Bloodletting in Mongolia: Three Visual Narratives
Authors/Editors: Natasha Fijn, Natalie Köhle, Shigehisa Kuriyama
Publication date: Wednesday, August 12, 2020
Publication type: Article
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Once upon a time, doctors across Eurasia imagined human beings in ways that strike us today as profoundly strange and alien. For over 2,000 years, they worried anxiously about fluids to which our modern doctors spare hardly a thought (such as sweat, phlegm and qi) and they obsessed over details (such as whether a person’s pores were open or closed) whose meaning and vital importance have now largely faded from memory. Through a series of case studies from Europe, India, China, Mongolia and Japan, Fluid Matter(s) suggests ways to make sense of this strange and dimly remembered past, and urges us to reflect anew on the significance of fluids and flows in the history of medicine.
The book also urges us, more generally, to reimagine the way in which we narrate history. The articles here are essays, in the original French sense. They are exploratory trials, experiments to illustrate some of the ways in which digital texts can go beyond the affordances of print. They test visual effects that are inconceivable on a paper page, but that are easily conjured on an electronic screen. Fluid Matter(s) is the first work of its kind: a study that narrates the body’s past in a form that embodies new futures for narrative.
In the essay Bloodletting in Mongolia: Three Visual Narratives, Dr Natasha Fijn explores the ancient medical tradition of bloodletting in Mongolia, which is practised on both humans and horses. Dr Fijn focuses on three experienced practitioners and their treatment of horses through bloodletting.
The collection of essays comes out of a meeting convened in December of 2017 at the Australian Centre of China in the World, The Australian National University, Canberra, which combined a conference on the cross-cultural study of bodily fluids with a workshop on image-based storytelling. Fluid Matter(s) is edited by Natalie Köhle and Shigehisa Kuriyama.
Cite the essay as:
Natasha Fijn, ‘Bloodletting in Mongolia: Three Visual Narratives’. In Fluid Matter(s): Flow and Transformation in the History of the Body, edited by Natalie Köhle and Shigehisa Kuriyama. Asian Studies Monograph Series 14. Canberra, ANU Press, 2020. doi.org/10.22459/FM.2020.