The Study Of Activities Of Healing And Nursing In Scholar-officials’ Family In Ming Dynasty

Since 1990s, the research about the social-culture history of medicine of China achieves rapid development, the results of which are fruitful. Generally speaking, however, the most research results take disease, medicine or medical health system as the starting and end point, being short of the patient-centered studies.Bring patients into the research category of social-culture history of medicine is of great significance in academic value and practice.I shift my focus from disease, medicine or medical health system to patients and their family, discussing disease treatment and patient care in the family daily life of scholar-officials in Ming Dynasty.Scholar-officials’family turn to medicine, supernatural power,self-treatment,curing parents by cutting thigh and witch or monk or Taoist when anyone of them fall ill. Generally, the family numbers have the right to choose the treat method. Although medicine was the way that scholar-officials’family tend to use, overall, the methods above have no distinction between first and last,high and low and advantage and disadvantage except treating the disease by witch was widely criticized. In the daily life of scholar-officials’ family, patient care was almost accomplished by the patient’s relatives and friends instead of doctors or other nursing staff. The methods of patient care mainly include the patient’s daily life, medicine, spirit help, self-care and comprehensive care.The scholar-officials class developed some nursing concept and methods during the long life practice which were full of Confucian characteristics, some of them were different from the care concept and methods advocated by medicine of the time in both form and content.There is an extensive interaction between the activities of treating disease and nursing patients in scholar-officials’family and medicine of the time. The book extracurricular records with good efforts(折肱漫录) wrote by an officer named Huang Chenghao who lived in Late Ming Dynasty shows that, the scholar-officials’family acquire medical knowledge more easier than before because of the publication and circulation of large amounts of books about Chinese herbal medicine and medical formulary from Song Dynasty, which played an important role in treating disease and nursing patients in scholar-officials’family. Meanwhile, the books about Chinese herbal medicine and medical formulary were criticized objects because the medical knowledge in them was hard to distinguish between the true and the false and simplified so that the scholar-officials’ family were very vigilant to use them. Besides, the practical experience based on criticizing the books about Chinese herbal medicine and medical formulary in Huang’s family had an potential impact on the medicine of the time. The development of the theory of Warm-recuperation (温补), the formation of the Warm-recuperation school and the debate between them and the Cold-recuperation (å¯'凉) school in Late Ming Dynasty were one of the most impotent characteristics in the history of medicine. The medical concepts and knowledge such as Cold-recuperation, Warm-recuperation, Zhu Danxi, Xue Ji and so on deeply affected the medical activities in Huang’s family. Huang has a lot of personal opinions on medicine which were based on his family’s practice. From the internal perspective of medicine, Huang’s opinions might not make a difference, but his opinions represented ’the patients’voice’ and ’the patients’ opinion’ in history from the perspective of the relationship between the medicine and society.The activities of treating disease and nursing patients in scholar-officials’family had significant gender difference which derive from his or her family roles and statuses. In providing medical services, women scarcely took part in visiting or inviting doctor,self-treating,looking for the foods that the patient needs outside and treating or taking care of patient by studying medicine. However,it did not mean that the female were completely isolated in the male-dominated medical field. The female themselves had subject consciousness of medicine in the social-cultural back ground that many people such as doctors, patients, the patients’ families and even other irrelevant people can have an effect on diagnosing, making up a prescription,taking the medicine and nursing.In the female-active medical fields, different women had different behavior on providing medical services because of their different family roles and status. In accepting medical services, the senior women often took advantage of their identity and statuses authority to decide whether to accept treatment or care,choose medical services and evaluate the relatives’service.As a junior,the male who fall ill usually had freedom of choice to accept the satisfied medical methods and escaped the barriers temporarily, on the contrary, the female who fall ill usually obeyed the junior (patriarch, husband or other juniors) arrangements. Besides, compared to the Middle Ancient times, the scholar-official took greater responsibilities for his family in the aspect of medicine so that many scholar-officials treated and took care of his relatives at home for a longtime.During the Late Ming Dynasty, the female in scholar-officials’family were increasingly using the methods of making a Buddhist service (礼佛) and regimen to treat disease and nurse patients. Beneath the scholar-officials hand, the medical image resulted from treating and taking care of patients between the male and female were partly the same, but there were different parts as well. Different images had different symbolic meanings. These medical images could not only make the reader experiencing what the protagonist experiencing and realizing noble spirit,but also constructed role model, spread the benevolence, purified the mind and improved the social order at the same time.