This volume analyses the transition of Chinese medicine during the modern era, and the development of product and service niches in selected countries: China, Malaysia, Japan and the Philippines. By investigating the major actors behind the transition, it explores in what way and to what extent these actors affect the transition. It argues that the transnational transition of Chinese medicine is caused not only by spontaneous cultural and social factors, i.e. population growth, technological innovation and acculturation, but also by hegemonic political and economic factors such as Western influence, adoption of the philosophy of modern state, and global commodification of indigenous medical specialties.
Neither Donkey nor Horse tells the story of how Chinese medicine was transformed from the antithesis of modernity in the early twentieth century into a potent symbol of and vehicle for China’s exploration of its own modernity half a century later. Instead of viewing this transition as derivative of the political history of modern China, Sean Hsiang-lin Lei argues that China’s medical history had a life of its own, one that at times directly influenced the ideological struggle over the meaning of China’s modernity and the Chinese state. Far from being a remnant of China’s premodern past, Chinese medicine in the twentieth century coevolved with Western medicine and the Nationalist state, undergoing a profound transformation—institutionally, epistemologically, and materially—that resulted in the creation of a modern Chinese medicine. This new medicine was derided as “neither donkey nor horse” because it necessarily betrayed both of the parental traditions and therefore was doomed to fail. Yet this hybrid medicine survived, through self-innovation and negotiation, thus challenging the conception of modernity that rejected the possibility of productive crossbreeding between the modern and the traditional. By exploring the production of modern Chinese medicine and China’s modernity in tandem, Lei offers both a political history of medicine and a medical history of the Chinese state.
Traditional Chinese medicine is often portrayed as an enduring system of therapeutic knowledge that has become globalized in recent decades. In Other-Worldly, Mei Zhan argues that the discourses and practices called “traditional Chinese medicine” are made through, rather than prior to, translocal encounters and entanglements. Zhan spent a decade following practitioners, teachers, and advocates of Chinese medicine through clinics, hospitals, schools, and grassroots organizations in Shanghai and the San Francisco Bay Area. Drawing on that ethnographic research, she demonstrates that the everyday practice of Chinese medicine is about much more than writing herbal prescriptions and inserting acupuncture needles. “Traditional Chinese medicine” is also made and remade through efforts to create a preventive medicine for the “proletariat world,” reinvent it for cosmopolitan middle-class aspirations, produce clinical “miracles,” translate knowledge and authority, and negotiate marketing strategies and medical ethics. Whether discussing the presentation of Chinese medicine at a health fair sponsored by a Silicon Valley corporation, or how the inclusion of a traditional Chinese medicine clinic authenticates the “California” appeal of an upscale residential neighborhood in Shanghai, Zhan emphasizes that unexpected encounters and interactions are not anomalies in the structure of Chinese medicine. Instead, they are constitutive of its irreducibly complex and open-ended worlds. Zhan proposes an ethnography of “worlding” as an analytic for engaging and illuminating emergent cultural processes such as those she describes. Rather than taking “cultural difference” as the starting point for anthropological inquiries, this analytic reveals how various terms of difference—for example, “traditional,” “Chinese,” and “medicine”—are invented, negotiated, and deployed translocally. Other-Worldly is a theoretically innovative and ethnographically rich account of the worlding of Chinese medicine.
Mary Brazelton argues that the territories and peoples associated with China have played vital roles in the emergence of modern international health. In the early twentieth century, repeated epidemic outbreaks in China justified interventions by transnational organizations; these projects shaped strategies for international health. China has also served as a space of creativity and reinvention, in which administrators developed new models of health care during decades of war and revolution, even as traditional practitioners presented alternatives to Western biomedicine. The 1949 establishment of the People's Republic of China introduced a new era of socialist internationalism, as well as new initiatives to establish connections across the non-aligned world using medical diplomacy. After 1978, the post-socialist transition gave rise to new configurations of health governance. The rich and varied history of Chinese involvement in global health offers a means to make sense of present-day crises.
This collection expands the history of Chinese medicine by bridging the philosophical concerns of epistemology and the history and cultural politics of transregional medical formations. Topics range from the spread of gingko’s popularity from East Asia to the West to the appeal of acupuncture for complementing in-vitro fertilisation regimens, from the modernisation of Chinese anatomy and forensic science to the evolving perceptions of the clinical efficacy of Chinese medicine. The individual essays cohere around the powerful theoretical-methodological approach, 'historical epistemology', which challenges the seemingly constant and timeless status of such rudimentary but pivotal dimensions of scientific process as knowledge, reason, argument, objectivity, evidence, fact, and truth. In studying the globalising role of medical objects, the contested premise of medical authority and legitimacy, and the syncretic transformations of metaphysical and ontological knowledge, contributors illuminate how the breadth of the historical study of Chinese medicine and its practices of knowledge-making in the modern period must be at once philosophical and transnational in scope.
Medical care in nineteenth-century China was spectacularly pluralistic: herbalists, shamans, bone-setters, midwives, priests, and a few medical missionaries from the West all competed for patients. This book examines the dichotomy between "Western" and "Chinese" medicine, showing how it has been greatly exaggerated. As missionaries went to lengths to make their medicine more acceptable to Chinese patients, modernizers of Chinese medicine worked to become more "scientific" by eradicating superstition and creating modern institutions. Andrews challenges the supposed superiority of Western medicine in China while showing how "traditional" Chinese medicine was deliberately created in the image of a modern scientific practice.
This brief discourse is an introduction to the historical development of medicine in China, whose influence on Korea, Japan and Southeast Asia was profound and even reached far west into the Islamic world. The authors wish to make the interested reader aware of China's rich contribution to the world growth of the medical sciences. Too often the view has been taken that the history of medicine began with the discoveries of the Greeks and those ancient nations from whom they learnt. The authors want to redress this view and acquaint readers with a glimpse of the concepts and history of Chinese medicine and hope that they will feel encouraged to delve deeper. ... this volume is a compact, tantalizing excursion through centuries of medical tradition, in a range of cultures ... it does make a long, complex and fascinating history accessible to medical professionals and students of Chinese history who may be tempted to delve further into this rich and interesting field. American Journal of Chinese Medicine If you want a concise, easy-to-read, easy-to-absorb summary of events and trends from the 29th century BC to the present, this compact book will comfortably and quickly answer many questions. American Journal of Acupuncture Concepts of Chinese Science and Traditional Healing Arts gives an especially useful account of the historical achievements of Chinese medicine. Far Eastern Economic Review
A leading authority explains the ideas and practice of Chinese medicine from its beginnings in antiquity to today. Paul U. Unschuld describes medicine's close connection with culture and politics throughout Chinese history. He brings together texts, techniques, and worldviews to understand changing Chinese attitudes toward healing and the significance of traditional Chinese medicine in both China and the Western world. Unschuld reveals the emergence of a Chinese medical tradition built around a new understanding of the human being, considering beliefs in the influence of cosmology, numerology, and the supernatural on the health of the living. He describes the variety of therapeutic approaches in Chinese culture, the history of pharmacology and techniques such as acupuncture, and the global exchange of medical knowledge. Insights are offered into the twentieth-century decline of traditional medicine, as military defeats caused reformers and revolutionaries to import medical knowledge as part of the construction of a new China. Unschuld also recounts the reception of traditional Chinese medicine in the West since the 1970s, where it is often considered an alternative to Western medicine at the same time as China seeks to incorporate elements of its medical traditions into a scientific framework. This concise and compelling introduction to medical thought and history suggests that Chinese medicine is also a guide to Chinese civilization.
"Neither Donkey Nor Horse "tells the story of how Chinese medicine was transformed from the antithesis of modernity in the early twentieth century into a potent symbol and vehicle for China s struggle with it half a century later. Instead of viewing this transition as derivative of the political history of modern China, Sean Hsiang-lin Lei argues that China s medical history had a life of its own and at times directly influenced the ideological struggle over the meaning of China s modernity and the Chinese state. Far from being a remnant of China s pre-modern past, Chinese medicine in the twentieth century co-evolved with Western medicine and the Nationalist state, undergoing a profound transformationinstitutionally, epistemologically, and materiallythat justifies our recognizing it as modern Chinese medicine. This new medicine was derided as neither donkey nor horse, because it attempted to integrate modern Western medicine into what its opponents considered the pre-modern and un-scientific practices of Chinese medicine. Its historic rise is of crucial importance for the general history of modernity in China, fundamentally challenging the conception of modernity that rejected the possibility of productive crossbreeding between the modern and the traditional. By exploring the co-production of modern Chinese medicine and China s modernity, Lei offers both a political history of medicine and a medical history of the Chinese state. "Neither Donkey Nor Horse "synthesizes into a single historical narrative what was previously separated into three independent histories: the history of Western medicine in China, the history of Chinese medicine, and the political history of the state. "
As the world's most comprehensive and deeply researched system of alternative and complementary medicine, Chinese medicine enjoys a large following in scientifically developed communities. Yet its concepts and principles have been shrouded in mystery and obscure language. This path-breaking book strips this ancient science of its mystique and metaphysical pretentions and interprets it to strike common ground with biomedical science. Concepts like qi and meridians are interpreted not as physical entities, but as constructs to facilitate diagnosis and therapy using heuristic models. Written for medical professionals, philosophers of medicine and discerning readers interested in holistic therapies, the book offers a unique perspective of Chinese medicine in an advanced biomedical world. It has practical chapters on cardiovascular disease, irritable bowel syndrome and cancer, and a compilation of Chinese herbs. This second edition of the acclaimed Theory of Chinese Medicine has new material on chronic diseases and the intriguing possible convergence of biomedicine and TCM.
