Hybridizing the human body : the hydrological development of acupuncture in early Imperial China

Investigating the concepts of qi and mai and their functions in the oldest extant, recently excavated, second century BCE practice-oriented guides to pulse taking, moxibustion, and needling practices, this thesis aims to show the prominent influence of water imagery and suggests a way to conceptualize its significance. These texts can be seen as transitional in the development of acupuncture, whose later practice would involve use of metal needles and be almost exclusively associated with the cosmological concepts of yin yang and wu xing and circular movements of qi that reached popularity in the Qin and Han dynasties and attested in the oldest and most famous Chinese medical compilation, also of the Han, the Huangdi neijing . In contrast, the paradigm of water, with its unidirectional free flows, is what informs these early medical manuscripts' understanding of qi and mai and their physiological movements