Abstract
This article studies the representations of Confucian physicians and their attitudes towards textual knowledge in medical histories written between the Song and Ming dynasties. The Confucian physician, a new social category that emerged in the Song dynasty, occupied a position between the literatus and the physician in the social hierarchy. Confucian physicians viewed themselves as the elite group in the realm of medicine. However, the social dilemma of the “middle” position of the Confucian physician is evident in the medical histories written during this period. These texts emphasize the importance of textual knowledge as the sole avenue to the art of medicine and construct genealogies of physicians parallel to that of the Confucian tradition. The medical histories produced during the Ming departed from previous modes of historical narratives, mostly religious, which compared physicians with eminent practitioners in the Taoist and Buddhist traditions. The social strategy of mimicking Confucianism enabled Confucian physicians to distinguish themselves from other physicians but was not enough to prevent others from eroding their professional boundaries, reading medical texts, and despising them as specialists. This mimicking strategy, though it distinguished Confucian physicians from other doctors, revealed that these elite physicians were unable to achieve the social status of literati who had passed through the thorny gate of the civil service examinations.
Keywords
Confucian physician, medical history, textual knowledge, experience, historiography of medicine
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