think in ways closer to the ancient sages of China or the writers of the classical Chinese medicine texts we so admire without learning to read Chinese, but if we can learn to use their tools, the ones they used to learn and to express concepts so different from our own, perhaps we too can enter into the same mind/heart space that enabled its creation and continuation.

A guest post by Tom Ehrman: “Though the Chinese medical literature contains many commentaries on historical works, particularly the classics from the Han dynasty, it is rare for authors to express their actual opinions on the historical literature in a general way. There is one book, however, which contains an entire chapter devoted to just that, the Yīxué Yuánliúlùn (On the Origins and Development of Medicine, 1764) by the Qing dynasty physician Xú Dàchūn (1693-1771), where a kind of brief critical summary of a number of famous ancient texts is given.”

…Presented below are 27 mugwort prescriptions from Běncǎo Gāngmù (Compendium of Materia Medica, 1596) out of a total of 52….