ABSTRACT

What exactly, one asks, was the relation of the tract-channel system to anatomy as we understand it today? This is a question to which we shall have to return in several places, partly when we describe and translate the Nei Ching accounts of the courses of the tracts,f partly when we consider claims that specific structures underlie them,g and partly in connection with the growth of anatomical knowledge in China considered in Sect. 43. Modern books on acupuncture, both Chinese and Western, generally show the chart system of the tracts (as we ourselves do in Figs. 6 and 7) superimposed upon modern anatomical diagrams, whether superficial, myographic or osteographic. It is interesting that this practice began in China and not in the West, for in 1906 two physicians, Wang Yu-Chung9 and Chang Ping-Yiieh, 10 published awork entitled Chung Hsi Hui Tshan I Hsueh Thu Shuo; II as we have seen, this included much modern anatomy combined with charts of the principal acu-tracts and acu-points.g Nearly all later books have followed the same practice, e.g. Chheng Tan-An (2) in 1933.