+ ...,

Here may be mentioned the activities of the Ming in the making of bronze acupuncture statues.e The old one of A-Ni-Ko was taken to the palace about + 1370, and a new one cast in + 1443, i.e. in the Cheng-Thung reign-period, when acupuncture texts were being carved on stone tablets at the capital (p. 133 above), and the emperor was himself composing prefaces for medical books. f Then in the following century statues were needed again, perhaps because of the spread of instruction and examination, so around + 1537 or a little later Kao Wu organised the casting of three figures, a man, a woman and a boy.g

As we leave the + 16th century, a word may be given to a much admired epitome of diseases and acu-points relative to them, entitled Pa£ Cheng FuII (Ode on the Hundred Syndromes).h This was included by Kao Wu in his Chen Chiu Chu Y£ng, and most probably \vritten by him. i Then comes a work of uncertain authorship, entitled Hsun Ch£ng Khao Hsueh Pien I2 (An Investigation of the Loci along the Tracts), probably by Yen Chen-ShihI3 and not before + 1575 as it quotes no work later than the Wan-Li reign period. It is noteworthy for some very interesting diagrammatic pictures of the expanding or contracting module coordinate system discussed above (p. 124), cf. Fig. 33. j Lastly we come to the treatise still of the highest usefulness

a On the characterisation of the two schools here see further in Hsieh Li-Heng (1), pp. 32bfT. b See ICK, p. 345 and Anon. (83), p. 103. Kao \Vu was active in the bronze figure field, too. c ICK, pp. 344-5. Wang was representative of the view that acupuncture could cure plerotic diseases

of excess very \"ell, but not eremotic diseases of insufficiency. Further, it could supplement drugs and potions, reaching places which they could not. This contradicted a more obvious idea, and showed an appreciation of the role of the nervous system, as we should say.