Only because of a great movement in China that has been going on for about 70 years have we been able to review the records of diseases in ancient China and publish them in a Western language.

This move­ment has been closely allied with a revaluation of the practice of traditional Chinese medicine by those who have taken a special training in it. Many valu­able works have been written in Chinese on the history of Chinese medical art and science.

So far, however, all this material has remained practically unassimilated by sinologists and other Western stu­dents of Chinese culture. Thus, for example, most of the dictionary definitions in common use are quite out of date. Among the works that we have used in preparing the present contribution is the brilliant monograph of Yii Yiin-hsiu on ancient nosology, or what might be called pathognostics - the recognition and classification Ofindividual disease entities. West­ern historians of medicine should be aware that the treatise of Wu Lien-te and Wang Chi-min (K. C. Wong and Wu Lien-teh 1932) on Chinese medicine (nearly always the only one they know) may be de­scribed as the very small exposed piece of an iceberg, 90 percent of which is “below the surface” (i.e., in the Chinese language and therefore inaccessible to most historians of medicine). Since about the mid-1950s, the study of Chinese medicine has been revitalized; a great number of rare medical books from ancient and medieval times have been republished in photo­graphic form, and some ancient texts have been re­produced in the modem colloquial (pai-hua) style, “translated” as it were from the ancient {ku-wen) style, either abridged or complete. For this reason, we feel no need to apologize for departing from former translations and identifications. Limitations of space in the present work will prevent us from providing extensive documentation for our state­ments, but the reader can consult our more expan­sive work, Science and Civilisation in China, Volume 6 (Needham et al. 1954).

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