I took a class recently called "The History of the Body", about how the West has analyzed the body and anatomy from the Greeks to modern times. One of the sections was comparing Western anatomical theory to Eastern, and my professor made a claim that the Chinese of the first millennium (0-1000 AD) did not recognize muscles.
She based this idea on an image similar to [this] (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d2/ChineseMedecine.JPG), saying that Chinese medicine only saw nerves and bones, but didn't recognize a muscular system. I thought this was strange, as I'm sure Chinese medicine must have had theories and techniques for muscular development and dealing with muscular injuries (strains, pulled muscles, etc.). Anyone have any thoughts?
Your teacher was ill informed. The image you linked is of the Stomach channel, one of the primary acupuncture channels, often called meridians. Using such a chart to suggest the Chinese had no conceptual understanding of muscles is like showing a medical drawing of the circulatory system and suggesting western med practitioners don't know anything about the respiratory system. Was this a college course? It is a very irresponsible statement to make.
Anyway, Classical Chinese medicine dealt with muscles and other non-meridian aspects of the superficial body in several different ways, and from very early on, i.e. Han Dynasty at least. The primary channels that deal with the muscles are called the Sinew Channels. My friend Nick, whom I went to acupuncture school, wrote this fine article on the history of the Sinew channels for Acupuncture today.
