ABSTRACT

In the early decades of the third century devastating epidemics spread through China. "Each family knew the pain of death," testified the poet Cao Zhi, "and from each room came wails and cries of sorrow." People fell ill for many different reasons, but two factors mattered most: the emotions and the weather. Weather was the external threat. A synopsis of the traditional Chinese understanding of epidemics might reasonably stop. Demons, heavenly displeasure, the attacks of wind and cold, and the emotional exhaustion that makes one susceptible to attack—these are, by far, the dominant themes. An anecdote in the official Jin dynasty history highlights contagionist expectations yet more forcefully. It tells of how near the end of the third century—shortly, therefore, after the time of Cao Zhi—a young man named Yu Gun lived through another serious epidemic. Charles Rosenberg himself concedes the porousness of the divide, and Chinese medicine provides a striking illustration.