I don't know about the correlation you wanted but I can help you by providing few interesting information, if you interested in traditional and alternative medicine, check it out, you will find many similarities between ancient Greek medicine and ancient Indian medicine the "Ayuerveda". Even the mythological and cultural similarity is more significant here. It is believed that the connection between this two regions actually resembles the same hierarchy which represents same origin.

I hope this may be helpful: 'Some civilizations improved their methods of healing and their knowledge of the human body over the ages. Some didn’t. Survival of a civilization was, to some degree, dependent upon the extent to which medical knowledge was pursued and applied.  The success of the Chinese people is attributed to several aspects of their society. They have enjoyed a long and unbroken span of building upon what knowledge they had. What is more, they chronicled their findings from a very early time. Though they have suffered changes in government, their scientific knowledge and books were nearly always left unharmed, unchanged and improvements continued uninterrupted.'  (Please read all.)

http://www.traditionalchinesetherapy.com/?page_id=2

I know a lilltle about Chinese Medicine, nothing about ancient Greek medicine. If you want do something, I will give you some help about Chinese medicine.

I think the classical scholar G.E.R. Lloyd has written some comparative stuff on medicine in these two ancient cultures. Don't have the references offhand but should be easy enough to find via Google Scholar?

Thank you for all your answers.  This book by Lloyd seems very appropriate "The Way and the Word: Science and Medicine in Early China and Greece", has anyone read it or suggest an other one to start with?

There is an excellent book: "The Expressiveness of the Body and the Divergence of Greek and Chinese Medicine" that looks at this specific question.  I suggest you use that as a starting point for your research.

Francesco- through my readings ayurvedic medicine (5,000 years old)  was the commencement of some type of systematic understanding of medicine, through wars medicine changed, eg the Greeks (medicine about 2,000years old) invaded India and a mesh of medicine commenced. The Chinese (4,000 years old) were the only ones who remained true to the original roots of medicine ( ayurvedic) and they developed  it and of course if you think laterally you will see that these ancient medicines have much in common, eventhough the terminlogy is different. You need to think of the franca lingua. 

a) The books of GER Lloyd are a very good place to start; (1) "The Way and the Word" (2002) is good one; you might also try (2) "The ambitions of curiosity: understanding the world in ancient Greece and China" (2002), and (3) "Principles and practices in ancient Greek and Chinese science" (2006), a collection of his essays and papers.

b) Elizabeth Craik has spotted some parallels, see her "The Hippocratic treatise On glands" (2009), and references to papers by her therein.

From my study there is more correlation between Greek and Ayuraveda. Traditional Thai Medicine also derived from Indian medicine and the physiology of our bodies are the Tridosha; Kapha, Pitta and Vata while Chinese has Yin and Yang. The ancient Greek also mention the 6 principle Jakras which are the same as those in Ayuraveda; Munladhara (root), Svatischtana (hip/genitals), Manipura (navel),Anahata (heart) Visuddha (throat), Ajna (third eye), and Sahastrara (crown). Moreover Unani Medicine also has similar paradigmas Ayuraveda. The medicinal plants used in Unani Medicine are very similar to Thai medicine. In my opinion as a Pharmacist it is easier to match the Tridosha system to western medicine.

Desde un punto de vista histórico, la intención ‘difusionista’ de encontrar influencias o elementos comunes entre la medicina tradicional china y la medicina griega (sobre todo, si se está pensando en la hipocrática), partiendo, por ejemplo, de la información de Heródoto (III y ss) sobre Democedes de Crotona y Ctesias de Cnido en Oriente próximo (y tal vez, un tanto especulativamente, en la India), se notan claros vínculos (sino influencias) de la Ayurveda en el Corpus Hippocraticum (sobre todo en el pneumatismo de tratados como Sobre aires, aguas y lugares y la teoría humoral, ya esbozada por Alcmeón de Crotona y el tratado Sobre los humores). Sin embargo se han hecho intentos, muy interesantes, bajo la influencia de las corrientes de la antropología cultural, el análisis del discurso, y, últimamente, por algunos discípulos de Jean Paul Vernant, la influencia del deseo (teoría psicoanalítica lacaniana) de redefinir la teoría difusionista, dentro de las tendencias ‘continuistas’ de la historia y de la filosofía de la ciencia.

Sobre las relaciones de la medicina griega con la ayurveda, señaladas por la colega Vallisuta, estoy de acuerdo y sugiero al colega el libro ya clásico de Jean Filliozat, The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine. Its origins and its Greek parallels, publicada en Frances, en 1964.

Sobre las relaciones de la medicina tradicional china con la medicina hipocrática, sugiero el libro de dos excelentes estudiosos de la historia de la medicina griega de y de la china: Geofrey Lloyd and Nathan Sivin, The Way and the Word. Science and Medicine in Early China and Greece, publicado en 2003. Alli se piensa un enlace epistémico por la vía de un enfoque cosmológico, holístico-complejo, ya visible en los presocráticos (o “maestros de sabiduría”) y las concepciones naturalistas-inmanentistas- holísticas del Tao-TaiChi y el Kosmos-mikrocosmos de los primeros sabios de la ciencia y los escritores del Corpus Huippocraticum y su validación por Platón en el Fedro el Gorgias.

Debemos recordar que el tema de las influencias, las difusiones, los continuismos y dis-continuismos, sigue abierto como los temas de la “cuetion homérica”, la “cuestión hipocratica”, y podríamos agregar, la “cuestión presocrática”, pues ya se han descubierto influencias impensables hace unas dos décadas, por ejemplo, la supuesta ruptura radical de los primeros cosmólogos con ideación mágica ( y lo mismo con respecto a los hipocráticos, como en caso del autor de Sobre la enfermedad sagrada y La Medicina Antigua, quienes, a luz de un nueva hermenéutica, ya no se ven tan ‘científicos’ y se les descubre todavía un nexo ético-epistémico con la ideación cosmogónica.

Visto así, profesor, a mi modo de ver, se puede intentar buscar nuevos puntos de contacto Chino-Griego, a partir del análisis de las fuentes primarias, el enfoque histórico (que no historicista) y las aproximaciones al contexto de emergencia, político-religioso-social, de conceptos claves.

Un saludo,

Yidy Páez Casadiego

Departamento de Historia y Ciencias Sociales

There is a conference that might interest you as enclosed.

Take a look to this http://akadimia.gr/book/ .  Its a free e-book (in english)  and maybe its helpfull

Hello Francesco, You might want to look into prof, Kuriyama's work. The Expressiveness of the Body and the Divergence of Greek and Chinese Medicine. He is a highly respected scholar from Harvard University, who has done a great comparison between these two traditions. 

Thank you all for your suggestions. I've just fineshed "The way and the word" by GER Lloyd. I have to say, it's really an interesting book, and I've really liked some philological parts, but it is not about medicine. It is an amazing study on sociological and phylosophical basis of these two cultures, but it does not investigate medical aspects.

You see, the problem with this book, and other books of history of medicine, is that thay do not go deeper analyzing how theoretical models were applied to actual medical conditions.

Anyway I do think this is a masterpiece in the history of medicine field, but it's not what I was looking for

You might want to take a look at Paul Unschuld's books about Chinese Medicine. He ia a sinologist and translator of classical Chinese Medicine works. In "Medicine in China: A History of Ideas" (at least in the preface) he talks about Greece and China and their medical systems and how they are or are not related. Hope this helps.

Well-documented contact between the Bactrian Greeks and the Chinese resulted in the Greek kings using nickel in their coins (Kings Agathocles & Pantaleon) imported from China as well as the technology of producing such coins. In return the Chinese imported protective "city walls" from the Greeks and used this method to protect themselves from the warriors from the north (The Walls of China). Probable dates of such a contact is before 250 BC. The route that the Greeks took towards China was probably through the Ferghana Valley and today's city of Urumqi, where we have the picture of a Greek warrior in the local museum.

picture of the famous walls of Bactra attached 

Dear all,

I am still interested in the topic and trying to find answers.

I am currently reading "What is medicine? Western and Eastern approaches to healing" by P. Unschuld, I do recommed it even though it's a book on history of ideas.

As I previously said, I think scholars not claerly in the field of medicine do perform amazing reasearch in the field of history of ideas, but they lack to deepen the question of pathologies and to compare different systems of healing

You can read an article: "Hippocrates meets the Yellow Emperor"

Article Hippocrates Meets the Yellow Emperor: on the Reception of Ch...