The Expressiveness of the Body and the Divergence of Greek and Chinese Medicine

Shigehisa Kuriyama

Zone Books, £20.50, pp 340

ISBN 0 942299 88 4

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Have you ever wondered why figures in Chinese medical writings are smooth skinned and plump, whereas Greek sculpture commonly depicted taut muscle men, their biceps and sterno-cleido-mastoids sharply outlined? Why Confucius always sports an ample belly, but the most powerful Versalian image is a lean corpse, its skin stripped away to expose its carefully dissected muscles? Why, in the West, taking the pulse is a shadowy remnant of a once vital diagnostic procedure, and why it …