POWERHOUSE COLLECTION

Medicine chest from China

Object No. 96/253/1

This Chinese medicine chest consists of a wooden cabinet with 3 shelves containing an array of weighing pans, porcelain and ceramic bowels, pestles, mixing spatulas and dispensing spoons used in the preparation of traditional Chinese medicines. In the drawer below are 13 samples of dried animal-derived material used as medicinal substances (yao), mostly in small bottles with a typed label containing a Cantonese style transliteration of the name and a brief description in English. Numerous remedies based on the parts, organs, secretions or excretions of animals have an important part in the Chinese materia medica. A boxed set of crude acupuncture needles and a bamboo cupping instrument represent other important therapeutic practices. These objects were typically associated with traditional Chinese medicine at beginning of the 20th century and the medicines appear collected for their exotic nature, such as dried hedgehog skin and maggots, rather than to represent the more common plant-based herbal therapy. There are boxed sets of implements including shaving brushes and metal implements used in personal care. The cardboard boxes are covered with coloured paper and were common in merchandising around southern China at that time. Nine of these boxes contain small medically-related metal instruments sewn into the velvet lining and individually labelled in Chinese and English indicating their function; scrapping lancing, bleeding etc.The science museum in London has a set of small steel surgical/acupuncture instruments dating from 18th to 19th century China which have some common forms with these instruments. There are similarities between some presumably Chinese designed surgical instruments in this chest and their Western contemporaries, including nickel plating to facilitate disinfection or sterilization through boiling. Little is known about their manufacture and use, despite extensive research, indicating they were not widely used and these boxes appear to have been collected separately and stored in the medicine chest at a later date. In traditional China the prohibitive influence of Confucius, with emphasis on the sacredness of the body and objection to dissection, hindered the development of internal surgery and anatomy. Certain traditional healers specialised as 'externalists' who performed various procedures on the external body, such as blood letting, lancing, removal of skin lumps and the debridement of ulcers and wounds with application of herbal pastes and powders. Fractures were splinted and bound but external limitations imposed on their craft limited invasive treatment. These types of healers largely inherited their profession with experience and knowledge passed on through the family lineage and they utilized small locally made metal instruments as working tools. Some instruments in the sets are reminiscent of the historical forms associated with the nine ancient needles, the first metal needles described in Chinese texts, each with a different shape and functional use in therapeutic needling techniques. Needles incorporating the forms of an arrow and sword may reference early Chinese concepts of disease as manifesting from the activity of demonic forces dealt with by shamanistic healers. These types of needles were used as lancets in bloodletting therapy, which is thought to be a conceptual precusor to acupuncture and is still used in China today as part of that treatment modality. Medical development was also influenced by the Taoist doctrine of Yin Yang and the Five Phases (elements) that evolved to illustrate a detailed system of mutual correspondence. In this paradigm phenomena of the visible and invisible world are understood as subject to mutual dependence through associations along lines of correspondence. Manipulations of one element in a specific line of correspondence can affect other elements of the same line. Influences on and within the body, explained earlier within concepts of demonology and a magical system of healing, came to be understood within an integrated system where all conceivable natural phenomena possess a transformative basis for substance and activity called Qi, pronounced 'chi' and often translated as vital energy flow. The Chinese system of traditional medicine understands health as a state of dynamic balance of Qi energies within the body and in relation to the external environment. Within the body Qi is in constant motion in a network of invisible channels or meridians in the body and undergoes continuous change, reflecting the dynamic interplay between aspects of restraint (yin) and exuberance (yang) and influenced by Qi from external phenomena. Health and well-being are contingent on the unobstructed flow of Qi and harmonization of the two aspects with cycles of change within the body. The meridians connect the interior of the body with the exterior and the basis of acupuncture theory is that working with certain points on the body will affect the Qi and blood that travel in the meridians below through lines of correspondence. Acupuncture, cupping, massage, medicinal substances other therapeutic treatments, are used to act on aspects of Qi; supplement Qi when it is depleted, drain any surplus and regulate its flow. This Chinese medicine chest was held at the Asian Studies Department at the University of Sydney since the late 1950's and later donated to the Powerhouse Museum in 1994. It was part of a small collection of Chinese artefacts thought to have been collected in China in the beginning of the 20th century by an Australian protestant missionary J. Whitsed Dovey (1887-1956), as examples of traditional cultural practices. The medicine chest was used for display and study in missionary education about local Chinese medical practices. During this time period modernisation was evident in China as the country increasingly came under the influence of Western scientific thought following the collapse of Imperial China. The new Nationalist government was enthusiastically promoted Western medicine, initially introduced by missionaries to facilitate conversions, and sidelined traditional Chinese medical practice in their plans for medical development. The medicine chest and its contents demonstrate the plurality of Chinese medical practice, underpinned by a philosophy of change and adaptation, resulting in differently conceptualised systems of therapy. The objects point different cultural and political influences acting on the development of Chinese medicine. By the second half of the 20th century the Communist government aligned a Marxist-Maoist viewpoint with the philosophical base of traditional therapies and began to structure them within the modern health care system. The resultant Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), emphasising acupuncture and herbal therapies, has generated a global presence in the face of increasing lifestyle related illness and a responding engagement with methods of maintaining wellbeing. Chinese medicine has had a presence in Australia since the mid 1850's when it was practised in the Victorian goldfields and other places where Chinese migrants congregated. For the museum this medical chest is a significant addition to the more contemporary acupuncture set and accessories in the museum's Health and Medicine collection reflecting the growing interest in TCM in the broader Australian society since the 1970's. Taylor, Kim, 'Chinese Medicine in Early Communist China, 1945-63: A medicine of revolution, New York', 2005, p123 Unschuld, Paul U, 'Medicine in China: A History of Ideas', California, 1985, p235-260 For the images of Chinese surgical instruments c18th -19th century at the Science Museum London: http://www.scienceandsociety.co.uk/results.asp?image=10290388&wwwflag=2&imagepos=16 http://www.scienceandsociety.co.uk/results.asp?image=10284673&wwwflag=2&imagepos=1 -accessed 1/6/09