A Comparative Study on “Mai” and “Blood Vessels” in Early Chinese and Western Medicine: Based on Hippocratic Corpus and Cauterization Canon of the Eleven Vessels of the Foot and Forearm

Abstract

This study compared the theory describing the “four pairs of blood vessels” in the Hippocratic Corpus with the description of vessels (Mai, 脉) in the Cauterization Canon of the Eleven Vessels of the Foot and Forearm. The two theories are comparable because of the time period in which they were written, the similarities between the descriptions of the Mai and blood vessels, and the treatment methods for symptoms corresponding to their dysfunctions. We discovered that the Mai theory and the blood vessel theory in the Hippocratic Corpus were conceived with similar motivations. They had a lot of coinciding information with regard to the route of flow, but they proposed opposite cyclic directions. Interestingly, neither of them had established that a definitive relationship exists between the vessels and the heart, but other internal organs, such as the liver, were considered to have connections with the Mai and blood vessels in the two literatures. Furthermore, there were similarities among the descriptions of symptoms, and the ancient Western treatments for these symptoms were largely the same as those recorded in the ancient Chinese medical literature, especially the treatment for backache. The comparisons put forward in this study not only reflect the consistencies between the understanding of the human body and the way diseases were treated in Chinese and Western medicine in the early days, but also demonstrate that the two types of medicine had finally embarked on different developmental paths because of the differences in the philosophies and cultural backgrounds in their respective regions.