ABSTRACT
However this may be, its first appearance in a Western printed book was in + 1674, when Hermann Buschof produced his 'Het Podagra... ' on gout and arthritic conditions. f But he never saw it, as he died that year. Buschof was a learned Dutch Reformed minister friendly with ten Rhijne in Batavia, and himself deeply grateful for the good results which moxa cautery had brought in his own case, applied by a Chinese or Indonesian woman doctor. There followed many publications-Geilfuss in + 1676, Gehema in + 1682, Valentini in + 1686, but of them all the 'Verhandeling van het Podagra... ' of Stephen Blankaart (+1684) was perhaps the most influential.g It included a previously unpublished letter or memorandum of ten Rhijne: 'On the Chinese and Japanese Way of curing all kinds of Diseases completely and with certainty by burning with Moxa and implanting golden Needles. 'h This phase of literature elucidated gradually the true nature of the moxa material used in East Asia, and sought to substitute for it all kinds of organic substances such as cotton, cobwebs, the pith of the elder or the bulrush, stalks of wild crowfoot, and so on. i
The time was marked by two other events of interest - the experiences of Sir William Temple (+ 1628 to + 1699) and the eminent clinician Thomas Sydenham
a A synonym was jukugai8 (shu ai,8 hot Artemisia). b The leaves ,,'ere dried and rubbed, whereupon the body crumbles to dust leaving the white hairs
on the under surface; these, matted tcgether and mixed "'ith a combustible vehicle, form the moxa. c Not meaning, as he seems to have thought, 'burning the skin'. d Ibuki in Shige is famous to this day for its mogusa. e Of course this might have been another case of a reaction which we meet with elsewhere (SCC,
Vol. 5, pt. 4, p. 474), where early travellers have remarked, thinking of some word already known to them but without any real linguistic connection, C how strange, that's just what we say'.
