Argues 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.
