Description
Book SynopsisA collection exploring public health policies and implementation in Chinese regions of East Asia from the late nineteenth century to the present; many of the contributors are based in Taiwan.
Trade Review“This volume, edited by Angela Ki Che Leung and Charlotte Furth, exemplifies the diverse social science approaches at work in the study of medical/health history. The book offers a fascinating investigation of the health and hygiene developments in twentieth-century Chinese East Asia, with insightful findings.” - Liping Bu,
Social History of Medicine“[T]his book provides many solid case studies to examine the intersections between governments, culture and science. Anyone interested in the history of Chinese medicine, colonial medicine and public health in East Asia will find it helpful.”
- Wen-Ching Sung,
The China Review“This volume skillfully highlights the importance of a holistic view of medicine and an understanding of the ‘web of biological relationships’ between humans and the environment in managing and understanding disease and health (271).” - Tina Phillips
Johnson, Journal of Interdisciplinary History“This timely and diverse volume brings together exemplary scholarship on the history of colonial medicine and public health in China and Taiwan from the late nineteenth century to the present. . . . [T]his invaluable volume commands not only the attention of East Asianists, but all scholars interested in the global circulations of scientific knowledge, medical technologies, and practices of governance.” - Leon Antonio Rocha,
Journal of Asian Studies“This book should be of interest to scholars who want to see a more cosmopolitan approach to the history of medicine. . . . This book departs from earlier scholarship on public health in East Asia in two important aspects. First is the shift in focus to geographical regions that are far from the center of state power, such as Manchuria and the Pearl River delta, as well as the focus on the countryside rather than urban centers. Second, studying the embedded local practices and traditions and their interactions with international and transnational influences allow the authors to break out of the narrative based on imperialism or nation-building as the shaper of public health.” - Yüan-ling Chao,
Bulletin of the History of Medicine“This collection of essays brings together in one volume cutting-edge scholarship on the history of hygiene and public health in East Asia, from the tenth century to the twenty-first. It willed be welcomed not only by researchers on the history of medicine but also by those interested in topics as diverse as imperialism, demography, diet, and gender studies.”—
Carol Benedict, author of
Bubonic Plague in Nineteenth-Century China“This imaginatively conceived volume sets the agenda for an entirely new history of public health. Moving deftly between the local and the global,
Health and Hygiene in Chinese East Asia demonstrates that public health is best understood as a series of relationships rather than as a closed project in nation- or empire-building. As the contributors to this fine book show, there was more than one ‘China’ and certainly more than one ‘public health.’”—
Mark Harrison, University of Oxford
“[T]his book provides many solid case studies to examine the intersections between governments, culture and science. Anyone interested in the history of Chinese medicine, colonial medicine and public health in East Asia will find it helpful.”
-- Wen-Ching Sung * China Review *
“This book should be of interest to scholars who want to see a more cosmopolitan approach to the history of medicine. . . . This book departs from earlier scholarship on public health in East Asia in two important aspects. First is the shift in focus to geographical regions that are far from the center of state power, such as Manchuria and the Pearl River delta, as well as the focus on the countryside rather than urban centers. Second, studying the embedded local practices and traditions and their interactions with international and transnational influences allow the authors to break out of the narrative based on imperialism or nation-building as the shaper of public health.” -- Yüan-ling Chao * Bulletin of the History of Medicine *
“This timely and diverse volume brings together exemplary scholarship on the history of colonial medicine and public health in China and Taiwan from the late nineteenth century to the present. . . . [T]his invaluable volume commands not only the attention of East Asianists, but all scholars interested in the global circulations of scientific knowledge, medical technologies, and practices of governance.” -- Leon Antonio Rocha * Journal of Asian Studies *
“This volume skillfully highlights the importance of a holistic view of medicine and an understanding of the ‘web of biological relationships’ between humans and the environment in managing and understanding disease and health (271).” -- Tina Phillips * Johnson Journal of Interdisciplinary History *
“This volume, edited by Angela Ki Che Leung and Charlotte Furth, exemplifies the diverse social science approaches at work in the study of medical/health history. The book offers a fascinating investigation of the health and hygiene developments in twentieth-century Chinese East Asia, with insightful findings.” -- Liping Bu * Social History of Medicine *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii
Introduction: Hygienic Modernity in Chinese East Asia / Charlotte Furth 1
Part I. Tradition and Transition
The Evolution of the Idea of
Chuanran Contagion in Imperial China / Angela Ki Che Leung 25
The Treatment of Night Soil and Waste in Modern China / Yu Zinzhong 51
Sovereignty and the Microscope: Constituting Notifiable Infectious Disease and Containing the Manchurian Plague (1910–11) / Sean Hsiang-lin Lei 73
Part II. Colonial Health and Hygiene
Eating Well in China: Diet and Hygiene in Nineteenth-Century Treaty Ports / Shang-Jen Li 109
Vampires in Plagueland: The Multiple Meanings of
Weisheng in Manchuria / Ruth Rogaski 132
Have Someone Cut the Umbilical Cord: Women's Birthing Networks, Knowledge, and Skills in Colonial Taiwan / Wu Chia-Ling 160
Part III. Campaigns for Epidemic Control
A Forgotten War: Malaria Eradication in Taiwan, 1905–65 / Lin Yi-ping and Liu Shiyung 183
The Elimination of Schistosomiasis in Jiaxing and Haining Counties, 1948–58: Public Health as Political Movement / Li Yushang 204
Conceptual Blind Spots, Media Blindfolds: The Case of SARS and Traditional Chines Medicine / Marta E. Hanson 228
Governing Germs from Outside and Within Borders: Controlling 2003 SARS Risk in Taiwan / Tseng Yen-fen and Wu Chia-Ling 255
Afterword: Biomedicine in Chinese East Asia: From Semicolonial to Postcolonial? / Warwick Anderson 273
Timeline 279
Glossary 283
Bibliography 287
Contributors 323
Index 327
