Abstract
Much has been written on the European and later mainly American activities that introduced Western medicine into China1. How this foreign practice was perceived and eventually accepted by the Chinese and how these forms of knowledge, grounded in Western science, were transformed by folk belief and practices of traditional professionals, is only mentioned briefly in the available literature. Chinese were probably not interested pointing out how Western medicine was modified, because they wished to stress progress and possibly foreign advocates of development were likewise not inclined to draw attention to the adulteration of cosmopolitan medicine with local practice.
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Notes
Hsü F. L. K., Magic and Science in Western Yunnan, Ph. D. thesis. London, 1943.
The Catholics prospered in Sichuan (Société des missions étrangères) with estimates of up to 40.000 Catholic converts in 1801 and 80.000 converts in 1870 (Latourette K. S., A history of Christian Missions in China, London, 1929). In the 1880’s, Yunnan’s Catholic community was said to comprise one bishop, eight French priests, and 9.000 converts (Clark G. W., Kwiechow and Yunnan Provinces, Shanghai, 1894; p.63). The Catholic missionary methods of the 19th century, however, were not as diverse and flexible as those of the Protestants and they did not expand as rapidly as the protestants did (Latourette K. S., Christianity in a Revolutionary Age: a History of Christianity in the 19th and 20th Centuries, Vol.5, New York, 1963).
The mathematical and astronomical teachings of the Jesuits were a means for proving the existence of God as well as for encouraging conversion to Christianity. In 1692, the Emperor Kangxi (1662–1722) was cured by a Jesuit from malaria by application of cinchona bark, but the Jesuits’medical endeavours were not carried on; the breakthrough in modern medicine was still to occur in Europe. (Hume E. H. Doctors Courageous, New York,1950, p.218).
Lutz G. W., China and the Christian Colleges 1850–1950, Ithaka and London, 1971.
Lowe J., Medical Missions, their Place and Power, London, 1886.
Lockhart W., The Medical Missionary in China, London, 1861.
Lowe, Medical Missions, their Place and Power, London, 1886, p.121.
Rocher E., La province du Yunnan, Paris, 1879.
Fairbank J. K. and Liu K. C., The Cambridge History of China, Late Ch’ing 1800–1911, Vol.11, Part 2, Cambridge, 1980.
Comparative Chronology of Protestantism in Asia, 1792–1945, By the Institute of Asian Cultural Studies, International Christian University, Tokyo, 1984.
Marianne Bastid, personal communication during the conference. See also: “Variole et vaccin en Indochine’’, Revue Indochinoise, n°91–92, 1908, p.479–492.
Doumer P., Situation de l’Indochine 1897–1901, Hanoi, 1902.
The Lisu inhabit mountainous regions of Western Yunnan (ca. 0.5m pers.), Thailand and Burma.
Cohen P. A., China and Christianity. The Missionary Movement and the Growth of Chinese Antiforeignism 1860–70, Cambridge Massachusetts, 1963, p.265.
Taylor, op. cit., 1944, p.228.
Kendall R. E., Beyond the Clouds, Holborn Hall, 1948.
Kendall, Beyond the Clouds, Holborn Hall, 1948, p.30.
Cohen, China and Christianity. The Missionary Movement and the Growth of Chinese Antiforeignism 1860–70, Cambridge Massachusetts, 1963, p.84.
Tian J. G., Yunnan Yiyao Weisheng Jianshi, Yunnan Keji Chubanshe, 1987, p. 159.
Clarke S. R., Among the Tribes in Southwest China, London 1910. ‘Miao’ refers to many related ethnic groups, mainly in and around Guizhou province (ca. 4m pers.).
Kendall, Beyond the Clouds, Holborn Hall, 1948, p.48.
Cohen, China and Christianity. The Missionary Movement and the Growth of Chinese Antiforeignism 1860–70, Cambridge Massachusetts, 1963, p.31.
The first clinic in China was an eye clinic, P. Parker’s ophthalmic clinic in Canton. The cataract operation is still nowadays a strategy for advertizing the benefits of Western medicine in virgin regions (e.g. job advertisement for Nepal of the International Red Cross in 1985).
According to (Lutz 1971), eyes were allegedly used for the producing the silver salts for photography. To link organs of vision with the preservation of vision reminds of sympathetic magic.
Owen Sichone, personal communication, February 1990. See also Gann L. H., A History of Northern Rhodesia, London, 1964; Banyama myth is labelled an “anti-colonial doctrine”, p.231.
Gilbert Lewis and Françoise Barbera-Friedman, personal communication, March 1990. See also: Taussig, M., Shamanism, Colonialism and the Wild Man, Chicago & London, 1986, p.238.
Tian, Yunnan Yiyao Weisheng Jianshi, Yunnan Keji Chubanshe, 1987, p. 116.
Hsü, Magic and Science in Western Yunnan, Ph. D. thesis. London, 1943, p.42; Papalangi medicine refers to the white man’s medicine.
R. Koch discovered vibrio cholerae in 1883. In 1943 the cholera toxin was still to be discovered (1947) and only in the 1960’s were further factors causing diarrhoea better understood (Van Heyningen, W. E. and Seal, J. R., Cholera: the American Scientific Experience 1947–80, Boulder, 1983).
“Les Européens rapidement alertés, prirent les précautions d’usage et surveillèrent de près leur personnel...: eau bouillante en permanence dans la cuisine, ordre d’échauder les bols, les assiettes, les couverts, défense de toucher les aliments, de servir ou de manger des crudités, lavage obligatoire des mains toutes les heures. Son cuisinier,..., manifesta une répugnance invincible à se soumettre à ce traitement barbare. Il méprisait les manifestations facheuses des superstitions étrangères...” (Gervais A., Aesculape en Chine, Paris, 1933, p. 190, in a description of a cholera epidemic in Chengdu).
Martin K. G., “Medical Systems in a Taiwan Village: Ong-ia-Kong, the Plague God as Modern Physician” in Kleinman A. et al., Medicine in Chinese Cultures, Washington D. C., 1975, p.115–141.
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Hsü, E. (1992). The Reception of Western Medicine in China: Examples from Yunnan. In: Petitjean, P., Jami, C., Moulin, A.M. (eds) Science and Empires. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 136. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-2594-9_11
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