Daoing Medicine: Practice Theory for Considering Religion and Medicine in Early Imperial China

This article is a critique of the neologism “Daoist medicine” (daojiao yixue 道教醫學) that has recently entered scholarly discourse in China. It provides evidence that this expression is an anachronism which found its way into scholarly discourse in 1995 and has now become so widely used that it is seen as representing an undisputed “historical fact.” It demonstrates that the term has no precursor in the pre-modern record, and critiques two substantive attempts to set up “Daoist medicine” as an analytical term. It reviews earlier scholarship on Daoism and medicine, or healing, within the larger context of religion and medicine, and shows how attention has shifted, particularly in relation to the notion of overlap or intersection of these historical fields of study. It proposes that earlier frameworks grounded in epistemology or simple social identity do not effectively represent the complexity of these therapies. Practice theory, on the other hand, provides a useful analytic for unpacking the organisation and transmission of curing knowledge. Such an approach foregrounds the processes and dynamics of assemblage, rather than theoretical abstractions. The article concludes by proposing a focus on the Daoing of medicine, that is, the variety of processes by which therapies come to be known as Daoist, rather than imposing an anachronistic concept like Daoist medicine

Adsorptive properties of chromium oxides and silica

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.The adsorption of nitrogen, argon and water vapour was studied on various well-characterised chromium oxides and silicas outgassed at selected temperatures between 25° and 1000°C. Standard data derived on non-porous oxides provided a basis for the analysis of the isotherms by the as-method, which has been found especially useful for the identification of the various physisorption processes, e. g. micropore filling and capillary condensation. The Frenkel-Halsey-Hill (FHH) method has also been used to analyse the multilayer region of the isotherms. Chromia gels precipitated at about pH 6 were found to be microporous. These gels, when outgassed at 25°C, exhibited molecular sieve properties; the sorption capacity for water was high, whereas the pore volume available to nitrogen and argon was small. It is suggested that cavities were formed in the gel in the vicinity of the Cr3+ ions through the removal of water ligands under conditions where the hydroxide structure was slow to develop. The molecular sieve character was considerably reduced in the case of gels precipitated at high pH (about 10.5), presumably because of the more efficient replacement of water ligands by hydroxyl ions. Chromia gels outgassed at high temperature retained a strong affinity for water vapour, and gave argon and water vapour isotherms which exhibited some slight stepwise character. On the other hand, silicas outgassed at 1000 °C were found to be strongly hydrophobic. Mercury vapour adsorption was found to take place very readily on some outgassed chromium oxides. This presents a problem in both volumetric and gravimetric adsorption measurements unless special precautions are taken to exclude mercury vapour from the system. Pressure-sensitive transducers have been used to overcome this problem in the case of the water vapour adsorption studies.Financial support was obtained from Glaxo Research Ltd

The Approximate Invariance of the Average Number of Connections for the Continuum Percolation of Squares at Criticality

We perform Monte Carlo simulations to determine the average excluded area $$of randomly oriented squares, randomly oriented widthless sticks and aligned squares in two dimensions. We find significant differences between our results for randomly oriented squares and previous analytical results for the same. The sources of these differences are explained. Using our results for$$ and Monte Carlo simulation results for the percolation threshold, we estimate the mean number of connections per object $B_c$ at the percolation threshold for squares in 2-D. We study systems of squares that are allowed random orientations within a specified angular interval. Our simulations show that the variation in $B_c$ is within 1.6% when the angular interval is varied from 0 to $\pi/2$