Podcast Ep.10 – Leslie De Vries: The Thread That Runs Through Medicine

Daoism, Confucianism and Buddhism all have a long history of influence in the development in Chinese medicine, which is perhaps most apparent in the syncretic traditions of the Wen Bu Xue Pai 溫補學派(School of Warming and Tonifying) doctors of the Ming Dynasty. In this episode we talk with Leslie De Vries about one of these doctors, Zhao Xian Ke 趙獻可, and his book the Yi Guan 醫貫or “The Thread that Runs through All Medicine,” and the theories expounded in this work such as those involving Ming Men or the Gate of life and the potential influence of internal alchemy practices. Later in the conversation there is also a discussion on the influence of these Chinese medical theories on Vietnamese medicine.

Image courtesy of The Wellcome Collections