Yilin Kaitsuo (Correcting Mistakes in Traditional Medical Wisdom), published in 1830, is one of the best known works among Chinese medical writings in the 19th century. With the lapse of time, it has achieved a measure of either notoriety or fame for its relentless attacks on the traditional descriptions of human anatomy. According to its author, Wang Ch’ing-jen(1768-1831), who practiced medicine in Peiking but remained an obscure character in contemporary medical circles, medical students before him seldom bothered to present themselves beside cadavers to carefully observe human viscera. As a result their topographical and functional descriptions of the wutsan liufu (viscera) are plagued with errors, inconsistencies and contradictions. He forcefully proposed to correct those mistakes and set the record straight with his own observations. For modern scholars who are convinced that studying the fabric of the human body through dissection is the foundation of scientific medicine, Wang Ch’ing-jen represents an avant-garde of the scientific spirit by which the aged Chinese medicine systems should have been rejuvenated and then been capable of competing with Western ones. However, as I argue in this paper, Wang Ch’ing-jen’s inquiries were in fact conducted on traditional terms, both methodologically and ideologically speaking. There is no comparison between his achievements and western human anatomy.

The pursuit of human anatomy in the West has never been confined to medical circles since Aristotle launched his research programmes in biology in the fourth century B.C.. Comparative anatomy was an integral part of Aristotle’s biology. It was this heritage of merging human anatomy with biology that earned Galen (129-99 B.C.), who had never dissected human bodies during his lifetime, his fame as a great master in human anatomy from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. Bred in a different heritage, Wang Ch’ing-jen’s inquisitive mind was framed with little light shed from other sources than medical ones which Manfred Pokert characterizes as antithesis to the practice of dissecting human bodies. While Wang Ch’ing-jen felt compelled to examine for himself more than 30 human cadavers of plague victims, he did it at the risk of his life. Despite his good faith in observing “wu-tsang liu-fu” on his own instead of relying on ancient texts, Wang Ch’ing-jen’s eyes failed to register nuances that might have interested Galen.

In short, Wang observed with a Chinese mind and was not disposed to see Western fabrics.