肩こりの歴史的起源

There is perhaps no physical complaint more common among Japanese than katakori, or \u27congealed shoulders\u27. This paper examines the historical origins of this affliction. It traces the beginnings of katakori to the Edo period ailment called katakori, and points to three major factors of Edo times that contributed to the formation of this ailment: 1. medical theories that saw stagnant flow as the prime source of human sickness; 2. the \u27industrious revolution\u27, in which hard work and an active life emerged as key virtues; and 3. the diagnostic and therapeutic practices of abdominal palpation and amma massage. The paper then examines some possible analogues to the notion of kori in 19th and 20th century Western medicine, and concludes with some observations about the relationship between the body and time

\u27\u27Fukushin\u27\u27: Some Observations on Economic Development and the Imagination of the Body in Japanese Medicine of the Edo Period

オランダ, ライデン, 1999年10月 27日-29

Preface

Istambul, 1996年10月7日-11

Embodied Action, Enacted Bodies. The Example of Hypoglycaemia.

We all know that we have and are our bodies. But might it be possible to leave this common place? In the present article we try to do this by attending to the way we do our bodies. The site where we look for such action is that of handling the hypoglycaemias that sometimes happen to people with diabetes. In this site it appears that the body, active in measuring, feeling and countering hypoglycaemias is not a bounded whole: its boundaries leak. Bits and pieces of the outside get incorporated within the active body; while the centre of some bodily activities is beyond the skin. The body thus enacted is not self-evidently coherent either. There are tensions between the body¿s organs; between the control under which we put our bodies and the erratic character of their behaviour; and between the various needs and desires single bodies somehow try to combine. Thus to say that a body is a whole, or so we conclude, skips over a lot of work. One does not hang together as a matter of course: keeping oneself together is something the embodied person needs to do. The person who fails to do so dies

Cycles and circulation: a theme in the history of biology and medicine

Funder: National Science Foundation; doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100000001Funder: History and Philosophy of the Life SciencesAbstract: We invite systematic consideration of the metaphors of cycles and circulation as a long-term theme in the history of the life and environmental sciences and medicine. Ubiquitous in ancient religious and philosophical traditions, especially in representing the seasons and the motions of celestial bodies, circles once symbolized perfection. Over the centuries cyclic images in western medicine, natural philosophy, natural history and eventually biology gained independence from cosmology and theology and came to depend less on strictly circular forms. As potent ‘canonical icons’, cycles also interacted with representations of linear and irreversible change, including arrows, arcs, scales, series and trees, as in theories of the Earth and of evolution. In modern times life cycles and reproductive cycles have often been held to characterize life, in some cases especially female life, while human efforts selectively to foster and disrupt these cycles have harnessed their productivity in medicine and agriculture. But strong cyclic metaphors have continued to link physiology and climatology, medicine and economics, and biology and manufacturing, notably through the relations between land, food and population. From the grand nineteenth-century transformations of matter to systems ecology, the circulation of molecules through organic and inorganic compartments has posed the problem of maintaining identity in the face of flux and highlights the seductive ability of cyclic schemes to imply closure where no original state was in fact restored. More concerted attention to cycles and circulation will enrich analyses of the power of metaphors to naturalize understandings of life and their shaping by practical interests and political imaginations