Chinese medicine: Did you mean...?

Religious practices in ancient China go back over 7,000 years. Long before the philosophical and spiritual teachings of Confucius and Lao-Tzu developed or before the teachings of the Buddha came to China, the people worshipped personifications...

Oracle bones or dragon bones were the shoulder blades of oxen or the flat underside of a turtle shell known as a plastron that were used for divination during the Shang Dynasty of China which dates between c. 1600 and 1046 BCE. The bones...

The Shang Dynasty (c. 1600-1046 BCE) was the second dynasty of China, which succeeded the Xia Dynasty (c. 2070-1600 BCE) after the overthrow of the Xia tyrant Jie by the Shang leader, Tang. Since many historians question whether the Xia Dynasty...

Medicine in ancient Egypt was understood as a combination of practical technique and magical incantation and ritual. Although physical injury was usually addressed pragmatically through bandages, splints, and salves, even the broken bones...

Simon Forman (1552-1611) was an Elizabethan physician, astrologer, magician, and alchemist who lived and worked in both London and Wiltshire, England. He was unusual in that despite receiving no formal training in medicine or astrology, and...

Oribasius (c. 320-400/403 CE) was the physician and political advisor of the Roman emperor Julian the Apostate (r. 361-363 CE). A native of Pergamon, a rich and powerful Greek city in Mysia, he studied medicine and oratory and belonged to...

A servant statue, Western Han Period (206 BCE – 9 CE). Cernuschi Museum, Paris, France.

The ancient Egyptians experienced the same wide array of disease that people do in the present day, but unlike most people in the modern era, they attributed the experience to supernatural causes. The common cold, for example, was prevalent...

The White Huns were a race of largely nomadic peoples who were a part of the Hunnic tribes of Central Asia. They ruled over an expansive area stretching from the Central Asian lands all the way to the Western Indian Subcontinent. Although...

A famous story from Greece relates how a young woman named Agnodice wished to become a doctor in Athens but found this forbidden. In fact, a woman practicing medicine in Athens in the 4th century BCE faced the death penalty. Refusing to give...