Medical And Magical Arts:How Did Taoism Deal With Infectious Diseases

The core purpose of this theis is to study how Taoism deals with infectious diseases.There are two connotations of "deals with".On the one hand,we need to study how did Taoism explain infectious diseases’ infection.On the other hand,we should study further to learn more about how did it treat them.To solve this problem,we must choose representative infectious diseases.So we concentrate on Daozang,where we can find rich materials about this essay’s core.After careful search,we focus on the most common infectious diseases in Daozang to start our study,they are:zhu,chuanshi/laozhai,malaria,plague,lai/li,rabies,parasitic diseases and cold.The first chapter is aimed at compararing the differences between Taoism and traditional Chinese medical science’s attitudes to infectious diseases,such as how did them explain infectious diseases’ infections.Generally speaking,there were not so many differences between them when they met cold and rabies.But things changed when they met the other infectious diseases.Taoism thought when somebody got infected,he could have been hurted by Qi,sanshijiuchong,ghost,or he had done something bad to Taoism,even behaved unkind would kill himself.Traditional Chinese medical science thought Qi,ghost,yin-yang,sex’s frequency and constitution all are etiologies.Zhu,laozhai and parasitic diseases are our key points in this chapter.There were so many diseases in Zhu,but not everyone of them was infectious.Taoism thought Zhugui attacked people so people sicked.This opinion was very popular once,but it faded after Song Dynasty.Chuanshi/laozhai was a kind of Zhu,it replaced Zhu’s position.The essay will talk about the reasons of the change.Parasitic diseases are important keys for discussing the differences between taoism and traditional Chinese medicine.Sanshijiuchong is a really special part of taoism and it effected traditional Chinese medicine deeply.The second and the third chapter concentrate on how did taoism treat infectious diseases.Firstly,taoism learned a lot from traditional Chinese medical science.It used medicine soup,acupuncture,bath and so on to treat patients.And also,taoism had its’special methods to help patients.Taoism magic arts played important role in infectious diseases’ treatment.At the same time,it turned to different gods for help.Some gods are created by taoists,some gods are absorbed from folk.We can find that these gods are affiliated to Beidi and Tianpeng.But unfortunately,as time goes by,these new gods faded away.In these two chapters,we will find traditional Chinese medical science had stamped deep brands on taoism,and they were intimate for a long time.But things changed in the late imperial China.Taoists tried a lot to distance themselves from traditional Chinese medical science.For example,ZhangYunchang deprecated traditional doctors’ skills on treating chuanshi/laozhai,meanwhile,he spared no effort to praise taoists’ skills for curing this disease.There were so many conflicts and fusions in the etiology of them.In this context,how did Taoism learn from traditional Chinese medical science and how did taoism carry forward its’ characters are really interesting challenges for this essay.