Neither donkey nor horse : medicine in the struggle over China's modernity / Sean Hsiang-lin Lei.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

"Neither Donkey nor Horse tells the story of how Chinese medicine was transformed from the antithesis of modernity in the early twentieth century into a potent symbol of and vehicle for China's exploration of its own modernity half a century later. Instead of viewing this transition as derivative of the political history of modern China, Sean Hsiang-lin Lei argues that China's medical history had a life of its own, one that at times directly influenced the ideological struggle over the meaning of China's modernity and the Chinese state. Far from being a remnant of China's premodern past, Chinese medicine in the twentieth century coevolved with Western medicine and the Nationalist state, undergoing a profound transformation--institutionally, epistemologically, and materially--that resulted in the creation of a modern Chinese medicine. This new medicine was derided as 'neither donkey nor horse' because it necessarily betrayed both of the parental traditions and therefore was doomed to fail. Yet this hybrid medicine survived, through self-innovation and negotiation, thus challenging the conception of modernity that rejected the possibility of productive crossbreeding between the modern and the traditional. By exploring the production of modern Chinese medicine and China's modernity in tandem, Lei offers both a political history of medicine and a medical history of the Chinese state"--Provided by publisher.

Print version record.

Chapter 1. Introduction; When Chinese Medicine Encountered the State; Beyond the Dual History of Tradition and Modernity; Toward a Coevolutionary History; China's Modernity; The Discourse of Modernity; Neither Donkey nor Horse; Conventions; Chapter 2. Sovereignty and the Microscope:The Containment of the Manchurian Plague, 1910-11; Not Believing That "This Plague Could Be Infectious"; Pneumonic Plague versus Bubonic Plague ; "The Most Brutal Policies Seen in Four Thousand Years"; Challenges from Chinese Medicine: Hong Kong versus Manchuria.

Chuanran: Extending a Network of Infected IndividualsAvoiding Epidemics; Joining the Global Surveillance System; Conclusion: The Social Characteristics of the Manchurian Plague; Chapter 3. Connecting Medicine with the State: From Missionary Medicine to Public Health, 1860-1928; Missionary Medicine; Western Medicine in Late Qing China versus Meiji Japan; The First Generation of Chinese Practitioners of Western Medicine; Western Medicine as a Public Enterprise; "Public Health: Time Not Ripe for Large Work," 1914-24.

The Ministry of Health and the Medical Obligations of Modern Government, 1926-27Conclusion; Chapter 4. Imagining the Relationship between Chinese Medicine and Western Medicine, 1890-1928; Converging Chinese and Western Medicine in the Late 1890s; Non-Identity between the Meridian Channels and the Blood Vessels; Yu Yan and the Tripartition of Chinese Medicine; To Avoid the Place of Confrontation; Ephedrine and Scientific Research on Nationally Produced Drugs; Inventing an Empirical Tradition of Chinese Medicine; Conclusion.

Chapter 5. The Chinese Medical Revolution and the National Medicine MovementThe Chinese Medical Revolution; Controversy over Legalizing Schools of Chinese Medicine; Abolishing Chinese Medicine: The Proposal of 1929; The March Seventeenth Demonstration; The Ambivalent Meaning of Guoyi; The Delegation to Nanjing; Envisioning National Medicine; Conclusion; Chapter 6. Visualizing Health Care in 1930s Shanghai; Reading a Chart of the Medical Environment in Shanghai; Western Medicine: Consolidation and Boundary-Drawing; Chinese Medicine: Fragmentation and Disintegration.

Systematizing Chinese MedicineConclusion; Chapter 7. Science as a Verb: Scientizing Chinese Medicine and the Rise of Mongrel Medicine; The Institute of National Medicine; The China Scientization Movement; The Polemic of Scientizing Chinese Medicine: Three Positions; Embracing Scientization and Abandoning Qi-Transformation; Rejecting Scientization; Reassembling Chinese Medicine: Acupuncture and Zhuyou Exorcism; The Challenge of "Mongrel Medicine"; Conclusion; Chapter 8. The Germ Theory and the Prehistory of "Pattern Differentiation and Treatment Determination."

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