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Treating emotion-related disorders in Japanese traditional medicine: language, patients and doctors
- Source :
- Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry
- Publication Year :
- 2013
-
Abstract
- This paper analyses how the conceptual and therapeutic formation of Japanese traditional medicine (Kampo) has been socially constructed through interactions with popular interpretations of illness. Taking the example of emotion-related disorders, this paper focuses on the changing meaning of constraint (utsu) in Kampo medicine. Utsu was once a name for one of the most frequently cited emotion-related disorders and pathological concerns during the Edo period. With the spread of Western medicine in the Meiji period, neurasthenia replaced utsu as the dominant emotion-related disorder in Japanese society. As a result, post-Meiji doctors developed other conceptual tools and strategies to respond to these new disease categories, innovations that continue to influence contemporary practitioners. I begin this history by focusing on Wada Tōkaku, a Japanese doctor of the Edo period who developed a unique theory and treatment strategy for utsu. Secondly, I examine. Yomuto Kyūshin and Mori Dōhaku, Kampo doctors of the early twentieth century, who privileged neurasthenia over utsu in their medical practice. The paper concludes with a discussion of the flexibility and complexity of Kampo medicine, how its theory and practices have been influenced by cross-cultural changes in medicine and society, while incorporating the popular experience of illness as well.
- Subjects :
- medicine.medical_specialty
Health (social science)
Qi
Kampo
Culture
Alternative medicine
MEDLINE
History, 18th Century
Health(social science)
History, 17th Century
Utsu
Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous)
Japan
medicine
Humans
Meaning (existential)
Language
Original Paper
Traditional medicine
Depression
Public health
History, 19th Century
General Medicine
Neurasthenia
History, 20th Century
medicine.disease
Social constructionism
Meiji period
Psychiatry and Mental health
Constraint
Liver
Kampo medicine
Anthropology
Emotion-related disorders
Medicine, Kampo
Psychology
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 1573076X
- Volume :
- 37
- Issue :
- 1
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Culture, medicine and psychiatry
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....9ecc25cf64c60c0c69c7f724a914547b