頭髮、疾病與醫療──以中國漢唐之間的醫學文獻為主的初步探討

Medical Knowledge and Uses of Hair in Traditional China

在傳統中國社會中，頭髮具有無比的重要性。「髮式」往往成為族群、年齡、性別、身分、地位和文明的標幟，髮質的良窳則被認為是衡量美麗與健康的標準，許多的法律和習俗也都和保護頭髮有關。此外，頭髮通常也是中國巫術和儀式中不可或缺的物件。然而，更值得我們注意的是，以中國的醫藥傳統來說，頭髮被認為是構成生命的主要元素之一。因此，藉著頭髮的品質、顏色、數量和長度，便可以診斷一個人的性格和身心狀況，而種種養護頭髮的方法也屢屢見於記載。此外，頭髮還被用以治療各種疾病，同時也被認為是造成疾病的原因。這些有關頭髮的觀念和習俗充分顯示，對於頭髮的認知，傳統中國社會與現代人似乎有非常大的差異。

In 1911 huge numbers of Chinese in Mainland China and in Taiwan started to cut off their queues. Although this was not the first time Chinese people changed their hair style, it was the first time the Chinese changed their hair-style from long to short. Moreover, it should be noted that Chinese changed their hair styles for a variety of reasons. For instance, unlike their predecessors in the 12th, 13th and 17th centuries and their 20th century contemporaries, Chinese people in Taiwan were not at first forced by the government to change their hair-styles, and had very unique reasons for cutting off their queues. Taiwan was occupied by Japanese forces in 1895. After establishing themselves on the island, Japanese officials soon determined that the queue, footbinding and opium-smoking were the three most intolerable ''bad customs'' in Taiwan. They did not, however, try to change these customs by force. On the contrary, they decided to transform these customs gradually by education. In 1911 these efforts were assisted by a journalist and a traditional Chinese physician who promoted a movement for encouraging people to cut their queues. They soon received support from many people and the Japanese colonial government. The leaders and supporters of this movement believed that the queue was not only an obstacle to the assimilation of Taiwanese (Chinese in Taiwan) to Japanese culture, but also a symbol of backwardness and a retreat from the new civilization (i.e. Western or modem civilization). They further attempted to buttress these symbolic arguments with more practical claims that the queue or long hair was inconvenient and unhygienic.