As in other civilizations of the time, various types of healing practices co-existed in imperial China, performed by just as many different groups of experts. Shamans and Buddhist or Daoist monks or nuns practicing religious healing, midwives, imperial physicians in official positions at court, itinerant folk-healers, practicing scholar-physicians trained in the Confucian classics, hereditary physicians, or scholarly laymen devoted to the study of medicine all had their part in the daily healthcare of the population.
In her dissertation “Competition among Medical Experts in Imperial China (10th to 19th centuries)” the TOPOI doctoral fellow Nalini Kirk focusses on those groups of mostly male healers that practiced medicine among the common people in order to make a living. Nalini Kirk follows Paul Unschuld in regarding competition for these resources as one major factor for the development of medical theory and practice.
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Agnes Kloocke
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