中国文化英语概论 第7课Test A.doc

Text A Influences of the Chinese Religious Systems on Medicine by Joseph Needham As is generally known, the three great religious systems or doctrines, the san chiao (三教, were Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism. Only the first two were autochthonous1, for the latter came in from India beginning in the Later Han. The thought of these religious philosophies affected all aspects of medicine, and they must have influenced entry into the profession. A great many medical men throughout the Middle Ages in China were trained at the government’s expense, and often became civil servants, even Imperial Physicians. In addition, there must always have been a host of auxiliary2 practitioners3 who learned medicine as apprentices4 and treated the poor. Physicians tended to come from the families that had produced medical men for several generations. Indeed, the Record of rites5 (Li chi礼记), contemporary with Confucius himself (early in the ?5th century), has been interpreted to say that one should not take the medicine of a physician whose family had not been physicians for three generations. From what we have already said it is clear that the class structure in mediaeval China was quite different from that of Europe, because of the non-hereditary6 bureaucracy of the scholar-gentry7. Social mobility was great. Families rose into office-holding, and sank out of it, within a few generations. The medical profession, as we have emphasised, was not wholly looked down upon after its early beginnings, for as the centuries went by more and more Confucian scholars tended to enter it. One interesting reason why men of scholarly families took up medicine was because Confucian filial piety8 enjoined9 them to attend upon their parents. This made the great Thang medical writer Wang Thao王涛, among many others, embark10 upon the studies that issued in the Wai thai pi yao外台秘要 (Arcane11 essentials from the imperial library, +752). Cases are also known of men who became physicians on account of t