Pain doll
A pain doll (also a doctor females , English Doctor's lady ) is an often artfully crafted female nude or Halbaktfigur 10-25 cm in length, those which ladies Chinese upper class in case of illness as a medium for communication with healers of traditional Chinese medicine served.
Between about 1300 and 1700, during the times of the Ming and early Qing dynasties , Chinese women were not allowed to undress in front of a doctor due to the dictates of custom and decency. It was also considered unthinkable that traditionally male healers were allowed to touch the bodies of women. In the event of illness, patients had a pain dummy come home, marked the painful part of the body on it and sent it back to the doctor by servants. Using the figure, the messenger could then show the healer where the lady of the house had her complaints. This preserved anonymity vis-à-vis the “impure doctor”, who often came from a potentially lower, if not despised class of the population, and protected the patient's feelings of shame. After the healer had made a remote diagnosis, the messenger returned to the patient with an appropriate medicine.
The partly unclothed and polished female figures, which are carved from ivory , bone , alabaster , resin , soapstone and gemstone such as amber or jade , often only wear small shoes on their lotus feet and often appear in elegant reclining poses on separate sofa beds made of rosewood, for example can. As a hairstyle, the artists worked out knots carefully tied at the neck of many of the dolls and also provided the figures with jewelry such as bracelets or earrings. Older exhibits made of ivory also have gilding. Male counterparts of these dolls are rare and, if available, usually fully clothed.
Early dolls have pronounced Asian features; the numerous mostly unclothed figures of the 19th and 20th centuries have more western features and show more erotic-looking poses. The latter were mostly made for decorative purposes for the tourist souvenir trade or for ivory collectors, the number of modern counterfeits is enormous.
reception
The sinologists Henri Maspero and Robert van Gulik assumed that the figures were used as pain dolls in the diagnosis.
Christine Ruggere, curator of the Department of the History of Medicine at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore , questioned the use of the dolls for medical purposes and suggested that they represent erotic art .
Charlotte Furth, professor emeritus of Chinese history at the University of Southern California , could find no evidence of such dolls in her studies of traditional Chinese medical texts. She shares the opinion of some art historians that the dolls were offered and sold as curiosities in Chinese contract ports in the 19th and 20th centuries . The recumbent position of the figures is similar to the posture taken in photographs of Chinese prostitutes. The pictures were based on the western model of Edouard Manet's painting Olympia and were sold in the late Qing period.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Hans-Georg Lesser: Kulturrümmer. Postmodern Lexicon. Blue Owl, 1988. ISBN 3-89206-222-6 , p. 162.
- ^ Tania Heller: You and Your Doctor. A Guide to a Healing Relationship, with Physicians' Insights. McFarland & Company, p. 66.
- ↑ Wolf Lübbers, Christian W. Lübbers : Fine ladies for the impure doctor. The doctor's lady. Urban & Vogel 2012, doi : 10.1007 / s00060-012-0279-5 . In: ENT News issue 3/2012, p. 48.
- ↑ Jürgen Thorwald: Power and Secret of the Early Doctors. Egypt, Babylonia, India, China, Mexico, Peru. Droemer Knaur, Munich 1962, 10th edition 1993, ISBN 3-426-77064-4 , p. 236.
- ↑ What Is a Doctor's Lady? In: ivoryandart.com
- ↑ a b c Donald Blaufox: Category: Misc. Diagnostic. Estimated Date: 1850. Name: Doctors Lady. In: Museum of Historical Medical Artefacts.
