Oogiantheorem: Examining the History of Sci & Med

Here’s a bit of fun amongst multiple essays and test preparation:

This is Foaming Mouth Guy . According to TCM (the old kind), he suffers from Spleen Qi deficiency and yin seizures due to internal wind. Symptoms include excess saliva production, phlegm obstructions to the head resulting in unbalanced Qi, and fainting. These symptoms in the modern version of TCM are said to be caused by large amounts of stress, living in a damp area, over-thinking, and possible head trauma. Poor foaming mouth guy – someone needs to give him some ground oyster shell.

(Foaming Mouth Guy is a character from the popular children’s series “Avatar the Last Airbender”.  I do not own rights to this character, but he sure was fun to analyze.)

TCM = Traditional Chinese Medicine

This was for a human geography course – but I’m  having a problem figuring out why the course isn’t classified as history. I could write on whatever I wanted within the context of British Columbia from 1500 – 1945, so I picked what I knew about. (Got it back on December 2nd, 2011 – got an “A” – YAY!)

 Transformation of the Space-Time Gap of Technology and Communications In British Columbia, 1500 – 1945

            With the arrival of colonial powers to the land imaginarily bordered and now called British Columbia, a change in human interaction caused a shift in the understanding of the spatial characteristics of human geography to regions that Indigenous peoples once bordered themselves. While the spatial characteristics of human relations became continuously more compressed for colonial immigrants when they settled in British Columbia in the early nineteenth century, for those Indigenous peoples whose families had lived and traded in the region for thousands of years, the opposite was true. This discrepancy is due to the new technologies perpetually introduced from Britain to the colonial populace of British Columbia, who were generally of British or Chinese descent (UBC Geography 121 lecture, September 26, 2011). Meanwhile, the Indigenous peoples of multiple bands, many with unique languages, endured discrimination and exploitation including the obstruction of language, economic prosperity, subsistence technologies, and trade. This essay will further discuss the disparity of the spatial character of human interactions between the colonists and the Indigenous peoples of British Columbia during post-colonial settlement of the land from 1500 until the year 1945. When British Imperialist colonists stormed the prosperous economies and already compressing space-time gap of the Indigenous peoples of British Columbia, it was Western ideas and communication technologies that expanded this compression and then compressed it a different way than it had been before in the duration of three hundred years.

            Before British colonists settled in Fort Langley in 1827 and later on Vancouver Island in 1843, Indigenous bands living along the Coast of North America and further inland had long trading routes, based on broad family connections remembered in oral tradition from hundreds of years in the past (Francis, Jones, and Smith, 2009, p. 420). Many bands who fished for their food knew how to canoe British Columbia’s rivers and knew their currents so well that they could visit their tenth cousin in sq̓əw̓nəc in the morning and be back in xʷməθkʷəy̓əm by nightfall (Shaw and Campbell, 1998-2011, p. 9). This large, highly accessible social network of kinship groupings made it easy for the Indigenous peoples of British Columbia to associate with each other and as more people became relatives with each other, often by marriage, and the currents flowing along the coast of British Columbia were full memorized, the space-time compression of Indigenous travel and communication grew increasingly tighter. Potlatches encouraged this process of space-time compression through the spreading wealth and resources as well as the spreading of culture and language (Francis et al, 2009, p. 421).

            When colonists decided to settle in West Coast regions of British Columbia at the discretion of the British Monarchy and the Hudson’s Bay Company, they saw Potlatch Ceremonies and banned them within the next century (Francis et al, 2009, p. 421). This was because of how much wealth was passed around from band to band. Jesuits especially thought that this was suspicious and came to the conclusion that the Potlatch must have been against Christianity is some way. To block traditional knowledge of trade, kinship connections, and subsistence technologies, and to re-acculturate British Columbia’s Indigenous peoples into Christian ideals, residential schools were built in the late nineteenth century. Indigenous children were forced to move away from their families and their culture beginning the process of time-space decompression. Most traditional Indigenous knowledge of British Columbia failed to be passed down orally during this time, and between this time and 1945, the British claimed Indigenous people’s land without making treaties, leading those who exited the residential school system to not have any culture or subsistence practices to rely on except for what the Hudson’s Bay company and the later what the Canadian federal Government gave them (Regan, 2010, p. 88). This unfortunate series of events for the Indigenous population of British Columbia caused the space-time compression of communications to expand in communities left with little tradition in 1945. People no longer knew their tenth cousin in sq̓əw̓nəc anymore, as it was an odd practice to keep such a large family in colonial thought. Likewise it would take them days to get to his house and back down the Fraser River due to the fact that they could not navigate the system of currents due to the lack of transmission of traditional knowledge.

            While this devastation was suffered to the Indigenous peoples of British Columbia, significant space-time compression occurred for the Colonial population of British Columbia, especially as electricity was brought to British Columbia, and new communication like telephones and transportation technologies like steam engines and later automobiles became standard in most non-indigenous populaces (UBC Geography 121 Lecture, September 26, 2011). It should be noted that due to the lack of economic prosperity that the Indigenous peoples of British Columbia were forced to undergo, they often could not afford such technologies. When colonial settlers established electricity and later telephone wires in the very late nineteen century and early 20^th century, twenty years after Britain had done the same, the time-space compression between colonial British Columbians making laws, transmitting information, and hearing ‘news’ was tremendous compared to what it had been before (Francis, Jones, and Smith, 2008, p. 114). In 1893 the Aboriginal Judicial System on the mainland of British Columbia could communicate to judicial systems not meant for Indigenous peoples as to confirm information and to settle claims and cases as easily as possible (BC Reports – 01, 1867). Likewise, consumer goods were moved faster than ever before with the construction of roads, and later railways. Information began to travel faster, and efficient means of transportation and communication became a commodity (Geography 121 Lecture. September 26, 2011).

            What British colonists did not count on with all of this newly invented transportation and communication technology is that it would trigger British Columbia’s Indigenous peoples to begin changing their identity into a united group of peoples with similar beliefs and wants. British Columbia’s Indigenous peoples, although still very protective of their band-names and what was left of their languages, grouped into what is called a Pan-Indigenous population, creating more communication between different bands than ever before, usually in the common language of English. The establishment of English as a Universal language in Indigenous communities resulted in a space-time compression because there no longer had to be interpreters among groups as their had once been during Potlatches. A result of this Pan-Indigenous consciousness was the Allied Indian Tribes of British Columbia, a group who fought for Indigenous land from 1887 until 1927 when it unfortunately disbanded (Foster, 1999, p. 27). The Pan-Indigenous view lived on after the Allied Indian Tribes of British Columbia and British Columbia’s Indigenous peoples fought for fishing and hunting rights, with increasing intensity as new technologies like radio and to a lesser extent television began to show the colonial view of Indigenous peoples as a whole (Sardar and Loon, 2000, p. 76).

            By the early twentieth century British Columbia’s lumber, fish, coal, and agricultural commodities began to be transported around the province by train expeditiously on the newly built Pacific Great Eastern Railway, which admittedly was not complete constructed until post 1945, but was still semi-functional (Wedley, 1998, p. 29). With all of the consumer goods brought into homes of ignorant multigenerational settlers, British Columbia’s social spatial changes began to influence its economic spatial changes. Supply and demand could be based on physical demands by phone or by commercials on the radio, and equally by how people’s outlook had been changed by technology (Sardar and Loon, 2000,p. 25). In the thirty years leading up to 1945, Indigenous peoples of British Columbia were also influenced by these technologies – even if the commercials were not aimed at them. Like the settlers of British Columbia, the Province’s Indigenous peoples wanted vacuums, electric stoves, and irons, but now a different kind of discrimination was upon them inflicted by new communication technologies that were supposed to help bridge the gap between communications. Instead of making a “middle-ground” between British Columbia’s settler population, which by now had forgotten its settler status, and its Indigenous population, the Indigenous peoples of British Columbia became increasingly marginalized by the stereotypes which space-time gap compressing technologies had created (UBC History 302 Lecture, October 18, 2011). Without those technologies, the transmission of a single degrading “Indian” identity could not be created and reinforced (Sardar and Loon, 2000, p. 135).

            In the 1500’s until the mid-1900’s, colonial powers had a slow, but steady revolution in communications technology that had the capacity to change human interactions and caused a shift in the understanding of the spatial characteristics of human geography to regions of British Columbia that Indigenous peoples once governed. Eventually Indigenous peoples of British Columbia, and the rest of North America became an unfortunate marginalized stereotype to settlers, reinforced by movies about “Cowboys and Indians” and “The Indian Princess.” The setter population of British Columbia did not acknowledge the stereotypes that the compression of the space-time gap in communication caused, 1945 was not the last year that the Canada’s Indigenous peoples would endure the consequences of the change in spatial thought. With the loss of ownership of resources and continuous de-culturation of Indigenous peoples through the residential school system, British Columbia’s Indigenous peoples had no choice but to partake in the shift of spatial thought through technology, even when they often had to struggle to do so. This shift was an exertion in which Indigenous peoples would feel remorse for generations to come.

So for my research this semester and some general galavanting around youtube and the internet in my spare time, I came upon some  interesting websites and videos to do with science, medicine, and technology. There’s everything from TEDtalks, to some rap, to other blogs, to websites about uranium and nuclear energy, to medical posters from around the world.  Enjoy everyone!

Nuclear Technology in Kazakhstan:

• Nuclear News Kazakhstan
• Happy Birthday Atomic Lake!
• Russian Eugenics in Kazakhstan?! ( BBC British POV)

TEDtalks:

• Our inner Neanderthal
• Potential “6th Sense” Technology
• Ultrasound Surgery – Healing Without Cuts
• How it Feels to Have a Stroke
• How we presently see “gender” – Is Anatomy Destiny? 

Fun:

• ROTATE YOUR OWL FOR SCIENCE!
• Pneumatic Prank
• Protein synthesis – An Epic At A Cellular Level

Did writing this make me and anti-feminist?  Oh well – as long as I’m not considered one, I’ll be happy. This was for my first history of science course class last year. I was trying to add what I knew about both Eugenics and Feminism together. It’s a really rushed work – you can tell by the grammar, but I still got a really good mark on it. (yay)

————————

Helen MacMurchy

Eugenics and Feminist Reinforcement

         In the early twentieth century, the health of a nation was judged by its infant mortality rate, so it was no surprise that mothers wanted to raise healthy children, and that governments were prepared to help them. However, many of the mothers in early nineteenth century North America were more than ordinary cooking, cleaning, mothering housewives – they were maternal feminists in the first wave of feminism.  As Ontario’s Inspector of the Feebleminded, and one of Canada’s few women in power, in 1915, Doctor Helen MacMurchy had the popularity over woman to tell mothers how to raise their children.She may have had good intentions toward Canadian mothers and their children, but as her career involved reinforcing public health, Canada’s concern in Eugenics of abolishing hereditary weakness was Helen MacMurchy’s main goal. In this essay, the connection between feminism and Eugenics will be explored, discussing how the two reinforced each other in the early twentieth century and their connection in today’s modernized scientific world.

For Helen MacMurchy’s government position to exist, there had to be a background in Eugenics from years before. It is however debatable how scientific the knowledge behind eugenics was at the time. Scientific knowledge of Eugenics up to the twentieth century was based on statistical evidence of family histories, highly biased intelligence tests, and statistics of how many people were disabled physically, and/or “feeble minded” within a country.The definition of “feeblemindedness” was also racist, as immigrants entering countries, such as Canada, had to immediately write intelligence tests when they got off the boat that brought them there. Not only were these immigrants fatigued from their travels, but also many of them could not understand English. Helen MacMurchy’s goal of abolishing heredity weakness can therefore be seen as corrupted by the inaccurate tests, especially because while she was held her position, 22% of Canada was non-British, non-French immigrants.The feminists of Canada were oblivious to this fact, so it can be noted that there was an extra percent of people seen as feebleminded bolstering the government’s imposition of positive Eugenics to the hegemonic races of Canada, and to hegemonic woman’s newly founded right to reproduce with whoever she wanted to.

As women had just begun to fight for the rights of their own bodies and reproductive capabilities, Helen MacMurchy, through her series of “Little Blue Books,” started informing woman on how to raise a mentally and physically fit child. The two ideas went hand in hand because before a woman could possibly have a “fit” child, she would have to pick a suitable man with the qualities appropriate for procreating such a child. Before that time, the idea that a woman could pick a man to be her mate was seen as preposterous, and so the early twentieth century version of a feebleminded child was more likely to be born. From the “Little Blue Books” the idea of a rise in “fit children” of the hegemonic white race of Canada, not only reinforced positive Eugenics, but also gave the possibility of improving Canada’s infant-mortality rate, as well as the future maternal-mortality rate. The maternal mortality rate would idealistically get better because mothers who died while their child was still an infant were seen to have individual inadequacy, a trait which Eugenicists thought was related to weakness in heredity.

Helen MacMurchy employed more than Positive Eugenics in her task of stamping out hereditary weakness in Canada.  She employed Negative Eugenics when lobbying with those in the National Council of Women, labeling unwed women as feeble-minded, condemning many of those women to be institutionalized. If they had children, they were either institutionalized as well, or left in the care of a “more suitable” family, depending if they were also deemed to be feeble minded.  First wave feminism supports what Helen MacMurchy did because being “a good mother” was still defined by having a husband during that wave of feminism, and “the woman as being more than a wife and mother” had not been explored much yet in that particular wave.

Today, long after “Eugenics” became a faux-pas word, and after three waves of feminism, feminism and “Eugenics” still go hand-in-hand. North American women have gained complete rights to their bodies, who can they reproduce with, and the institutions that used to hold the feeble minded were closed decades ago. They can now choose not to marry, and have children without being married. It is the practice of having children in which Eugenics is still involved. Eugenics has found a new name in the science of genetics. Nowadays, women have their unborn fetuses tested for genetic anomalies before they are born, and can even choose the exact sperm that fertilizes their egg. If an anomaly is found, the woman is usually advised to go through an abortion – as to not have the burden of caring for a mentally insufficient or physically ill child. Women may have reproductive freedom, but society and medical professionals in that society still find the less fit unfit to be born – an idea crucial to negative Eugenics.  The infant-mortality rate has improved drastically, and yet the practice of making strong fit children goes on.

Feminists may now take the opposite side of the argument from first wave feminism and fight for the right of society to accept women who choose to birth a child less smart, or strong, or even less healthy than the majority of children. Like Doctor Michael J. Sandel in his article, “The Case Against Perfection,” they would want to embrace the gift of life, rather than try to make it better with genetics.

Feminism may have reinforced Eugenics during its first wave almost a century ago, but decades later after the Holocaust in Germany, mass sterilization especially in Western North America, and the wrongful institutionalization of thousands of individuals the connection has broken. Helen MacMurchy’s name currently cannot be found in searching the website for the National Council of Women, even in its history archives. Perhaps feminists have figured out that education is the key to making weaker woman stronger. Sterilization, discrimination, and euthanasia did not work in the past – and those are some of the issues that feminists theories about and fight against every day. After all, why should people discriminate against those who are different, when different points of view are what educates and expands learning in the world?

The world has learned the terrors of the radical side of Negative Eugenics, but Negative Eugenics still exist in every MRI when a doctor tells eager parents the gender of their unborn child, or when prospective parents get tested to see if they are carriers of debilitating genetic diseases or viruses. Medical professionals and scientists with the same good intentions that Doctor Helen MacMurchy had still exist, and in educational institutions such as the University of British Columbia there is no requirement of the history of Eugenics for those pursuing degrees in genetics. Degrees in feminism do cover past discrimination in multiple courses, even in regards to Eugenics. The question is, why do the feminists know more about the past of Eugenics than the geneticists implementing it?

I’m put this piece in the Eugenics section because of the genetic modification idea, even if it doesn’t fit completely. It’s another rushed bit of writing, but the films for it were really interesting! Twas one of those end of semester times when I was trying to write three papers at once. It’s technically a sociology paper – but like I said in the “epiphany” part of this blog, most fields of study can fall under the study of the history of science.

A Film Review Assignment

When Canada began to genetically modify its food, the general population was never told beforehand, like in the 1960’s when Canada began to use chemical insecticides. Both were suddenly used with no warning from the government or on packaging, and both the chemical insecticides and the genetically modified foods were never tested to see if they were harmful to humans before they were utilized throughout Canada. That lack of testing before making changes to what people eat is the topic of “Seeds of Change”  Likewise, restaurants did not know of the genetic modifications, as the foods could still be made into the same dishes and tasted to same as the non-genetically modified foods. This control over people’s foods through chemical pesticides and genetically modified foods makes Vancouver Chef, John Bishop, worry about what he was feeding his customers. He goes to find out about genetically modified foods in the film, “Deconstructing Supper.” But it’s not chefs who truly have to worry. Genetically modified plants are overtaking organic farms and the genetically modified plants are immune to herbicides. This lack of control is also researched in “Deconstructing supper.”

When Peter Schmeiser, a Canadian canola farmer has no choice but to have “Round Up Ready” brand canola on his originally organic canola farm, it is proof that whoever controls the seed supply controls the food supply. As he cannot get the pesticide resistant plants off of his land, he is obligated to pay for the Round Up Ready. As this happens to more and more farmers without them even knowing it, farmers have no control over their crops, or their future crops, as once they have Round Up Ready canola plants on their land, it is near impossible to stop growing them without destroying the soil of the land that the farmers have worked so hard to tend. The seed companies only being responsible to shareholders is prevalent in “Seeds of Change,” by the fact that the number of farmers are dwindling and the seed companies like Monsanto are not taking responsibility for this dwindling of farmers, even if it is their fault for genetically modifying plants enough that the weeds became resistant to what was supposed to kill off weeds in the original products – like Round Up Ready.

In “Deconstructing Supper” is it easy to interpret that by creating its own standards for safety, Monsanto has ruined the lives of many farmers for a large profit. By the letting the genetically modified food companies create their own standards for safety, the government of Canada is letting the companies potentially tamper with the health of Canadian citizens. New super-weeds worse than those resistant to the pesticides in Round Up Ready could be created very easily if scientists are not careful. Plus, organic crops will inevitably go extinct. What will need to be focused of in these safely regulations is keeping biodiversity, because without biodiversity seeds cannot become resistant to natural forces without being genetically modified to be that way. Based on what Happened with Round Up Ready, there could be cycle of genetically modified plants and super weeds beating each other out, not allowing enough food to be produced for Canadians.

“Deconstructing Supper,” shares a few kinds of agricultural knowledge, including that about Bio-technology in which genes from animals and other plants are implanted into the genes of plant seeds to produce a better crop with the healthy attributes from those genes. According to the film, this can even make a plant healthier as extra supplements can be added to it to make it more vitamin rich. On the less technological side of farming is that which is in India which depends on biodiversity, so seeds are traded so that crops are healthy. There is also organic fertilizer yielding good crops. If land is depleted there is a follow year – a method used since medieval times. In India some plants also considered weeds are eaten, so it doesn’t matter if a few of them happen to grow in a crop.  In “seeds of change “, the main agricultural knowledge that farmers have is passed down from generation to generation. That can be said with the Indian people of the other film as well, but the Indian people don’t have to worry as much about that knowledge going to waste – yet.

Don’t you just hate when you lose something important!

I’ve done two papers on the sterilization of Leilani Muir and after my computer died in September, I lost them both! I mustn’t have saved them to my email before printing them.

It’s so sad… I had the feminist view and the scientific view all figured out and *POOF*—- gone!

————

(for those who have not read the  “Epiphany” post, read the bottom at least – it basically tells you why you shouldn’t and cannot plagiarize my work successfully – why would you want to plagiarize my work anyway – my average is lower than yours, right? …. but seriously, you use my work – I kill you in your sleep, capiche?)

Let me also note that I know my writing is REALLY BAD! I’ve only ever gotten a B+ in any English course, ever! And much of what was written here was written at 3am… (Don’t Do As Sarah Does). Anyway, if I ever eventually have insight in the History of Science and Medicine, I’ll make sure that I have a good editor.

Here’s an oldie. I did this for history of science before I was even interested, lol.

Edit: I found the mark I got on this while digging through my papers…. EW….just ew… it looks like I made a few too many generalizations and major claims for the lack of evidence I gave. I’m pretty sure that my writing  has improved since this essay, thankfully!

Critiques and Action Against Big Science

Before the 1940’s the world survived without Big Science. It was a world with simple sciences, but for some scientists, experiments without new, large, costly technologies would not let them prove their hypotheses. Theoretical science had to be proven. With the emergence of Big Science during the time of the Second World War, a scientific renaissance came to an end, and from the remnants of the renaissance arose terrifying weapons and technologies that some people feared would destroy the world. Big Science may have been created with the intention of the overall betterment of society, but its momentum lead to secrecy and corruption with the potential of destroying humanity.

 The main opinion of those who were against Big Science was that a world without Big Science would be a less complex world to deal with. Starting with the Manhattan Project near the end of World War Two, Big Science bred secrecy in government, enough that Truman did not know about the Manhattan Project when he was Vice President of the United States of America. In the beginning, American politicians agreed with the secrecy if it meant that it would end the war favorably for the Allied Forces, with America leading the victory. Scientists used the secrecy of the Manhattan Project to expand human knowledge. It was when that secrecy got out of control in the 1960’s and 1970’s and other secrets were devised having to do with Big Science that social thinkers got involved bringing forth ways to put an end to Big Science.

Citizens found ways to slow the momentum of Big Science initiatives by organizing against them in protest and finding loopholes in the safety of such projects. When Pacific Gas And Electric devised a plan to dump nuclear waste in the public community of Bodega Bay, the citizens of the city rose up in fear for their families’ health. At first they could do nothing to stop the possible dumping of harmful substances on their land except protest and educate people of the dangers of nuclear waste. People from as far as San Francisco helped with their protest. Their land was finally saved and eventually turned into a park when they brought in a trained professional to assess the land as a possible nuclear waste dumping ground. The citizens were relieved to learn that the ground underneath the possible dumping site was directly underneath the San Andreas Fault, and therefore not suitable for storing nuclear waste. They won their battle against a possibly harmful result of Big Science, but their battle would not have been possible without help from politicians informing the public of secrets hidden about big Science.

 It was a major deviation from the justified secrecy during the time of the Manhattan Project when fifteen years later Dwight Eisenhower gave a speech warning the people of America of Big Science’s undemocratic nature, and how it could lead to the corruption of America. Propaganda of the dangers of the byproducts of nuclear energy, atomic bombs, and government conspiracies had already swept the media by that time, but Eisenhower’s speech empowered the propaganda to continue. Meanwhile scientific groups such as The New Earth Alchemists and The Whole Earth Network researched forms of technology against Big Science. They believed in the preservation of society without nuclear bombs. Figures such as Jacques Ellul, Herbert Marques, Lewis Mumford, John Todd, and Buckminster Fuller were forerunners in spreading Big Science Anti-culture, new technologies and initiatives against the atomic bomb. Some of them, like Buckminster Fuller, believed in the progression of science through man’s control of the world, but that control was not to be abused by building technologies that could potentially bring about the destruction of the world.

Places such as Nelson, British Columbia thrive today because of the anti-culture of Big Science. Communes were built to demonstrate that society could be self-sufficient and could progress naturally without Big Science. The communes used the Whole Earth Catalogue to buy what they needed to live.  With the catalogue one could buy building tools, garden seeds, newspapers, technologies to create wind power and solar power, and more to be shipped to the communes easily by mail. Simple machines and alternative energy sources were used to replace the large scale energy sources that Big Science created, but when people in the communes discovered that it was hard to build a house, how unsatisfactory it was to use solar or wind power, and how much work it took to live self-sufficiently, the communes modernized.

The momentum of Big Science never came to an end, and neither did the secrecy that it caused. Experiments go wrong and loved ones of those who died in the experiments never get explanations of what truly happened. Weapons of mass destruction still exist, some even more terrifying than the atomic bomb. Wars have occurred because of such weapons. The communes devised to set examples of how to save the planet failed, and for the most part, so has the anti-culture of Big Science. The people who won their battles against Big Science may have cities free of nuclear waste, but nothing could help them if a nuclear bomb exploded in their backyard. Even if the entire world became wind powered, or solar powered nothing could stop the pursuit of knowledge to know everything about planet Earth and beyond. The momentum of Big Science will never cease until it destroys the world.

Here’s two sides of a cue-card for my first history if Science and technology course… there’s a reason my average was the class average U__U”

(Click the images to see them in full-size)

(note that this was the first comparison I ever made between bodies are medical forms – it’s really general, and not very well written)

(and upon further review the grammar is just….EW! This is why we check our spelling and grammar, so we don’t add academic trash to our blogs!) 

The Correct Way to Interpret Human Physiology

If one were to say that, “ideas of human physiology and anatomy have drastically changed over the past millennia,” they would be making a generalization. This is because, not only can the human body be interpreted in different ways depending on which culture is observing it, but there are also theories about how the human body functions from hundreds of years ago that are similar to how the body is viewed to function today. An example of this is the comparison of how the Ancient Greeks and the Ancient Chinese viewed reproductive physiology and how they are in some ways similar to what is known in modern human physiology. While the Ancient Greek use of reproductive terminology is similar to that of modern physiology, some of the Chinese concepts are closer to those read today in modern physiology textbooks. Modern human physiology has the ability to merge newly discovered knowledge of the human body with many cultures’ unique interpretations of the human body. With this merge of new and old ideas, one can argue that there is no single effective way of understanding the human body and how it works.

When comparing how reproductive physiology was seen in Ancient China and in Ancient Greece, one must first understand that each theory is different, not because one of them was more correct than the other, but because each of the two societies saw their bodies differently. The information about Ancient China in this essay is focused in particular on how the people of Han Dynasty understood how to create a baby, and how the Daoists of China in the Dynasty viewed the male and female reproductive systems and how reproduction took place. The focus of the Ancient Greek reproductive physiology is during the time of the Greek physician Galen, between 131 and 201 C.E.

According to Mawangdui text, “Taichan Shu, The Book of The Generation of the Fetus”, a woman becomes pregnant after she finishes her menstruation period, when a man has sexual intercourse with her for three days.The unborn baby’s gender is dependant on rituals to engender the baby. Most Peoples’ intent was to have a boy, because at that time it was a boy that brought prosperity and wealth to the family. Depending on how many days after a woman’s menstruation period a man has sexual intercourse with her, the baby will be born a certain gender.Odd numbers are Yang and a male birth, and even numbers are Yin and result in a female birth. The baby’s gender is also based on what a woman eats during her pregnancy, the kind of vapor she breaths, the gender of the animals that she observes, and what she wears.The Taichan Shu also explains how a fetus develops.  During the fourth to eight month of pregnancy the fetus receives the Five Agents.Each of these Five Agents represents an element that creates a part of the baby. Water produces blood, fire produces vapor, metal produces muscle, wood produces bone, and earth produces skin.

Moving on to the Daoist interpretation of what reproduction looks like, one notices that there is more imagery in the Daoist interpretation of reproduction than in the Mawangdui interpretation of reproduction. Daoist ideas are often shown in the Mawangdui texts, as they are timeless, but there are conceptual differences in physical anatomy of the human body in Daosim and the Mawangdui texts.  It is the Daoist belief that men keep their semen and women keep their menstrual blood in the main Cinnabar Field of “The Daoist Body”. These sexual fluids are kept for a time when yin and yang meet in the “harmonious union” of reproduction. The Cinnabar Field “is [also] the embryo’s home.”

The Ancient Greek interpretation of human reproductive physiology is certainly different than that of the Ancient Chinese. Sexual fluids are seen differently in the way that when a baby is being formed in the mother’s womb after intercourse, it is “the female blood that [provides] the material substance to the body, while male pneuma made from the male sperm [articulates] the body’s form.” In Ancient Greece, pneuma flows through conduits separately from blood and carries sensations and will. Pneuma is “linked to the activities and essence of the soul.” There is no such thing as Yin and Yang in Ancient Greek medicine, but like in Ancient Chinese medicine there is an essence of vitality. Vitality is Qi or vapor in China and pneuma in Greece, although the meanings are slightly different.

Ancient Greek reproductive physiology is also concerned with getting rid of unwanted bodily fluids. The Greek philosopher, Galen, thought that having too much semen could potentially make a man ill, although this idea varies from text to text.This variation is shown by Aristotle’s thought that any erectile emission should be for reproductive purposes. Aristotle’s idea was similar to that in Ancient China, where semen is seen as vital to creating new life and that it is not to be wasted because it could be used to create life in the future.Reproductive physiology in Ancient Greece and Ancient China both have an element within them that the male and female reproductive fluids join together and help in the creation of a new human. The difference between the theories is that in Ancient Greek physiology the reproductive fluids are what end up making the body of a human, and in Ancient Chinese physiology it is the reproductive fluids that help the union of Yin and Yang to occur. It is the Five Agents that fulfill the task of creating the flesh and Qi.

Although Greek medicine became one of many bases for modern medicine today, many of its past aspects have changed due to new scientific technologies. For instance, it is now known that it is not the female menstrual fluid that makes up the body of a fetus, but that it enables the growth of the placenta and permits active transport of nutrients to the fetus to occur. The idea has changed, but stays within the same anatomical structures of the human body. Ancient Chinese medical practices still live along side modern medical practices because they are just as relevant to the Chinese body as modern medicine is. Acupuncture still exists all over the world as a pain reducing treatment.  There are tai chi classes and classes to learn breathing exercises at most community centers.  Chinese reproductive anatomy and physiology still exist within the Chinese body, even if not in the same state as in the Mawangdui texts.

In present medical teachings of human anatomy and physiology, such as those taught at the University of British Columbia, it is learned that an embryo is formed and grows by cells duplicating themselves, adding selective parts of two sets of DNA in the form of a coiled double helix into each cell. The sets of DNA, which are selectively duplicated, come from the parents of an unborn child. This merging of sets of DNA is similar to Yin and Yang’s harmonious union in the cinnabar field. The idea that the cinnabar field inhabiting the area three inches below the belly button and in front of the kidneys, is also similar to where the male and female reproductive systems are in modern human anatomy.These different ideas can coincide with each other, because they are both describing the same action in the same part of the body,  but a line is drawn between the two ideas through medical treatment of the cinnabar field and the female reproductive system.

When a person makes the generalization that ideas of human physiology have changed over time, they have most likely only been in contact with one kind of idea of human physiology.   The lack of contact with any other understanding of human physiology could be attributed to the person’s culture predominantly using one understanding of human physiology. In this essay two understandings of human physiology have been briefly examined to establish that neither of them is better than the other, and they can both exist along side each other. The Ancient Greeks and the Ancient Chinese never sought out to make their understanding of the human body the one correct way to view it, but understood the human body in their own unique interpretations of it. Each culture’s unique idea of anatomy and physiology changed with the cultures themselves. Ideas of human physiology may change over time, but the initial change is based on how a culture understands human physiology.

(bibliography available upon request)

So, here’s the first artistic piece I did for the history of medicine. It’s pretty lame, I admit, but it took lots of thought. The thesis is around the edge.