External carotid artery External carotid artery The external carotid artery is a major artery of the head and neck. It arises from the common carotid artery when it splits into the external and internal carotid artery. It supplies blood to the face and neck. The external carotid artery begins at the upper border of thyroid cartilage, and curves, passing forward and upward, and then inclining backward to the space behind the neck of the mandible, where it divides into the superficial temporal and maxillary artery within the parotid gland. It rapidly diminishes in size as it travels up the neck, owing to the
Traditional Chinese medicines derived from the human body "Three Corpses; demonic spirits believed to live in the human body and hasten death" and "gǔdú" 蠱毒 "gu poisoning"; a poison produced by venomous insects; cast a black magic spirit possession over someone". The first "Bencao gangmu" prescription for human nails is not from Chinese medical texts but from Daoist rituals for expelling what (Cooper & Sivin (1973: 220) describe as the "Three Corpse-Worms 三尸, the chief of the "inner gods" who are to the individual microcosm what the celestial bureaucracy is to the cosmos." Prescription 52.6.1, the 斬三尸法 "Method of Beheading the Three Corpses", involves supernaturally cutting the nails