A Treatise on Treatises: On the Movement of the Heart and Blood (Part 2)
Ah. You're back? I didn't imagine you had the stomach for my brand of storytelling. Well, I won't bore you with much inane chatter. This is The Heart Part 2 (by Not Kendrick Lamar). Let's jump right in! We closed off the first instalment with a cryptic Reverend Insanity reference and a promise to visit the wider medical traditions of the world. At least with respect to the heart. Join me in the Dragon country. Cue my erhu music. Centuries before Galen began his misadventures, physicians of the Han dynasty had already conceptualised that blood flowed centripetally (returning towards the centre “ centre-petere ”) in the body. This was not mechanically or quantitatively derived but was an explanation rooted in the philosophy of completeness and circulation that remains a mainstay of the region to this day. “The blood flows continuously in a circle and never stops... It flows like the water in a river or like the sun and moon in their orbits,” - Huangdi Neijing, Su We...
