From 'Medical Prescriptions' to the 'Maritime Saint of Medicine': Decoding the Healthcare Logic of Wu Ben Belief in Fujian Archives
Geographic Connections Tongan Baijiao (now part of Longhai), Qingjiao (now Haicang, Xiamen), Quanzhou (Zayton), Fuzhou, Zhangzhou, Xiamen, Kinmen, Taiwan (Yunlin, Xuejia, Taichung, Taipei, Kaohsiung), Penghu, Manila, and Singapore. Introduction: Survival Wisdom in the ‘Land of Miasma’ In the opening chapters of the Fujian Provincial Chronicles: Medicine, Fujian is described as a region “backed by mountains and facing the sea, with a hot and humid climate,” historically prone to epidemics where bacteria and disease-carrying insects thrived. The famous Song Dynasty scholar Wang Anshi once sighed in a poem: “Fujian’s mountains reach Zhangzhou’s end… where mist and miasma arise in spring and winter.” This extreme environment forced the ancestors of Fujian to develop a unique healthcare system—one that appears in digital archives as a fusion of “Medicine, Pharmacy, and Divinity.” ...