The first study in English that examines barefoot doctors in China from
the perspective of the social history of medicine.
In 1968, at the height of the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese Communist
Party endorsed a radical new system of health-care delivery for the
rural masses. Soon every village had at least one barefoot doctor to
provide basic medical care, creating a national network of health-care
services for the very first time. The barefoot doctors were portrayed
nationally and internationally as revolutionary heroes, wading undaunted
through rice paddies to bring effective, low-cost care to poor
peasants.
This book is the first comprehensive study to look beyond the nostalgia
dominating present scholarship on public health in China and offer a
powerful and carefully contextualized critiqueof the prevailing views on
the role of barefoot doctors, their legacy, and their impact. Drawing on
primary documents from the Cultural Revolution and personal interviews
with patients and doctors, Xiaoping Fang examines the evidence within
the broader history of medicine in revolutionary and postreform China.
He finds that rather than consolidating traditional Chinese medicine, as
purported by government propaganda, the barefoot doctor program
introducedmodern Western medicine to rural China, effectively
modernizing established methods and forms of care. As a result, this
volume retrieves from potential oblivion a critical part of the history
of Western medicine in China.
Xiaoping Fang is assistant professor of Chinese history at Nanyang
Technological University, Singapore.
