Abstract
The notion of food being able to improve health and cure illness is a common treatment concept widely practiced throughout Asia. The modern notion of shih-liao (food treatments) has its origins in the past and thus can be investigated from a historical perspective and understood historically. This essay focuses on such a task. By looking at the T’ang dynasty doctor Sun Szu-miao and his essay "Ch’ien-chin Shih-chih" to understand the style of treatments common at that time, I argue that "Ch’ien-chin Shih-chih," while definitely being used as a foundational text in medical treatment during the T’ang period, its concepts did in fact exist earlier and can be seen during the Han and Wei periods and in pre-T’ang texts such as: Huang-ti Nei-ching, She-nung Pen-tsao Ching, and Ming-yi Pie-lu. Today the historical materials we have for these earlier knowledge systems pertaining to food treatments are scattered. Sun Szu-miao's "food treatment concepts" can first be seen in earlier works and his essay "Ch’ien-chin Shih-chih" is the result of his editing previous works and choosing what he felt were the more important arguments. While many researched shih-liao before and after the T’ang, none surpassed Sun Szu-miao on the conceptual level. It is the social and cultural ramifications of shih-liao, however, which have yet to be determined and explored.
Shih-liao concepts and practices constituted a change in traditional medical knowledge since the T’ang period. This was particularly the case in terms of the Sung literati and the culture surrounding them. At this level of Sung society, shih-liao evolved from a special knowledge system during the Tang into a system that became part of the common knowledge of Sung literati. In the Northern Sung, medical texts and records were something that came under the control of the government but which later became easier to access by other social groups such as the Sung literati. The literati became the advocators of food treatments during the Sung and came to regard concepts of shih-liao as part of other medical treatments and thus as an element of the wider social arena. Control over these social practices therefore also had strong cultural characteristics. If we look at Ch’en Chih's book Yang-lao Feng-ch’in Shu and the treatments it proposes to increase ones lifespan, or Huang Ting-chieng's Shih-tai-fu Shih-shih Wu-kuan embodying the literati group, and shih-liao practices in the Shan-chia Ch’ing-kung, we can already see the high cultured world of Lin Hung and his literati companions. At this level, shih-liao represented a strong cultural phenomenon within a social spectrum which, over time, became more popular and widespread as a practice. Shih-liao became an everyday part of literati practices and thus constituted an important component of literati culture.
Keywords
T’ang, Sung, Shih-liao (food treatments), Ch’ien-chin Shih-chih, Sun Szu-miao
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