Article ID: CBB000770514

Divergent Interests and Cultivated Misunderstandings: The Influence of the West on Modern Chinese Medicine (2004)

unapi

Set in the first forty years of Communist Party rule in China (1949--89), this article will describe how Chinese medicine in modern China has been tailored to some degree by a Western concept of what Chinese medicine `really' should be. After Chinese medicine was reinstated by the Chinese Communist Party as a state-sanctioned system of health care, it had to redefine its role within Chinese society. Western scholarly interest in the medicine was one force which was to leave its mark on this search for identity. The shroud of mystery in which China was enveloped for much of this time was to give rise to two fundamentally contradictory attitudes---one side was Chinese, pushing for a scientification of their medicine, and the other was Western, pushing for more information on a traditional healing method. This article will show how the Chinese medical community contributed to the Western illusion of a static, unchanging medical system, by repeated advertising of the long and rich history of their medicine, and by the use of the translation `Traditional Chinese Medicine' (or `TCM'). In turn, Western scholars clamoured for proof of such a tradition, and their attention was directed towards a new form of textbook, namely the `Basic Theory of TCM', which belonged, in fact, to a sideline programme of Chinese medical education---that of teaching it to doctors of Western medicine. Just how such divergent interests and cultivated misunderstandings reinforced one another will be the topic of this article.

...More
Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB000770514/

Similar Citations

Book Zhan, Mei; (2009)
Other-Worldly: Making Chinese Medicine through Transnational Frames (/isis/citation/CBB001231968/)

Thesis Karchmer, Eric I.; (2005)
Orientalizing the Body: Postcolonial Transformations in Chinese Medicine (/isis/citation/CBB001561860/)

Book Barnes, Linda L.; (2005)
Needles, Herbs, Gods, and Ghosts: China, Healing, and the West to 1848 (/isis/citation/CBB000600584/)

Book C. Michele Thompson; (2015)
Vietnamese Traditional Medicine: A Social History (/isis/citation/CBB013500686/)

Article Nogueira, Maria Inês; Camargo, Kenneth Rochel de, Jr.; (2007)
A orientalização do Ocidente como superfície de emergência de novos paradigmas em saúde (/isis/citation/CBB000831577/)

Book Yaron Seidman DAOM; Sean Xiang Lin Lei; Lois Nethery; Zac Patterson; (2015)
Chinese Medicine Liberation: Inner Documents (/isis/citation/CBB665325494/)

Book Hilary A. Smith; (2017)
Forgotten Disease: Illnesses Transformed in Chinese Medicine (/isis/citation/CBB891109049/)

Article Chang, Rhonda; (2014)
Making Theoretical Principles for New Chinese Medicine (/isis/citation/CBB001421869/)

Article Sugiyama, Shigeo; (2004)
Traditional Kampo Medicine: Unauthenticated in the Meiji Era (/isis/citation/CBB000774908/)

Article Liang, Rong; (2004)
Probing into the Academic Evolution of Tongue Inspection of TCM Before 1949 (/isis/citation/CBB000502063/)

Article Chace, Chip; Blalack, Jason; (2013)
Tracing the Dragon: Flexibility and Adaptation in Zhang Xichun's `Essays on Medicine' (/isis/citation/CBB001510510/)

Article Craik, E. M.; (2009)
Hippocratic Bodily “Channels” and Oriental Parallels (/isis/citation/CBB000931185/)

Article Farquhar, Judith; (2014)
Reading Hands: Pulse Qualities and the Specificity of the Clinical (/isis/citation/CBB001450048/)

Article Rocha, Leon Antonio; (2012)
The Way of Sex: Joseph Needham and Jolan Chang (/isis/citation/CBB001211287/)

Article Wang, Guangchao; Wu, Yunhao; Sun, Xiaochun; (2008)
The Impact of the Telescope on Chinese Astronomy during the Late Ming and Early Qing Period (/isis/citation/CBB000933532/)

Authors & Contributors
Lois Nethery
Sean Xiang Lin Lei
Paramore, Kiri
Yaron Seidman
Zac Patterson
Blalack, Jason
Concepts
Cross-cultural interaction; cultural influence
East Asia, civilization and culture
Medicine, Chinese traditional
Western world, civilization and culture
Medicine
Health
Time Periods
20th century
19th century
Qing dynasty (China, 1644-1912)
20th century, late
20th century, early
17th century
Places
China
Japan
Republic of China (1912-1949)
Vietnam
Tibet
Korea
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment