ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the illness experiences from the elite client's point of view and the close relations that elite doctors forged with their clients. It demonstrates that the discourses about the doctors reflected the complex philosophical and religious situations of the time. Because the Iron Curtain, or political and cultural barriers, separated the discursive practices of the Jin and the Southern Song territories, the ways in which the literati eulogized doctors were different in North and South China. The late Jin and early Yuan literati focused on the doctor's membership in what we would call the elite society and his ability to participate in China's literary tradition. In contrast, Southern Song literati had been increasingly converted to the Learning of the Way, which emphasized the significance of the values and behaviors proper to Confucians, and thus sought out Confucian doctors or doctors who continued their study and practice as Confucian scholars.
