Medical Investigation on Human Pottery Figurines of The Western Han Dynasty
The morphological characteristics of Liao TCM figurines No.1 and No.2 are respectively consistent with the na-ked maid figurines and warrior figurines unearthed from the tombs of Emperor Wen and Emperor Jing of the Western Han Dynas-ty.The style of this type of pottery figurines is realistic,real body shaped and the individually scalptured in head and face.They are of great value to the research of anthropometry and surface anatomical medicine.The data from actual measurements shows that the human body figurines of the Western Han Dynasty are 1/3 miniature of real people,representing the standard male and female adult human bodies during the Western Han Dynasty.The restored height of women in the Han Dynasty is 159 cm and that of men is 172.5 cm,which is basically the same as the 75 Cun described in Neijing and the average height of modern Chinese people.In addition,the head-to-body ratio,foot-to-body ratio,upper-to-lower body ratio and other data of Han figurines are also highly consistent with modern Chinese people.The Proportional Body Cun of the Han Dynasty figurines is highly consist-ent with the Qin and Han metric systems and the human body bone-measurements in Neijing and represents the Standard Body Cun of traditional acupuncture.Most of the 66 commonly used body surface anatomy terms in the"meridian book"of the Western Han Dynasty have sculptural expressions on the bodies of Han figurines,which illustrates the ancients'precise understanding of the human body and the consistency of written and sculptural expressions.The most common use of specific terms for body sur-face structures in the"meridian book"is to express the location of pain,which can be regarded as the early prototype of"acu-points"and"taking the pain point as a acupoint"in traditional Chinese medicine.This study shows that the human body figu-rines of the Western Han Dynasty not only represent the standard male and female human bodies at that time,but also represent the modern human body standards,and have broad international contemporaneity.It may be considered as the"prototype stand-ard"of ancient Chinese anthropometry.Therefore,reconstructing the human body model of meridians according to the Han Dy-nasty is of great significance to the inheritance,medical education,standardization and clinical application of traditional acupunc-ture.
Liao TCM figurinesHan pottery figurinesnaked figurineshuman body figurinebamboo slips and silk medical booksmeridian bookshuman model of meridians and channelsstandardization of acupuncture
万方数据
维普
