The Expressiveness of the Body and the Divergence of Greek and Chinese Medicine, Shigehisa Kuriyama (1999)
“physicians of the empiricist school insisted on the distance separating the anatomical definition of the pulse and the actual experience of the fingers.”
“How do pulse and palpitation differ?”
“Basic to this divorce was the new perception of the body defined by dissection.”
“transform…from a vague occasional oddity into a vital sign”
“systematic anatomy”
“The earliest evidence of systematic anatomy appears in the animal dissections of Aristotle”
“Phlebes, moreover, stretched the length of the body in routes that cannot be directly matched with anatomical blood vessels.”
“Praxagoras also took an interest in both dissection and pulsation.”
“physicians of the empiricist school insisted on the distance separating the anatomical definition of the pulse and the actual experience of the fingers. What our fingers feel, the empiricists contended, is merely the sensation of being struck.”
“no necessity dictates the pulsetaker’s approach. There are other ways to cradle meaning at the wrist.”
“roughly mirrored the spatial organization of the body”
“All approaches took for granted that the meaning of what the fingers felt, depended on where they felt.”
“its grammar was topological”
“Greek diagnosticians evinced little interest in, or even awareness of, the differing feel of the pulse in distant parts.” [in different parts, different places]
“one inspects the wrist because the pulse there can be felt clearly”
“he conjures of the image of their frantic panting”
“No major blood vessel matches these meanderings from ankle to eye.”
“how and why treating one site on the body solved [involved] suffering in other, distant parts”
