  The first section locates medicine among the Chinese sciences and introduces the intellectual shared common ground of Chinese philosophy and Chinese medicine, including shared theories of qi, yin-yang and “Five Agents” (wuxing) and their use in analogies between the human body and the state and cosmos, including the development of a systematic medical theory of the body. Section Two introduces the important medical contributions of “nurturing life” (yang sheng) traditions.  Section Three takes up what has been represented as a long shared history of Daoism and medicine in the works of three great Daoist physicians. Section Four returns to the views of Zhang Xichun and his claims for an explicit link between Chinese Medicine and Chinese Philosophy.