Lam Qua and the development of a westernized medical iconography in China.

The relationship between Chinese models of science and those in the West has been the topic of one of the most striking scholarly undertakings of the last thirty years, Joseph Needham's multi-volume history of science and technology in China.' The central theme of Needham's study is the autonomy of Chinese science and its central role in the development of a scientific world-view of the "Orient", which is of equal stature to that of "occidental" science. The mythology which Needham succeeds in destroying is that the Chinese, although able to evolve rather sophisticated technologies, remained on a relatively primitive level of technical sophistication, especially in comparison with the parallel rate of scientific and technological progress in the West. Needham counters this by showing the complexity as well as the autonomy of Chinese scientific thought and by stressing its progress within a model of "Chinese" science. As of yet only peripherally covered in Needham's monumental undertaking is the development of the theories and technologies of Chinese medicine.2 This area,