Ancient Chinese medicine
2 min readMagic and Medicine
In the primitive society in which medicine first started to emerge, early humans had little control over onment Tt their destiny and environment. It was natural that their fear and awe of the great power of Nature would lead to belief in deities and magic Everything that people could not comprehend was attrib uted to the Divine. Confronted with disease and disaster, they entreated the deities for protection, and gradually prayer developed into a specialized vocation. Ritual activities were conducted by revered members of the tribe known as shamans, who were believed to have the magical ability to communi- cate with the deities.
Ancient writings indicate that the responsiblities of shamans included divination, conducting sacri as specialized medical practitioners. They were the tribe’s highest authority figures, feared and re- spected for their specialized and sacred knowledge.
On one hand, shaman healers were the repositories of generations of pra al medical knowledge, while on the other their treatments relied heavily on their people’s be agical abilities. As a result, primitive medicine became infused with the element of superstition menon may be seen in every early human culture, including that of China. Primitive shamanism first arose during the late Paleolithic Age(c. pre-8000 BC). Shamanism medicine remained clo n and linked through China’s Xia(c. 2070-1600 BC), Shang(c. 1600-1046 BC),and Western Zhou(1046-77)dynasties, with shaman healers responsible both for communicating with the deities an ease.
Whether shamanism is considered to represent a religiona vocation, or a broad cultural phenomenon, it was instrumental to humanity’s advance from barbarism to civilization The developm ing reflects the intimate connection between shamanism and medicine. The (yi) at one time included the component for magic, “wu”. A number of or cases have been excavated. They reveal that shaman heal ients within a ritual context, during the Yin and Zhou periods(300-256bc),th cal support as well as effective medical treatment. It can be seen that shamanism made an undeniable c bution to the development of medicine. Shamans between Humanity and the Divine. Th Divine.
They treated disease with a combination of traditional remedies and magical ritual, utilizing their patients’belief and fear of their powers. Using language and movement, they were able to put the patients into a trance or hypnotic state as their treatment T part of their treatment. Therefore, some people today believe that shamans were humanity’s first psychiatrists.
