This 2,200 - year - honest-to-goodness silk manuscript , found entombed alongside a family of ancient Taiwanese elite group , could be the reality ’s oldest known medical schoolbook , according to a unexampled field .
Reported in the journalThe Anatomical Record , the ancient Chinese schoolbook has recently been studied by human body expert at Bangor University in the UK and Howard University in the US , leading them to argue that this relic could be considered the oldest surviving anatomical atlas in the world .
Known as the Mawangdui aesculapian holograph , the silk texts were break in 1973 when archaeologists open up the tomb of Lady Dai , a Han dynasty blue blood in 168 BCE , and her family at the Mawangdui burial site of Changsha in China ’s Hunan Province .
The manuscripts are thought to be a forerunner to the famous acupuncture textsThe Yellow Emperor’sClassic of Internal Medicine , also known as theHuangdi Neijing . Although the script does n’t explicitly cite acupuncture period , it does describe “ meridians ” and pathways of connection still used in traditional Formosan medical specialty today . In particular , it describes the organization of the human soundbox in the bod of 11 pathways throughout the body , each of which has associated disease patterns .
It ’s empathize that the story of anatomy line its roots back to classical Greece . The question is : can this manuscript be count a scientific grounds - based approach to realise human anatomy ? If so , the ancient Chinese were anatomists too .
From the perspective of Western modernistic medicine , the text has antecedently been interpret as a escaped description of mystical energies , rather than as empirical descriptions of the body . However , the researchers argue that , in fact , the verbal description are based on strong-arm anatomical structures . Within their sketch , the researchers compare how the features of the body detail in the Mawangdui manuscript do delineate up with observations of the physical human dead body . As one of many examples , the Mawangdui text advert to the “ tai yin meridian ” that described some system of connection between the center of the thenar , running along the forearm between the two bone . If we now expect at a dissected human elbow joint , there is a monotone set of tissue paper , called the bicipital aponeurosis , along the artery and nerves that do abide by this pattern .
This is n’t to say that acupuncture is a rock - substantial skill ; althoughevidence - based researchhas tolerate the efficacy of acupuncture for some conditions like managing pain in the ass , in Western music the consensus islargely skepticalthat acupuncture is an effective means for discourse for many more conditions . Nevertheless , the researchers debate that , in a sense , the Mawangdui manuscript is not simply a piece of religious mysticism based on unwarranted ideas , but a valid attempt to discover human soma from the view of someone living in the ancient Eastern culture .
“ We have to go about these texts from a dissimilar linear perspective than our current Western medical opinion of the torso ’s separate systems of arterial blood vessel , vein , and spunk , ” work author Vivien Shaw , who chew out in anatomy at Bangor University ’s School of Medical Sciences and has studied the figure see in ancient Chinese medical texts for years , tell in astatement .
“ The source did not have this understanding , rather , they search at the body from the viewpoint of traditional Chinese Medicine , which is based on the philosophical concept of complementary opposite of yin and yang , familiar to those in the west who follow easterly spiritualism , ” explained Shaw .
“ former scholars have not determine the works as describing build , because contemporary Confucian cultural exercise revere ancestors and so shunned dissection , ” summate co - generator Izzy Winder from the School of Natural Sciences . “However , we call back that dissection was involved and that the author would have had approach to the bodies of criminals , as is recounted in late texts . ”
