{"title":"‘Homoeopathy flourishes in the far East’: A forgotten history of homeopathy in late nineteenth-century China","authors":"Di-lai Lu","doi":"10.1098/rsnr.2018.0041","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Homeopathy and its transnational transmission have received significant attention from historians of medicine. But the emergence of homeopathy in modern Chinese society has remained little explored. This article identifies the homeopathic practitioners arriving in nineteenth-century China, and then explores their origins, efforts and sense of professional identity in a transnational context. The history of homeopathy in China is found to begin in the late nineteenth century, during which the growth of the Christian missionary enterprise promoted the arrival of sporadic Euro-American homeopathic practitioners, also missionaries, in coastal regions of China. Almost all of them received professional training in American homeopathic medical institutions; and most of them were females, providing additional opportunities for local women patients to receive treatment. The practitioners recognized homeopathy and their collective homeopathic identity, but their healing services were not necessarily essentially homeopathic. Homeopathy that they learnt also evolved and transacted with exotic knowledge during its globalization. Under the influence of homeopathy, some Euro-Americans claimed to have discovered homeopathic elements in Chinese medical ideas and practice. The early history of homeopathy explored in this article helps deconstruct the popular imagination of a coherent ‘Western medicine’ in modern China.","PeriodicalId":49744,"journal":{"name":"Notes and Records-The Royal Society Journal of the History of Science","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4000,"publicationDate":"2018-09-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1098/rsnr.2018.0041","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Notes and Records-The Royal Society Journal of the History of Science","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1098/rsnr.2018.0041","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"HISTORY & PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
Homeopathy and its transnational transmission have received significant attention from historians of medicine. But the emergence of homeopathy in modern Chinese society has remained little explored. This article identifies the homeopathic practitioners arriving in nineteenth-century China, and then explores their origins, efforts and sense of professional identity in a transnational context. The history of homeopathy in China is found to begin in the late nineteenth century, during which the growth of the Christian missionary enterprise promoted the arrival of sporadic Euro-American homeopathic practitioners, also missionaries, in coastal regions of China. Almost all of them received professional training in American homeopathic medical institutions; and most of them were females, providing additional opportunities for local women patients to receive treatment. The practitioners recognized homeopathy and their collective homeopathic identity, but their healing services were not necessarily essentially homeopathic. Homeopathy that they learnt also evolved and transacted with exotic knowledge during its globalization. Under the influence of homeopathy, some Euro-Americans claimed to have discovered homeopathic elements in Chinese medical ideas and practice. The early history of homeopathy explored in this article helps deconstruct the popular imagination of a coherent ‘Western medicine’ in modern China.
期刊介绍:
Notes and Records is an international journal which publishes original research in the history of science, technology and medicine.
In addition to publishing peer-reviewed research articles in all areas of the history of science, technology and medicine, Notes and Records welcomes other forms of contribution including: research notes elucidating recent archival discoveries (in the collections of the Royal Society and elsewhere); news of research projects and online and other resources of interest to historians; essay reviews, on material relating primarily to the history of the Royal Society; and recollections or autobiographical accounts written by Fellows and others recording important moments in science from the recent past.