Fortune and the Pulse: Pulse Physiognomy in Mid and Late Imperial China

This paper explores pulse physiognomy in mid and late imperial China and looks at how the traditional Chinese medical knowledge of pulses and bodily channels is systematically used for mantic practices. The pulse is perceived in these medical/mantic texts as a cosmic and numerological phenomenon, and such an understanding of the pulse is the foundation for this medical divination technique. Pulse physiognomy shows the multiple nature of medical knowledge in the traditional Chinese context and the cosmological understanding of medicine and human physiology.