Overview

This book traces the history of the Chinese concept of ""Warm diseases"" (wenbing) from antiquity to the SARS epidemic. Following wenbing from its birth to maturity and even life in modern times Marta Hanson approaches the history of Chinese medicine from a new angle. She explores the possibility of replacing older narratives that stress progress and linear development with accounts that pay attention to geographic, intellectual, and cultural diversity. By doing so her book integrates the history of Chinese medicine into broader historical studies in a way that has not so far been attempted, and addresses the concerns of a readership much wider than that of Chinese medicine specialists. The persistence of wenbing and other Chinese disease concepts in the present can be interpreted as resistance to the narrowing of meaning in modern biomedical nosology. Attention to conceptions of disease and space reveal a previously unexamined discourse the author calls the Chinese geographic imagination. Tracing the changing meanings of ""Warm diseases"" over two thousand years allows for the exploration of pre-modern understandings of the nature of epidemics, their intersection with this geographic imagination, and how conceptions of geography shaped the sociology of medical practice and knowledge in late imperial China. Speaking of Epidemics in Chinese Medicine opens a new window on interpretive themes in Chinese cultural history as well as on contemporary studies of the history of science and medicine beyond East Asia.

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9780415602532

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Reviews

Marta Hanson's thorough research into the process of change in Chinese medicine is well worth a place on practitioners' bookshelves. - Nancy Holroyde-Downing, The Journal of Chinese Medicine, February 2012. A groundbreaking work on the history of Chinese epidemiology... rather than simply being a rich description of a long neglected aspect of Chinese medicine, Hanson's book engages in a powerful analysis of the material at hand...Hanson's book stands as a most significant contribution to understanding epidemiological theory and practice in Imperial China. At the same time, it provides social historians and anthropologists of medicine with a new focus on spatiality and the `geographic imagination' of disease. This demonstrates clearly that far from being confined to Hippocratic or Western-colonial medicine, the territorialisation of disease constitutes a significant governmental apparatus for non-western imperial and state formations. - Christos Lynteris, University of Cambridge, 2013. Informative, rewarding reading for anyone interested in the history of medicine, of science, or of China in general. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Choice

Marta Hanson's thorough research into the process of change in Chinese medicine is well worth a place on practitioners' bookshelves. - Nancy Holroyde-Downing, The Journal of Chinese Medicine, February 2012. A groundbreaking work on the history of Chinese epidemiology... rather than simply being a rich description of a long neglected aspect of Chinese medicine, Hanson's book engages in a powerful analysis of the material at hand...Hanson's book stands as a most significant contribution to understanding epidemiological theory and practice in Imperial China. At the same time, it provides social historians and anthropologists of medicine with a new focus on spatiality and the 'geographic imagination' of disease. This demonstrates clearly that far from being confined to Hippocratic or Western-colonial medicine, the territorialisation of disease constitutes a significant governmental apparatus for non-western imperial and state formations. - Christos Lynteris, University of Cambridge, 2013.

Rich, detailed, and hugely impressive in scope, Marta Hanson's history of the warm diseases or the wenbing disease classification, from the earliest references in the canonical medical literature through to the present day, is a welcome addition to the Needham Research Institute Series of texts on East Asian medical history... the picture she paints is not only a fantastically thorough portrait of the Chinese wenbing disease concept that will be of interest to historians of East Asian medical history, but also a richly textured landscape that reveals much about the previously unexplored intersections between geography and disease and will have a broader appeal to anyone interested in the dynamic interplay between medicine and society. - Joanna Grant; Bulletin of the History of Medicine 2013.

Marta Hanson's thorough research into the process of change in Chinese medicine is well worth a place on practitioners' bookshelves. - Nancy Holroyde-Downing, The Journal of Chinese Medicine, February 2012. A groundbreaking work on the history of Chinese epidemiology... rather than simply being a rich description of a long neglected aspect of Chinese medicine, Hanson's book engages in a powerful analysis of the material at hand...Hanson's book stands as a most significant contribution to understanding epidemiological theory and practice in Imperial China. At the same time, it provides social historians and anthropologists of medicine with a new focus on spatiality and the 'geographic imagination' of disease. This demonstrates clearly that far from being confined to Hippocratic or Western-colonial medicine, the territorialisation of disease constitutes a significant governmental apparatus for non-western imperial and state formations. - Christos Lynteris, University of Cambridge, 2013. Informative, rewarding reading for anyone interested in the history of medicine, of science, or of China in general. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Choice

Author Information

Marta Hanson is Assistant Professor in the Department of the History of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University, USA. Her research interests are in the history of medicine, disease, and public health in China and the cultural history of Chinese arts of memory.

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