ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the concepts of yin, yang, and five agents in Han China, in the realm which we recognise nowadays as medicine, by drawing examples from excavated medical manuscripts and the received medical classic, Basic Questions. The manuscripts and Basic Questions exhibit a variety of systematic correspondence between yin, yang, five agents, and the body, disclosing a pluralism of healing arts during this period. The development towards synthesising qi and yin-yang with five agents shows a new style of thought in early imperial China; that is, the attribution of the occurrence of disorders became disharmony of yin and yang in the internal body or environmental patterns, rather than the work of demons or ancestors as blamed in the Shang dynasty.
