A Chinese Doctor in Eighteenth-Century Naples and the Practice of Pulse Diagnosis

Abstract Diagnosing a patient on the basis of their pulse alone is an impressive demonstration of medical ability for which early modern Chinese doctors were famous. This article looks at the early history of Chinese medicine in Europe by examining the encounter between Xu Shizhi, who travelled to Naples to study for the Catholic priesthood but became a sensation as a doctor, and Domenico Cirillo, a prominent physician who met him through a patient and became interested in Chinese medicine. Although Chinese pulse manuals had been translated into European languages, the sense of touch is impossible to convey in words, but when Xu met Cirillo, he was able to demonstrate how to feel the pulse. Cirillo then combined elements of Chinese medicine and new vitalist theories of the nervous system to produce a system of his own, published as the Tractatus de pulsibus, which he taught to his students and which became widespread across southern Italy. Recent work on the global circulation of medical ideas in the early modern period has focused on texts and pharmaceuticals, and on encounters in colonial spaces. Xu and Cirillo’s story suggests the importance of personal interactions in conveying tacit knowledge as a key part of this circulation.