Barefoot Doctors and Western Medicine in China

Erscheinungsjahr 2012
ISBN: 978-1-58046-433-8
Verlag: University of Rochester Press

Buch, Englisch, Band Volume 23, 310 Seiten, Format (B × H): 160 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 616 g

Reihe: Rochester Studies in Medical History

In 1968, at the height of the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese Communist Party endorsed a radical new system of health-care delivery for the rural masses. Soon every village had at least one barefoot doctor to provide basic medical care, creating a national network of health-care services for the very first time. The barefoot doctors were portrayed nationally and internationally as revolutionary heroes, wading undaunted through rice paddies to bring effective, low-cost care to poor peasants.
This book is the first comprehensive study to look beyond the nostalgia dominating present scholarship on public health in China and offer a powerful and carefully contextualized critique of the prevailing views on the role of barefoot doctors, their legacy, and their impact. Drawing on primary documents from the Cultural Revolution and personal interviews with patients and doctors, Xiaoping Fang examines the evidence within the broader history of medicine in revolutionary and postreform China. He finds that rather than consolidating traditional Chinese medicine, as purported by government propaganda, the barefoot doctor program introduced modern Western medicine to rural China, effectively modernizing established methods and forms of care. As a result, this volume retrieves from potential oblivion a critical part of the history of Western medicine in China.

Xiaoping Fang is assistant professor of Chinese history at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Fang, Xiaoping

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Asiatische Geschichte
• Medizin | Veterinärmedizin Medizin | Public Health | Pharmazie | Zahnmedizin Medizin, Gesundheitswesen Geschichte der Medizin
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kultur- und Ideengeschichte
• Medizin | Veterinärmedizin Medizin | Public Health | Pharmazie | Zahnmedizin Medizin, Gesundheitswesen Public Health, Gesundheitsmanagement, Gesundheitsökonomie, Gesundheitspolitik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction
Village Healers, Medical Pluralism, and State Medicine
Revolutionizing Knowledge Transmission Structures
Pharmaceuticals Reach the Villages
Healing Styles and Medical Beliefs: The Consumption of Chinese and Western Medicines
Relocating Illness: The Shift from Home Bedside to Hospital Ward
Group Identity, Power Relationships, and Medical Legitimacy
Conclusion
Appendixes
The Organization of the Three-Tiered Medical System in Rural China, 1968-83
Common Medicines in Chinese Villages during the 1960s-70s

Über Autor(innen)

Xiaoping Fang is a research fellow at the China Research Centre of the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia.