Abstract
This article will introduce the changes of the historiography of the Chinese medicine which have been made during the last several decades. These will be described with the changes in the image of the Chinese medicine that has been occupied in our mind. We regard Chinese medicine as a rational knowledge system which is based on the theory of Yin-Yang and Five phases. Therefore we draw a dear line of demarcation between Chinese medicine and irrational cure means such as religious prayer, charms and folk remedies which have no theoretical background. We also think the medical lineages continue virtually uninterrupted over the whole time of the history of Chinese medicine that began from Huangdineijing(皇帝內徑) and Shanghanlun(傷寒論). And we consider Chinese medicine as a sort of science, and suppose there has been one universal and homogeneous medical system in the mainland China. This image, however, has been changing rapidly. These changes come from the join of externalists who were trained as historian not physician, for studying the history of Chinese medicine, and the methodological innovations of historiography which was influenced by the methodologies of anthropology, social history, cultural history and the discourse of postmodemism.
