Description
Book SynopsisArgues that developments in biomedicine in China should be at the center of our understanding of biomedicine, not at the periphery Today China is a major player in advancing the frontiers of biomedicine, yet previous accounts have examined only whether medical ideas and institutions created in the West were successfully transferred to China. This is the firstbook to demonstrate the role China played in creating a globalized biomedicine between 1850 and 1950. This was China's "Century of Humiliation" when imperialist powers dominated China's foreign policy and economy, forcing it to join global trends that included limited public health measures in the nineteenth century and government-sponsored healthcare in the twentieth. These external pressures, combined with a vast population immiserated by imperialism and the decline of the Chinese traditional economy, created extraordinary problems for biomedicine that were both unique to China and potentially applicable to other developing nations. In this book, scholars based in China, the United States, and the United Kingdom make the case that developments in biomedicine in China such as the discovery of new diseases, the opening of the medical profession to women, the mass production of vaccines, and the delivery ofhealthcare to poor rural areas should be at the center of our understanding of biomedicine, not at the periphery. CONTRIBUTORS: Daniel Asen, Nicole Barnes, Mary Augusta Brazelton, Gao Xi , He Xiaolian, Li Shenglan, David Luesink, William H. Schneider, Shi Yan, Yu Xinzhong, DAVID LUESINK is Assistant Professor of History at Sacred Heart University. WILLIAM H. SCHNEIDER is Professor Emeritus of History and Medical Humanities at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis. ZHANG DAQING is Professor and Director, Institute of Medical Humanities at Peking University in Beijing.
Trade ReviewIn summary, this volume provides a fascinating illustration of the diversified biomedical field in modern China, solidly anchored in both global and Chinese contexts. It also engages with serious historiographical endeavours to decentralize the West and to grapple with the tension between global modernity and local practice, which will benefit readers from a broad humanities and social sciences. -- H-Net Reviews
Table of ContentsIntroduction: China and the Globalization of Biomedicine - David Luesink PART 1. HYGIENE AND DISEASE CONSTRUCTION IN LATE QING CHINA Reflections on the Modernity of Sanitation Construction in the Late Qing Dynasty - Yu Xinzhong Discovering Diseases: Research on the Globalization of Medical Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century China - Gao Xi PART 2. THE INDIGENIZATION OF BIOMEDICINE IN REPUBLICAN CHINA Globalizing Biomedicine through Sino-Japanese Networks: The Case of National Medical College, Beijing, 1912-1937 - Daniel Asen Globalizing Biomedicine through Sino-Japanese Networks: The Case of National Medical College, Beijing, 1912-1937 - David Luesink An Abortive Amalgamation: Multiple Western-Style Doctors in Republican China, 1927-1937 - Shi Yan Shanghai's Female Doctors: A Discussion of the Gendered Politics of Modern Medical Professionalization - He Xiaolian PART 3. THE SPREAD OF BIOMEDICINE TO SOUTHWEST CHINA, 1937-1945 A Social History of Wartime Nursing Training in Hunan, 1937-1945 - Li Shenglan Frontiers of Immunology: Medical Migrations to Yunnan, Vaccine Research and Public Health During the War with Japan, 1937-1945 - Mary Augusta Brazelton Serving the People: Chen Zhiqian and the Sichuan Provincial Health Administration, 1939-1949 - Nicole Barnes Afterword: Western Medicine and Global Health - William H. Schneider List of Chinese and Japanese Names and Terms Notes on Contributors
