Download or read book Bubonic Plague in Nineteenth Century China written by Carol Ann Benedict and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, the first work in English on the history of disease in China, traces an epidemic of bubonic plague that began in Yunnan province in the late eighteenth century, spread throughout much of southern China in the nineteenth century, and eventually exploded on the world scene as a global pandemic at the end of the century. The author finds the origins of the pandemic in Qing economic expansion, which brought new populations into contact with plague-bearing animals along China’s southwestern frontier. She shows how the geographic diffusion of the disease closely followed the growth of interregional trading networks, particularly the domestic trade in opium, during the nineteenth century. A discussion of foreign interventions during plague outbreaks along China’s southern coast links the history of plague to the political impact of imperialism on China, and to the ways in which European cultural representations of the Chinese influenced the theory and practice of colonial medicine.

Download or read book Bubonic Plague in Nineteenth Century China written by Carol Benedict and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, the first work in English on the history of disease in China, traces an epidemic of bubonic plague that began in Yunnan province in the late eighteenth century, spread throughout much of southern China in the nineteenth century, and eventually exploded on the world scene as a global pandemic at the end of the century. The author finds the origins of the pandemic in Qing economic expansion, which brought new populations into contact with plague-bearing animals along China's southwestern frontier. She shows how the geographic diffusion of the disease closely followed the growth of interregional trading networks, particularly the domestic trade in opium, during the nineteenth century. A discussion of foreign interventions during plague outbreaks along China's southern coast links the history of plague to the political impact of imperialism on China, and to the ways in which European cultural representations of the Chinese influenced the theory and practice of colonial medicine.

Download or read book Bubonic Plague in Nineteenth century China written by Carol Benedict and published by . This book was released on 1991 with total page 884 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Great Manchurian Plague of 1910 1911 written by William C. Summers and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2012-12-11 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When plague broke out in Manchuria in 1910 as a result of transmission from marmots to humans, it struck a region struggling with the introduction of Western medicine, as well as with the interactions of three different national powers: Chinese, Japanese, and Russian. In this fascinating case history, William Summers relates how this plague killed as many as 60,000 people in less than a year, and uses the analysis to examine the actions and interactions of the multinational doctors, politicians, and ordinary residents who responded to it.Summers covers the complex political and economic background of early twentieth-century Manchuria and then moves on to the plague itself, addressing the various contested stories of the plague's origins, development, and ecological ties. Ultimately, Summers shows how, because of Manchuria's importance to the world powers of its day, the plague brought together resources, knowledge, and people in ways that enacted in miniature the triumphs and challenges of transnational medical projects such as the World Health Organization.

Download or read book Ethnographic Plague written by Christos Lynteris and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-07-30 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Challenging the concept that since the discovery of the plague bacillus in 1894 the study of the disease was dominated by bacteriology, Ethnographic Plague argues for the role of ethnography as a vital contributor to the configuration of plague at the turn of the nineteenth century. With a focus on research on the Chinese-Russian frontier, where a series of pneumonic plague epidemics shook the Chinese, Russian and Japanese Empires, this book examines how native Mongols and Buryats came to be understood as holding a traditional knowledge of the disease. Exploring the forging and consequences of this alluring theory, this book seeks to understand medical fascination with culture, so as to underline the limitations of the employment of the latter as an explanatory category in the context of infectious disease epidemics, such as the recent SARS and Ebola outbreaks.

Download or read book Leprosy in China written by Angela Ki Che Leung and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2009-01-01 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Angela Ki Che Leung's meticulous study begins with the classical annals of the imperial era, which contain the first descriptions of a feared and stigmatized disorder modern researchers now identify as leprosy. She then tracks the relationship between the disease and China's social and political spheres (theories of contagion prompted community and statewide efforts at segregation); religious traditions (Buddhism and Daoism ascribed redemptive meaning to those suffering from the disease), and evolving medical discourse (Chinese doctors have contested the disease's etiology for centuries). Leprosy even pops up in Chinese folklore, attributing the spread of the contagion to contact with immoral women. Leung next places the history of leprosy into a global context of colonialism, racial politics, and "imperial danger." A perceived global pandemic in the late nineteenth century seemed to confirm Westerners' fears that Chinese immigration threatened public health. Therefore battling to contain, if not eliminate, the disease became a central mission of the modernizing, state-building projects of the late Qing empire, the nationalist government of the first half of the twentieth century, and the People's Republic of China. Stamping out the curse of leprosy was the first step toward achieving "hygienic modernity" and erasing the cultural and economic backwardness associated with the disease. Leung's final move connects China's experience with leprosy to a larger history of public health and biomedical regimes of power, exploring the cultural and political implications of China's Sino-Western approach to the disease.

Download or read book Plague and Fire written by James C. Mohr and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2004-11-15 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A little over a century ago, bubonic plague--the same Black Death that decimated medieval Europe--arrived on the shores of Hawaii just as the islands were about to become a U.S. territory. In this absorbing narrative, James Mohr tells the story of that fearful visitation and its fiery climax--a vast conflagration that engulfed Honolulu's Chinatown. Mohr tells this gripping tale largely through the eyes of the people caught up in the disaster, from members of the white elite to Chinese doctors, Japanese businessmen, and Hawaiian reporters. At the heart of the narrative are three American physicians--the Honolulu Board of Health--who became virtual dictators when the government granted them absolute control over the armed forces and the treasury. The doctors soon quarantined Chinatown, where the plague was killing one or two people a day and clearly spreading. They resisted intense pressure from the white community to burn down all of Chinatown at once and instead ordered a careful, controlled burning of buildings where plague victims had died. But a freak wind whipped one of those small fires into a roaring inferno that destroyed everything in its path, consuming roughly thirty-eight acres of densely packed wooden structures in a single afternoon. Some 5000 people lost their homes and all their possessions and were marched in shock to detention camps, where they were confined under armed guard for weeks. Next to the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the Chinatown fire is the worst civic disaster in Hawaiian history. A dramatic account of people struggling in the face of mounting catastrophe, Plague and Fire is a stimulating and thought-provoking read.

Download or read book Medical Transitions in Twentieth Century China written by Bridie Andrews and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2014-08-14 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Rich insights into how one country has dealt with perhaps the most central issue for any human society: the health and wellbeing of its citizens.” —The Lancet This volume examines important aspects of China’s century-long search to provide appropriate and effective health care for its people. Four subjects—disease and healing, encounters and accommodations, institutions and professions, and people’s health—organize discussions across case studies of schistosomiasis, tuberculosis, mental health, and tobacco and health. Among the book’s significant conclusions are the importance of barefoot doctors in disseminating western medicine; the improvements in medical health and services during the long Sino-Japanese war; and the important role of the Chinese consumer. This is a thought-provoking read for health practitioners, historians, and others interested in the history of medicine and health in China.

Download or read book Geographies of Plague Pandemics written by Mark Welford and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-04-09 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Geographies of Plague Pandemics synthesizes our current understanding of the spatial and temporal dynamics of plague, Yersinia pestis. The environmental, political, economic, and social impacts of the plague from Ancient Greece to the modern day are examined. Chapters explore the identity of plague DNA, its human mortality, and the source of ancient and modern plagues. This book also discusses the role plague has played in shifting power from Mediterranean Europe to north-western Europe during the 500 years that plague has raged across the continent. The book demonstrates how recent colonial structures influenced the spread and mortality of plague while changing colonial histories. In addition, this book provides critical insight into how plague has shaped modern medicine, public health, and disease monitoring, and what role, if any, it might play as a terror weapon. The scope and breadth of Geographies of Plague Pandemics offers geographers, historians, biologists, and public health educators the opportunity to explore the deep connections among disease and human existence.

Download or read book Plague Fear and Politics in San Francisco s Chinatown written by Guenter B. Risse and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2012-03-14 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When health officials in San Francisco discovered bubonic plague in their city’s Chinatown in 1900, they responded with intrusive, controlling, and arbitrary measures that touched off a sociocultural conflict still relevant today. Guenter B. Risse’s history of an epidemic is the first to incorporate the voices of those living in Chinatown at the time, including the desperately ill Wong Chut King, believed to be the first person infected. Lasting until 1904, the plague in San Francisco's Chinatown reignited racial prejudices, renewed efforts to remove the Chinese from their district, and created new tensions among local, state, and federal public health officials quarreling over the presence of the deadly disease. Risse's rich, nuanced narrative of the event draws from a variety of sources, including Chinese-language reports and accounts. He addresses the ecology of Chinatown, the approaches taken by Chinese and Western medical practitioners, and the effects of quarantine plans on Chinatown and its residents. Risse explains how plague threatened California’s agricultural economy and San Francisco’s leading commercial role with Asia, discusses why it brought on a wave of fear mongering that drove perceptions and intervention efforts, and describes how Chinese residents organized and successfully opposed government quarantines and evacuation plans in federal court. By probing public health interventions in the setting of one of the most visible ethnic communities in United States history, Plague, Fear, and Politics in San Francisco’s Chinatown offers insight into the clash of Eastern and Western cultures in a time of medical emergency.

Download or read book Narcotic Culture written by Frank Dikötter and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2004-04-16 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To this day, the perception persists that China was a civilization defeated by imperialist Britain's most desirable trade commodity, opium—a drug that turned the Chinese into cadaverous addicts in the iron grip of dependence. Britain, in an effort to reverse the damage caused by opium addiction, launched its own version of the "war on drugs," which lasted roughly sixty years, from 1880 to World War II and the beginning of Chinese communism. But, as Narcotic Culture brilliantly shows, the real scandal in Chinese history was not the expansion of the drug trade by Britain in the early nineteenth century, but rather the failure of the British to grasp the consequences of prohibition. In a stunning historical reversal, Frank Dikötter, Lars Laamann, and Zhou Xun tell this different story of the relationship between opium and the Chinese. They reveal that opium actually had few harmful effects on either health or longevity; in fact, it was prepared and appreciated in highly complex rituals with inbuilt constraints preventing excessive use. Opium was even used as a medicinal panacea in China before the availability of aspirin and penicillin. But as a result of the British effort to eradicate opium, the Chinese turned from the relatively benign use of that drug to heroin, morphine, cocaine, and countless other psychoactive substances. Narcotic Culture provides abundant evidence that the transition from a tolerated opium culture to a system of prohibition produced a "cure" that was far worse than the disease. Delving into a history of drugs and their abuses, Narcotic Culture is part revisionist history of imperial and twentieth-century Britain and part sobering portrait of the dangers of prohibition.

Download or read book The Making of Modern Chinese Medicine 1850 1960 written by Bridie Andrews and published by UBC Press. This book was released on 2014-04-01 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Medical care in nineteenth-century China was spectacularly pluralistic: herbalists, shamans, bone-setters, midwives, priests, and a few medical missionaries from the West all competed for patients. This book examines the dichotomy between "Western" and "Chinese" medicine, showing how it has been greatly exaggerated. As missionaries went to lengths to make their medicine more acceptable to Chinese patients, modernizers of Chinese medicine worked to become more "scientific" by eradicating superstition and creating modern institutions. Andrews challenges the supposed superiority of Western medicine in China while showing how "traditional" Chinese medicine was deliberately created in the image of a modern scientific practice.

Download or read book Yi Lin Gai Cuo written by Qingren Wang and published by Blue Poppy Enterprises, Inc.. This book was released on 2007 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Epidemics and Society written by Frank M. Snowden and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2019-10-22 with total page 603 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A wide-ranging study that illuminates the connection between epidemic diseases and societal change, from the Black Death to Ebola This sweeping exploration of the impact of epidemic diseases looks at how mass infectious outbreaks have shaped society, from the Black Death to today. In a clear and accessible style, Frank M. Snowden reveals the ways that diseases have not only influenced medical science and public health, but also transformed the arts, religion, intellectual history, and warfare. A multidisciplinary and comparative investigation of the medical and social history of the major epidemics, this volume touches on themes such as the evolution of medical therapy, plague literature, poverty, the environment, and mass hysteria. In addition to providing historical perspective on diseases such as smallpox, cholera, and tuberculosis, Snowden examines the fallout from recent epidemics such as HIV/AIDS, SARS, and Ebola and the question of the world’s preparedness for the next generation of diseases.

Download or read book Golden Silk Smoke written by Carol Benedict and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2011-04-10 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Tobacco has been pervasive in China almost since its introduction from the Americas in the mid-sixteenth century. One-third of the world's smokers--over 350 million--now live in China, and they account for 25 percent of worldwide smoking-related deaths. This book examines the deep roots of China's contemporary "cigarette culture" and smoking epidemic and provides one of the first comprehensive histories of Chinese consumption in global and comparative perspective"--Publisher's description.

Download or read book Yellow Perils written by Franck Billé and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2018-07-31 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: China’s meteoric rise and ever expanding economic and cultural footprint have been accompanied by widespread global disquiet. Whether admiring or alarmist, media discourse and representations of China often tap into the myths and prejudices that emerged through specific historical encounters. These deeply embedded anxieties have shown great resilience, as in recent media treatments of SARS and the H5N1 virus, which echoed past beliefs connecting China and disease. Popular perceptions of Asia, too, continue to be framed by entrenched racial stereotypes: its people are unfathomable, exploitative, cunning, or excessively hardworking. This interdisciplinary collection of original essays offers a broad view of the mechanics that underlie Yellow Peril discourse by looking at its cultural deployment and repercussions worldwide. Building on the richly detailed historical studies already published in the context of the United States and Europe, contributors to Yellow Perils confront the phenomenon in Italy, Australia, South Africa, Nigeria, Mongolia, Hong Kong, and China itself. With chapters based on archival material and interviews, the collection supplements and often challenges superficial journalistic accounts and top-down studies by economists and political scientists. Yellow Peril narratives, contributors find, constitute cultural vectors of multiple kinds of anxieties, spanning the cultural, racial, political, and economic. Indeed, the emergence of the term “Yellow Peril” in such disparate contexts cannot be assumed to be singular, to refer to the same fears, or to revolve around the same stereotypes. The discourse, even when used in reference to a single country like China, is therefore inherently fractured and multiple. The term “Yellow Peril” may feel unpalatable and dated today, but the ethnographic, geographic, and historical breadth of this collection—experiences of Chinese migration and diaspora, historical reflections on the discourse of the Yellow Peril in China, and contemporary analyses of the global reverberations of China’s economic rise—offers a unique overview of the ways in which anti-Chinese narratives continue to play out in today’s world. This timely and provocative book will appeal to Chinese and Asian Studies scholars, but will also be highly relevant to historians and anthropologists working on diasporic communities and on ethnic formations both within and beyond Asia. Contributors: Christos Lynteris David Walker Kevin Carrico Magnus Fiskesjö Romain Dittgen Ross Anthony Xiaojian Zhao Yu Qiu

Download or read book The Black Death Transformed written by Samuel Kline Cohn and published by Hodder Arnold. This book was released on 2002 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Black Death in Europe, from its arrival in 1347-52 into the early modern period, has been seriously misunderstood. From a wide range of sources, this study argues that it was not the rat-based bubonic plague usually blamed, and considers its effect on European culture.