Series Convenors: Dr Alex Aylward, Dr Hohee Cho, Professor Mark Harrison, Dr Catherine M Jackson, Dr Sloan Mahone
Seminars in the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology
(Joint session with Medical Humanities, Public Health in China: A Multidisciplinary Workshop)
Dr Xianbing Du (Tianjin Normal University, China)
Medical Knowledge and Sanitation Measures in China in the Time of Cholera, 1820-1925
From the beginning of the 19th century to the early 20th century, cholera was a pandemic of global importance, but the related medical knowledge and sanitation measures are quite local. During this period, cholera broke out repeatedly in China. The cognition of cholera affected directly sanitation measures related to it.
Throughout the 19th century, the Chinese followed the cognition of Traditional Chinese medicine about cholera. Sanitation measures under traditional medical knowledge had little effect on public health. At the turn of the 19th century, more and more doctors of Traditional Chinese Medicine accepted the nomenclature and connotation of cholera in western medicine. In the early 20th century, there were local efforts to improve public health, mainly in urban areas, by establishing medical colleges and hospitals, improving infrastructure and promulgating hygiene regulations.
Dr Dong Guoqiang (Tianjin Normal University, China)
The Western Medical Missionaries in China, 1840s-1950s
Based on abundant annual reports and publications of different UK missionary societies, as well as family archives and biographical materials of many missionary individuals, stocked in the libraries of Oxford University, this talk will outline the influence of western missionaires on Chinese medical education, hospital construction, and medical practice in the modern period, including the attitude of Nationalist and communist authorities towards missionary medicine. One striking example was the Cheeloo University Medical College in Tsinan, Shantung and the hospital affiliated to it.
