Comparative Guts

Comparative
Guts

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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Karten der inneren Landschaften, Bauch- und Rückenansicht — Zwei gleichgroße Blätter liegen nebeneinander. Die Zeichnung links zeigt eine Rückenansicht mit inneren Organen, und die rechts eine Sicht von vorne in den Bauchraum. Der Umriss beider Darstellungen des menschlichen Rumpfes erinnert an eine Flasche mit sehr kurzem Hals und breiter Schulter. Um die Schulter herum liegt eine Art Kragen aus Formen, die an längliche spitz zulaufende Blätter denken lassen. Ihre innere Struktur erscheint wie sich verzweigende Blutgefäße. Auf beiden Zeichnungen sind ein bis zwei Blattspitzen schwarz gestaltet, die die Leberlappen darstellen sollen. Weisse Blätter darüber zeigen die Lungen. Darunter schließen sich Strukturen an, die wie Fischschuppen angeordnet sind, womit die Darmschlingen angedeutet werden. Aus dem Boden der Flaschenformen ragen jeweils kurze halsartige Fortsätze. Auf der linken Zeichnung mit der Rückenansicht erstrecken sich zwei eng aneinander liegende, parallele Linien vom Flaschenboden unten bis zu den Blattspitzen. Etwa auf der Hälfte zweigen zwei kurze horizontale Röhren zu beiden Seiten ab, die an ihren Enden trichterförmig auseinanderstreben. An diesen Enden liegen kidneybohnenartige Gebilde in Schwarz. Sie stellen die Nieren dar. Auf der rechten Zeichnung mit der Bauchansicht befinden sich unterhalb der Fischschuppenstrukturen solche, die horizontal verlaufen und an Zöpfe erinnern. Sie füllen die Fläche bis zum Boden aus. Die Illustrationen nehmen etwa zwei Drittel der Blätter ein. Am oberen Rand beider Blätter befindet sich eine Art Titelzeile mit Schriftzeichen, die sich über die gesamte Breite erstrecken. Weiße Nummern in roten Kreisen sind sowohl innerhalb als auch außerhalb der Umrisse angebracht. Sie sind nachträglich eingefügt worden und bringen die im Original schwer lesbaren chinesischen Beschriftungen und deren englische Übersetzung. So bezeichnet zum Beispiel die Nummer 8 das sogenannte Schicksals-Tor, d.h. die rechte Niere in der Zeichnung links. —— Maps of the Inner Sceneries, Ventral and Dorsal View — Two sheets of the same size lie next to each other. The drawing on the left shows a back view with internal organs, and the one on the right a view from the front into the abdomen. The outline of both representations of the human torso is reminiscent of a bottle with a very short neck and a broad shoulder. Around the shoulder is a kind of collar comprised of shapes reminiscent of elongated pointed leaves. Their inner structure appears like branching blood vessels. In both drawings, one or two leaf tips are designed in black, which is supposed to represent the liver lobes. White leaves above show the lungs. Below them are structures arranged like fish scales, suggesting the intestinal loops. Short neck-like appendages protrude from the bottom of each bottle shape. The sheet marked “F” on the left depicts a dorsal view with internal organs. In the centre, two closely spaced parallel lines extend from the bottom of the bottle to the tips of the leaves. About halfway down, two short horizontal tubes branch off to either side, diverging in a funnel-like fashion at their ends. At these ends are kidney bean-like structures in black. They represent the kidneys. The sheet marked “E” on the right depicts a ventral view into the abdomen, below the fish scale structures are those that run horizontally and resemble plaits. They fill the surface down to the ground. The illustrations take up about two-thirds of the sheets. At the top of both sheets is a kind of title line with characters that extend across the entire width. White numbers in red circles have been inserted inside and outside of the drawing’s outlines. When touched with the computer mouse’s arrow, they reveal the Chinese inscriptions, which are difficult to read in the original and their English translation. For example, on the left sheet marked “F”, number 8 indicates the so-called “Gate of Destiny,” i.e., the right kidney in dorsal view.  
F
‘Map of the inner sceneries in dorsal view’ (Ti ke ge, 3b)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
E
‘Map of the inner sceneries in ventral view’ (Ti ke ge, 3a)

Maps of the inner sceneries • ventral and dorsal view

Songs of the Bodily Husk  (Ti ke ge  體殼歌), in Daoist Canon  (Zhengtong daozang  正統道藏), fasc. 125, no. 263, juan 18: 3a, 3b. Public domain; color scan.

Body parts marked in black are those discussed in Zhu’s treatise. The respective positions of the liver and the spleen are exchanged, as if both ventral and dorsal body maps would depict a situs inversus. Later versions of situs pictures show the more commonly seen arrangement, where the liver is at the right side of the body, and the spleen at the left.

See Frontal illustration (f. 69v) of the small and large intestines (amʿāʾ diqāq wa-ghilāẓ) and the bladder (mathānah) and The Screen Gate (A | 13 lán mén  闌門).

Superintendent Zhu points out asymmetric postions of organs, which were missed in B ‘Master Yan Luo’s map of courting the perfected’ (Ti ke ge, 2b):
“Of the kidneys lies the one to the right of the liver a bit deeper, the one to the left of the spleen a bit higher.”

–

The five storehouses (wǔ zàng  五臟, i.e. lung, heart, spleen, liver, kidney) and five of the six hoards (liù fǔ  六腑, namely stomach, gallbladder, large and small intestine, and urinary bladder) are shown together with three ‘gates’ of the digestive system, i.e. cardia (E | 6), pyloric orifice (E | 8), and ileocecal valve (E | 13).

Body maps are used for five storehouses visualisation: “Gaze inside at the five storehouses: The lung white, the liver blue green, the spleen yellow, the heart red and the kidney black. {One should seek first a diagram of the five storehouses, or of the Master Yan Luo kind. Suspend it constantly on a wall. Cause to know perfectly the forms of the six [recte five] storehouses and the six hoards.}” (Miscellaneous Information from Gui Xin Street by Zhou Mi, 1232-1298, Song)

The ‘gate of destiny’ is placed to the right kidney (F | 8) of a man, and thus closes the debate in the controversy over its precise location. Some specified that in a woman it’s just the other way round: the left kidney being her ‘gate of destiny’. Others had located it between the kidneys, or interpreted it as a male uterus-like organ lying in the pouch of connective tissue, which is now called the rectovesical pouch (Douglas space).

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