Medical Transitions in Twentieth-Century China
- Publisher
- Indiana University Press
- Initial publish date
- Aug 2014
- Category
- China, Public Health, History
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9780253014900
- Publish Date
- Aug 2014
- List Price
- $33.00
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Description
This volume examines important aspects of China's century-long search to provide appropriate and effective health care for its people. Four subjects—disease and healing, encounters and accommodations, institutions and professions, and people's health—organize discussions across case studies of schistosomiasis, tuberculosis, mental health, and tobacco and health. Among the book's significant conclusions are the importance of barefoot doctors in disseminating western medicine, the improvements in medical health and services during the long Sino-Japanese war, and the important role of the Chinese consumer. Intended for an audience of health practitioners, historians, and others interested in the history of medicine and health in China, the book is one of three commissioned by the China Medical Board to mark its centennial in 2014.
About the authors
Bridie Andrews is an associate professor of history at Bentley University and teaches the history of medicine at New England School of Acupuncture. She has co-edited two books, Western Medicine as Contested Knowledge (with A.R. Cunningham, Manchester University Press, 1997) and Medicine and Identity in the Colonies (with Mary P. Sutphen, Routledge, 2003).
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Sonya Grypma is a leading scholar in the history of nursing and global health and an associate professor of nursing at Trinity Western University. She has gained an international reputation for her work on missionary nursing in China, particularly through her groundbreaking book Healing Henan: Canadian Nurses at the North China Mission, 1888–1947.
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Editorial Reviews
[T]his volume provides an invaluable synthesis of modern medical development in China, and useful sources for survey courses on medical history, public health and the global circulation of knowledge.
Social History of Medicine
Overall, this work achieves what it set out to do: write a general overview of the great changes in the history of health and health care in twentieth-century China. The collection of papers is impressive and gives the reader a good introduction into the transformations in health and medical care in China.
Frontiers of History in Chinca
Anyone interested in the history of modern medicine will find this an especially instructive book for its focus on China, its treatment of political and social issues, and its explanation of how decollectivization and China's opening to a market economy have impacted medicine and health care. A substantial bibliography and detailed index make this a particularly useful volume for promoting further scholarship on the history and politics of medicine in contemporary China. . . . Highly recommended.
Choice
Medical Transitions in Twentieth Century China provides rich insights into how one country has dealt with perhaps the most central issue for any human society: the health and wellbeing of its citizens. Yet the book sheds light on more than simply China's own medical transitions, and should appeal to anyone interested more broadly in the modern history of health.
The Lancet
