Illness we share with our ancestors. Diagnosis and remedies set us and them apart.

Imagine yourself a Kyoto noble 1,000-odd years ago. You're feeling unwell. "One of two things," you muse to yourself, "either my yin-yang balance is upset, or ..." The second possibility makes you shudder: "Am I possessed by an evil spirit?"

Yin and yang were the elemental components of the universe: dark, moist, female yin; bright, dry, male yang. A yin-yang imbalance caused natural disasters and political upheaval in the world, disease in the body. A physician could deal with the latter. He was a sage, a learned man — learned, however, not in what we today call science but in ancient Chinese literary classics that defined health as it defined morality — a matter of being in tune with the forces of the universe. With acupuncture, moxibustion and herbal medicines he labored to restore the ailing body to its rightful universal alignment.