Farewell to the god of plague : Chairman Mao's campaign to deworm China / Miriam Gross.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Chairman Mao weighs in : the high politics of the campaign -- Dodging leadership in an era of decentralization : structural problems of the 1950s -- Denying economic responsibility while brandishing an empty purse -- Building the new scientific socialist society : educating the masses -- Preventing the unpreventable -- The challenges of treatment -- Doing the unthinkable : scientifically legitimating party intrusion in the 1950s -- Scientific consolidation in the late sixties and seventies.

"Farewell to the God of Plague reassesses the celebrated Maoist health care model through the lens of Mao's famous campaign against snail fever. Using newly available archives, Miriam Gross documents how economic, political, and cultural realities led to grassroots resistance. Nonetheless, the campaign triumphed, but not because of its touted mass-prevention campaign. Instead, success came from its unacknowledged treatment arm, carried out jointly by banished urban doctors and rural educated youth. More broadly, the book reconsiders the relationship between science and political control during the ostensibly antiscientific Maoist era, discovering the important role of 'grassroots science' in regime legitimation and Party control in rural areas"--Provided by publisher.

Print version record.

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