The extraordinary ordinariness of Fu Qingzhu: reflections on the messiness of Chinese medicine
Item
Title
The extraordinary ordinariness of Fu Qingzhu: reflections on the messiness of Chinese medicine
Description
Lantern (2019), Scheid, Volker.
Source
Abstract
Fu Qingzhu, as Steve Clavey’s biography in this issue demonstrates, was a rather special person: a veritable “Renaissance Man” in the tradition of Leonardo da Vinci, Albert Schweizer or Benjamin Franklin whose achievements stretched across fields as disparate as calligraphy, literature, philosophy, politics, medicine, bodily cultivation and (for lack of a better word) religion. Celebrating Fu Qingzhu in this manner links to a long hagiographic tradition in Chinese medicine, but doing so also sets him apart from mere mortals like ourselves, turning him into a person to whom we can loop up for inspiration and guidance but we can never hope to emulate. In this essay I therefore want to take a different approach, one that narrows the distance between Fu Qingzhu and ourselves and thereby makes him more immediately relevant to our own lives. Taking Steve’s biography as a starting point, I want to show that if Fu Qingzhu was, indeed, extraordinary, he was but one of many extraordinary men in the history of Chinese medicine. Then I will examine what this might mean for us. Specifically, I will argue that the messiness of lives in which medicine is mixed up with many other practices and interests is what might really inspire us, and that this messiness is also more realistic (and therefor ordinary) than the illusory (and therefore extraordinary) pursuit of an authentic practice purged of its history and politics.
Creator
Language
English
Date
volume
16
issue
2
page start
2
page end
9
Alternative Title
Lantern
Date Created
10/1/2019
Type
Journal Article
issn
1449-2717