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One of the most important archaeological finds excavated from the Tianhui Laoguanshan Han tombs in 2012–13 was a manuscript on horse medicine, dated around the third century BCE. Prior to the discovery of this highly specialized veterinary text, only a handful of horse recipes from the Qin and Han periods had been found, and a sixth-century CE agricultural treatise, Essential Techniques for the Common People , was generally regarded as the earliest surviving source of extensive veterinary material, including various medical treatments for horses. Although the Laoguanshan manuscript – given the modern title Book of Treating Horses by the Team for Collating the Medical Bamboo Slips Excavated from the Han Tombs in Tianhui Town, Chengdu – has suffered significant damage, it nevertheless gives us an insight into the knowledge and treatments for horses during the Qin and early Han periods. A variety of ways of treating horses are recorded in Treating Horses , including herbal remedies, piercing, cauterization, hot packs, bandages, massage, and bathing. The use of gold needles is also mentioned in this text, echoing the gold and silver sewing needles excavated from Liu Sheng's (d. 113 BCE) tomb in Mancheng, Hebei Province. This paper offers a short introduction to this valuable text on horse medicine by examining the content of its fragments, including names of ailments, symptoms of certain diseases, etiologies, and treatment methods. The discovery of Treating Horses challenges the established view that horse treatment methods in ancient China were predominantly herbal and that techniques of bleeding and cauterization recorded in Essential Techniques were brought to China from elsewhere, together with the introduction of Buddhism. The paper argues that the "foreign influence" had already occurred at a much earlier date, in the form of interactions with nomadic tribes such as the Scythians, the horsemen par excellence of classical antiquity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The name Bian Que, like that of the Yellow Emperor (Huangdi), has reverberated through the development of Chinese medicine since the time of the Warring States. The discovery of a human figurine showing channels and strategic points, together with a number of medical texts, during the excavation of the Laoguanshan Han tomb in Chengdu, Sichuan, in 2012–13 has reignited controversies about whether it is correct to speak of a specific Bian Que school, or whether, as this paper argues, these texts were written by the Han physicians who used Bian Que as a mouthpiece to record their own medical expositions. The paper begins by examining the main characteristics of the Laoguanshan human figurine and discusses what this excavated artifact reveals about the early history of Chinese medicine. It questions the existence of the so-called Bian Que school and, obliquely, the suggested relationships between the school and the figurine and between the school and medical texts found in the same tomb. The paper shows how diverse the disjointed knowledge of medicine was and that the idea of a "school" does not accurately reflect what was happening in the transmission of medical knowledge during the Warring States, Qin, and Han periods (475 BCE–220 CE). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The text discussed in this paper is part of the collection of bamboo slip medical manuscripts excavated from the Laoguanshan Han tomb outside of Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China, in 2012. We have given it the title Piercing Methods based on its contents. This text provides invaluable new material for understanding the historical development of Chinese medicine and acupuncture over the course of the Han dynasty (202 BCE–220 CE). We combine analyses of excavated manuscripts, received texts, and excavated artifacts to reconstruct the piercing methods from the early Han presented in this text. Three primary sets of techniques and associated piercing tools have been identified: mai piercing, division piercing, and piercing water (swelling), although only the first technique that concerns treating the mai is dealt with comprehensively in this article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]