About this ebook
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. In the century that followed, pressure to reform traditional medicine in China came not only from this small clutch of Westerners, but from within the country itself, as governments set on modernization aligned themselves against the traditions of the past, and individuals saw in the Western system the potential for new wealth and power. 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.
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. In the century that followed, pressure to reform traditional medicine in China came not only from t...
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About the author
Bridie Andrews is an associate professor of history at Bentley University and teaches history of medicine at the New England School of Acupuncture. She has co-edited two books, Western Medicine as Contested Knowledge (1997) and Medicine and Identity in the Colonies (2003).
Bridie Andrews is an associate professor of history at Bentley University and teaches history of medicine at the New England School of Acupuncture. She has co-edited two books, Western Medicine as Contested Knowledge (1997) and Medicine and Identity in the Colonies (2003).
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