The Inner Classic, the Book of Hours, the Treatise and the Gospel
TLS February 6 2009 from Michael Stanley-Baker's review of A Dictionary of the Huang Di Nei Jing Su Wen : The roots of Chinese medicine lie in the rich textual tradition that began with the Inner Classic of the Yellow Emperor , or Huang Di Nei Jing , compiled over 2,000 years ago. The first organized canon of medical theory, the Inner Classic describes a range of ideas about the structure and patterns of the universe and the human body, from five-phase correlative cosmology, to yin and yang, qi and blood, acupuncture meridians and the relationship between the inner organs. * "Heaven" and "breath," for example, form the term "weather". Thus "breath" not only animates the human body, but also storms, rainbows and hazy summer days. Small wonder then that Chinese doctors use terms for weather patterns when diagnosing the human body as well. *** from Ronald Blythe's review of Katherine Swift's The Morville Hours : A book of hours was a...