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Grenoble: P. Charvvs, 1671, 12°, (12), 135, (1), (6), pp., contemporary sheep, spine gilt; fresh and bright, a fine copy. Chinese & Japanese ground-breaking Medical Text! First edition of an exceptionally rare book, it is "the first Western book on Chinese medicine, with a few brief comments on Japanese methods. This anonymous collection of translations of early Chinese texts on pulse medicine has been variously attributed to different Jesuits working in China at the time." Garrison & Morton This work gives the first account in the West of the Chinese theory of pulses and of the theory and practice of acupuncture. The text appears to be a Compilation of Chinese texts translated or summarized and seems to be a partial source for the two books generally credited with giving the first Western accounts of Chinese medicine: Andreas Cleyer's 'Specimen Medicinae Sinicae' (Frankfurt: 1682) and Michal Piotr Boym's 'Clavis Medica ad Chinarum doctrinam de pulsibus' (Nuremberg: 1686). The authorship of this book is not known. The Wellcome and NLM catalogues site the following as authors, or possible authors, while noting the reservations of Grmek: Louis-Augustin Alemand (1643-1728), Michel Boym (1612-59), and Julien Placide Flervieu (1671-1746), but dates alone rule out all three. The author, a Jesuit, States that he is writing from Canton in 1668, having been ejected from Peking along with his fellow Christians. M.D. Grmek, in "Les Reflets de la Sphygmologie chinoise dans la Medecine occidentale," Biologie medicale, Vol. 51 (1962), pp. lix-lxiii proposes as possible candidates the Jesuit fathers Jean Valat, Adrien Greslon, Humbert Augery, Jacques Le Favre, Claude and Jacques Motal and Philippe Couplet. However there is no convincing evidence for any attribution. During the last third party of the 17th century, the first monographs written by Westerners on the theoretical and practical aspects of the pulse diagnosis in Chinese medicine are published in Europe. Their influence was important as for the interest and for the knowledge about the far eastern practices of health in West. The first one of these books, a work written in French, entitled 'Les Secrets de la Médecine des Chinois consistant en la parfaite connaissance du Pouls' , published in 1671, was initially awarded, by mistake, to Louis Augustine ALLEMAND. Historians and sinologists wondered a long time about the real author and about the precise Chinese sources of this treatise of sphygmology. No copy of this book is located by OCLC in the U.S. (although there is a copy at NLM). "Brown is the first institution in the Northeast to hold a copy and one of only seven institutions worldwide." Brown University Library (2011) Garrison-Morton 6491.9; Krivatsy 10856.
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