PARATEXTUAL ADVANTAGES OF VERSIFIED PULSE TEXTS: THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF WANG SHUHE'S RHYMED VERSES OF PULSE-DIAGNOSTICS IN CHINESE MEDICAL HISTORY, 11-17th CENTURIES

This thesis addresses the issue of the relationship between theory and practice in the history of Chinese medicine through one historical example. Through problematizing and historicizing the provenance and dissemination of a popular medical book and its many editions published in small handy format, I foreground how the material paratexts of these physical editions conditioned the wide circulation and profuse practice of the abstract medical theory they carried. This popular medical book composed of rhymed verses of the pulse-diagnostics, therefore, rendered the pulse-taking theory its many editions carried a paradigm of medicine in China from the 11th to the 17th century. This theory that defined a legitimate understanding of the viscera in the body through viscera-wrists connections, was not simply about taking pulses. It was a paradigm of medicine for centuries because it, by legitimizing a specific interpretation of the viscera, explained the physiology and pathology of the body, and therefore conditioned the experiences of clinical practices. However, as I highlight in this thesis, without the practically useful and commercially saleable paratextual elements of its popular carriers, this theory might not have been so widely circulated and practiced as it was in Chinese history. This book’s becoming paradigmatic, in this way, is actually contingent. The correctness of this theory cannot explain it being paradigmatic, because, around the turn of the 17th century there was a paradigm shift that made this previously paradigmatic theory unmitigatedly wrong thereafter. The efficaciousness of this theory in the experiences of clinical practices cannot explain either why it became a paradigm. This is because “efficaciousness” in the history of medicine is usually retrospectively justified by biomedicine. A historical contingency that defined the itinerancy of the printed book and its many commercial editions that carried its eponymous theory in the medical market helps explain why this theory became a paradigm of medicine before the 17th century. This contingency that was embodied in the paratextual elements of the popular editions of this book, explained as well why the paradigmatic theory the book carried became erroneous after the 17th century. This is because when its carrier as a prominent popular medical book became repudiated by the elite occupational physicians who had newly emerged as a social force in the turn of the 17th century, this abstract paradigmatic theory also became delegitimized and discredited