Speaking of Epidemics in Chinese Medicine: Disease and the Geographic Imagination in Late Imperial China (Needham Research Institute Series) Hardcover – August 9, 2011 Author: Marta Hanson | Language: English | ISBN:
041560253X | Format: PDF, EPUB
Speaking of Epidemics in Chinese Medicine: Disease and the Geographic Imagination in Late Imperial China – August 9, 2011 Direct download links available Speaking of Epidemics in Chinese Medicine: Disease and the Geographic Imagination in Late Imperial China (Needham Research Institute Series) Hardcover – August 9, 2011 from with Mediafire Link Download Link
Review
"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
About the Author
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.
Books with free ebook downloads available Speaking of Epidemics in Chinese Medicine: Disease and the Geographic Imagination in Late Imperial China (Needham Research Institute Series) Hardcover – August 9, 2011
- Series: Needham Research Institute Series
- Hardcover: 288 pages
- Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (August 9, 2011)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 041560253X
- ISBN-13: 978-0415602532
- Product Dimensions: 0.8 x 6 x 9 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,354,240 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
This book is an extended history of wenbing, "warm illness(es)" or Warm Disease, a broad category that became important about 800 years ago in Chinese medical discourse. It recently has come to include SARS. Warm illness, or illnesses, was or were particularly common in the south. This area was considered a hot region with much contagion, where people would become weak and run-down. Exile to the far south was dreaded as a virtual sentence of death in old Imperial days. Only with the massive settlement of the south did warm illness(es) appear on the physicians' docket. Previously, Cold Damage was more salient. Geography, and specifically Chinese concepts of geography, are therefore essential to understanding these categories and treatments.
In the Ming Dynasty, wenbing had a field day as a matter for concerns, herbal drug prescriptions, and warnings. This continued into Qing and it continues today. Traditional medicine meshes with biomedical treatment in that SARS is now treated both with biomedical remedies and with Chinese herbs; the latter are alleged to help the body withstand and/or recover from the virus.
The book thus stands in the category of history or biography of a particular disease concept--one of the most fascinating areas of medical history. Nothing is more interesting than watching people try their hardest to figure out how to stop illness: what is going on, what is causing this dreadful sickness, what is exacerbating it, and above all what can stop it. Clinicians in China tried every sort of herb that could treat warm illnesses. They claimed success--on what basis we can usually no longer tell, since we do not usually know what biomedical entities were involved in the pre-SARS days.
Speaking of Epidemics in Chinese Medicine: Disease and the Geographic Imagination in Late Imperial China – August 9, 2011 Download
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