Medicine on the March: Military Institutions, Medical Networks, and the Qing Empire, 1644-1800 (2025)
Chang Xu (Author)
Miles, Steven B. (Advisor)
Treitel, Corinna (Advisor)
Treitel, Corinna
Miles, Steven B.
Washington University in St. Louis
Physical Details: 264
Language: English
This dissertation provides a social, cultural, and institutional history of military medicine in early modern China, focusing on a variety of medical practices in garrisons during the period of Qing territorial expansion. The state initiated some of these practices: dispatching healers from the imperial court, procuring medicinal objects, and distributing compound medications to showcase the emperor’s benevolence to his subjects. Garrison personnel instructed the other: requiring additional medical practitioners and medicine, consulting prescriptions for armies, recruiting local healers, and investigating unfamiliar pharmaceutical objects. Together, military institutions functioned as nodes connecting imperial medical networks, linked not only the imperial center but also residents inside and outside the garrison walls with medicine. “Medicine on the March” contributes to both the history of medicine in the early modern world and the Qing history. By incorporating the military regime into the history of medicine, this project highlights aspects of classical Chinese medicine pertinent to non-elite practitioners, compound medicines, and collective healing. Additionally, by reconsidering Qing imperialism through the lens of military medicine, it uncovers the ways in which medicine and imperialism overlapped in the making of a multi-ethnic empire. It suggests that the Qing empire did not develop colonial medicine with a regional specialty but imposed an imperial medicine that prioritized medical efficacy and pragmatism in military expansion. Overall, this dissertation addresses the neglected historical question of how the Qing raised one of the largest armies in the eighteenth century and presents a broader history of medicine within the context of Qing imperialism, transregional connectivity, and empire building.
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