shanghanlun

Foretelling Disease Duration (line 7)

By markouser ⋅ February 21, 2008 ⋅  Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment

Here is an example where Mr. Zhang dabbles in numerology to explain why something is so. Remember, there is logic here, but probably not something we’d deem scientific in this day and age.

病有发热恶寒者，发于阳也；无热恶寒者，发于阴也。发于阳者七日愈，发于阴者六日愈，以阳数七，阴数六故也。 (line 7)

Here, he differentiates the guy who has both a fever and the chills from the guy who only has the chills. The former is yang (well, there’s the fever) while the latter is yin (he’s feeling cold). After giving an yin or yang classification to the externally contracted disease at hand, he uses this classification to explain why one recovers in seven days (odd numbers are yang) and the other recovers in six (even numbers yin).

What we see here is a man with an analytical mind who decides to use the broadest method of classification of all – that of dichotomy. From this dichotomy, he provides an answer to the question “how long will this patient take to recover” but assigning a number to each distinct set.

I wouldn’t agree with this kind of theoretical construct, because it would collapse under the challenge of the scientific method. Nonetheless, we must still appreciate that he was asking questions and giving answers.

That said, this is one possibility, that his entire sampling of patients either recovered on the sixth day or seventh – and those that recovered on the sixth day showed only an aversion to cold, while those that recovered on the seventh day were all having fevers and aversion to cold. Most possible with a small sample size, for example two patients. But he had to have had many more, no?

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