Abstract: The westward transmission of Chinese medicine has suffered greatly from Western unfamiliarity with Chinese history and culture and from the paucity of information available in Western languages about Chinese medicine itself, giving rise to misconceptions concerning the nature of the subject. Education in Chinese medical schools still centers on textbooks that provide a comprehensive core knowledge but fail to present a wider view. One way to improve students’ understanding of the subject would be to provide students with an in-depth explanation of the role of analogy in relation to analytical reasoning in the early development of Chinese medical theories. This presentation offers examples of how this could be done through a tentative explanation of how theories about the liver may have arisen and though a discussion on the theory-based applications of the five-phase system in pathomechanisms and treatment of disease that have not been consistently endorsed in later clinical practice.
About the speaker: Nigel Wiseman, born in the UK in 1954, holds a Bachelor of Arts in German and Spanish (1976); PhD in Complementary Health Studies (2001). He has lived in Taiwan since 1981, where he has been engaged in translation and compilation of Chinese medical (TCM) literature. He worked at China Medical University, Taichung, from 1991 to 2000 teaching biomedical and Chinese medical English. Since then he has been lecturer at Chang Gung University, teaching the same subjects, as well as medicinal cookery. He has been temporary advisor to numerous WHO meetings on standardization of Chinese medical terminology and has been a visiting professor at Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine. He also teaches medical translation at Fujen Catholic University, Taiwan. His works cover theory of Chinese medical translation; modern TCM texts and classics; Chinese medical dictionaries; Chinese medical English textbooks; grammars of Chinese and English. Representative works: Fundamentals of Chinese Medicine; A Practical Dictionary of Chinese Medicine; Shāng Hán Lùn: On Cold Damage; Jīn Guì Yào Lüè: Essential Prescriptions of the Golden Cabinet; Online Dictionary of Chinese Medicine (http://www.paradigm-pubs.com/TermList/). His papers are available at (http://www.paradigm-pubs.com/WisemanWork). Current project: Chinese Medicine and the Ideas that Shaped it, due to be published in 2019.
ArgO-EMR Seminars Michaelmas 2019
Thick Translation Strategies for Chinese Medicine
Pauling Centre, 58a Banbury Road
Convened by Elisabeth Hsu
