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Three Corpses
The ''sanshi'' 三尸 "Three Corpses" or ''sanchong'' 三蟲 "Three Worms" are a Taoist physiological belief or concept that demonic creatures live inside the human body, and they seek to hasten the death of their host. These three supernatural parasites allegedly enter the person at birth, and reside in the three ''dantian'' "energy centers", respectively located within the head, chest, and abdomen. After their human host dies, they are freed from the body and become malevolent ghosts. The pernicious Three Corpses/Worms work to harm their host's health and fate by initiating sicknesses, inviting other disease-causing agents into the body, and reporting their host's transgressions to the Gods. The Three Corpses are supposed to keep records of their host's misdeeds, ascend to Tian "Heaven" bimonthly on the night of Chinese sexagenary ''gengshen'' 庚申 "57th of the 60-day cycle" while the host is sleeping, and file reports to the Siming 司命 "Director of Destinies" who deducts ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Causative
In linguistics, a causative (abbreviated ) is a valency-increasing operationPayne, Thomas E. (1997). Describing morphosyntax: A guide for field linguists'' Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 173–186. that indicates that a subject either causes someone or something else to do or be something or causes a change in state of a non-volitional event. Normally, it brings in a new argument (the causer), A, into a transitive clause, with the original subject S becoming the object O. All languages have ways to express causation but differ in the means. Most, if not all, languages have specific or ''lexical'' causative forms (such as English ''rise'' → ''raise'', ''lie'' → ''lay'', ''sit'' → ''set''). Some languages also have morphological devices (such as inflection) that change verbs into their causative forms or change adjectives into verbs of ''becoming''. Other languages employ periphrasis, with control verbs, idiomatic expressions or auxiliary verbs. There tends to be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gods
A deity or god is a supernatural being who is considered divine or sacred. The ''Oxford Dictionary of English'' defines deity as a god or goddess, or anything revered as divine. C. Scott Littleton defines a deity as "a being with powers greater than those of ordinary humans, but who interacts with humans, positively or negatively, in ways that carry humans to new levels of consciousness, beyond the grounded preoccupations of ordinary life". Religions can be categorized by how many deities they worship. Monotheistic religions accept only one deity (predominantly referred to as "God"), whereas polytheistic religions accept multiple deities. Henotheistic religions accept one supreme deity without denying other deities, considering them as aspects of the same divine principle. Nontheistic religions deny any supreme eternal creator deity, but may accept a pantheon of deities which live, die and may be reborn like any other being. Although most monotheistic religions traditionally ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bregma
The bregma is the anatomical point on the skull at which the coronal suture is intersected perpendicularly by the sagittal suture. Structure The bregma is located at the intersection of the coronal suture and the sagittal suture on the superior middle portion of the calvaria. It is the point where the frontal bone and the two parietal bones meet. Development The bregma is known as the anterior fontanelle during infancy. The anterior fontanelle is membranous and closes in the first 18-36 months of life. Clinical significance Cleidocranial dysostosis In the birth defect cleidocranial dysostosis, the anterior fontanelle never closes to form the bregma. Surgical landmark The bregma is often used as a reference point for stereotactic surgery of the brain. It may be identified by blunt scraping of the surface of the skull and washing to make the meeting point of the sutures clearer. Neonatal examination Examination of an infant includes palpating the anterior fontanel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Traditional Chinese Medicines Derived From The Human Body
Li Shizhen's (1597) ''Bencao gangmu'', the classic materia medica of traditional Chinese medicine ( TCM), included 35 human drugs, including organs, bodily fluids, and excreta. Crude drugs derived from the human body were commonplace in the early history of medicine. Some of these TCM human drug usages are familiar from alternative medicine, such as medicinal breast milk and urine therapy. Others are uncommon, such as the "mellified man", which was a foreign nostrum allegedly prepared from the mummy of a holy man who only ate honey during his last days and whose corpse had been immersed in honey for 100 years. Historical background Chinese herbalists and doctors have used medicines from the human body for over two millennia. The earliest known example is the 168 BCE '' Wushier bingfang'' medical text that prescribes using ingredients such as hair, fingernail, and ''nüzǐbù'' (女子布, "women's enstrualcloth"). Contents Li Shizhen's (1518-1593) magnum opus, the ''Bencao ga ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Demonic Possession
Spirit possession is an unusual or altered state of consciousness and associated behaviors purportedly caused by the control of a human body by spirits, ghosts, demons, or gods. The concept of spirit possession exists in many cultures and religions, including Buddhism, Christianity,Mark 5:9, Luke 8:30 Haitian Vodou, Hinduism, Islam, Wicca, and Southeast Asian, African, and Native American traditions. Depending on the cultural context in which it is found, possession may be considered voluntary or involuntary and may be considered to have beneficial or detrimental effects on the host. In a 1969 study funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, spirit possession beliefs were found to exist in 74% of a sample of 488 societies in all parts of the world, with the highest numbers of believing societies in Pacific cultures and the lowest incidence among Native Americans of both North and South America. As Pentecostal and Charismatic Christian churches move into both African ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Etiological
Etiology (pronounced ; alternatively: aetiology or ætiology) is the study of causation or origination. The word is derived from the Greek (''aitiología'') "giving a reason for" (, ''aitía'', "cause"); and ('' -logía''). More completely, etiology is the study of the causes, origins, or reasons behind the way that things are, or the way they function, or it can refer to the causes themselves. The word is commonly used in medicine (pertaining to causes of disease) and in philosophy, but also in physics, psychology, government, geography, spatial analysis, theology, and biology, in reference to the causes or origins of various phenomena. In the past, when many physical phenomena were not well understood or when histories were not recorded, myths often arose to provide etiologies. Thus, an etiological myth, or origin myth, is a myth that has arisen, been told over time or written to explain the origins of various social or natural phenomena. For example, Virgil's ''Aeneid'' is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bencao Gangmu
The ''Bencao gangmu'', known in English as the ''Compendium of Materia Medica'' or ''Great Pharmacopoeia'', is an encyclopedic gathering of medicine, natural history, and Chinese herbology compiled and edited by Li Shizhen and published in the late 16th century, during the Ming dynasty. Its first draft was completed in 1578 and printed in Nanjing in 1596. The ''Compendium'' lists the '' materia medica'' of traditional Chinese medicine known at the time, including plants, animals, and minerals that were believed to have medicinal properties. Over the centuries it was reprinted, translated, and cited widely. In the twentieth century was adopted as a basis for Traditional Chinese Medicine. Li compiled his entries not only from hundreds of earlier works in the ''bencao'' medical tradition, but from literary and historical texts. He reasoned that a poem might have better value that a medical work and that a tale of the strange could illustrate a drug's effects. Name The title, tran ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Li Shizhen
Li Shizhen (July 3, 1518 – 1593), courtesy name Dongbi, was a Chinese acupuncturist, herbalist, naturalist, pharmacologist, physician, and writer of the Ming dynasty. He is the author of a 27-year work, found in the ''Compendium of Materia Medica'' (''Bencao Gangmu''; ). He developed several methods for classifying herb components and medications for treating diseases. CNTV Documentary on the life and achievements of Li Shizhen, with focus on his work ''Compendium of Materia Medica''. Title is (English translation is "Medical and Pharmacological Sage Lishizhen"). Part of the serie(English name is "Around China"). English subtitles are available. The ''Compendium'' is a materia medica text with 1,892 entries, with details about more than 1,800 traditional Chinese medicines, including 1,100 illustrations and 11,000 prescriptions. It also described the type, form, flavor, nature and application in disease treatments of 1,094 herbs. The book has been translated into ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Etiology (medicine)
Cause, also known as etiology () and aetiology, is the reason or origination of something. The word ''etiology'' is derived from the Greek , ''aitiologia'', "giving a reason for" (, ''aitia'', "cause"; and , '' -logia''). Description In medicine, etiology refers to the cause or causes of diseases or pathologies. Where no etiology can be ascertained, the disorder is said to be idiopathic. Traditional accounts of the causes of disease may point to the "evil eye". The Ancient Roman scholar Marcus Terentius Varro put forward early ideas about microorganisms in a 1st-century BC book titled ''On Agriculture''. Medieval thinking on the etiology of disease showed the influence of Galen and of Hippocrates. Medieval European doctors generally held the view that disease was related to the air and adopted a miasmatic approach to disease etiology. Etiological discovery in medicine has a history in Robert Koch's demonstration that species of the pathogenic bacteria ''Mycobacterium tuberculos ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Traditional Chinese Medicine
Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is an alternative medical practice drawn from traditional medicine in China. It has been described as "fraught with pseudoscience", with the majority of its treatments having no logical mechanism of action. Medicine in traditional China encompassed a range of sometimes competing health and healing practices, folk beliefs, literati theory and Confucian philosophy, herbal remedies, food, diet, exercise, medical specializations, and schools of thought. In the early twentieth century, Chinese cultural and political modernizers worked to eliminate traditional practices as backward and unscientific. Traditional practitioners then selected elements of philosophy and practice and organized them into what they called "Chinese medicine" (''Zhongyi''). In the 1950s, the Chinese government sponsored the integration of Chinese and Western medicine, and in the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, promoted Chinese medicine as inexpensive a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polysemy
Polysemy ( or ; ) is the capacity for a sign (e.g. a symbol, a morpheme, a word, or a phrase) to have multiple related meanings. For example, a word can have several word senses. Polysemy is distinct from ''monosemy'', where a word has a single meaning. Polysemy is distinct from homonymy—or homophony—which is an accidental similarity between two or more words (such as ''bear'' the animal, and the verb ''bear''); whereas homonymy is a mere linguistic coincidence, polysemy is not. In discerning whether a given set of meanings represent polysemy or homonymy, it is often necessary to look at the history of the word to see whether the two meanings are historically related. Dictionary writers often list polysemes (words or phrases with different, but related, senses) in the same entry (that is, under the same headword) and enter homonyms as separate headwords (usually with a numbering convention such as ''¹bear'' and ''²bear''). Polysemes A polyseme is a word or phrase wit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
