Epistemic Genres as a Conceptual Tool in the History of Chinese Medicine

Abstract This article summarizes the collaboration between two historians of medicine on Sino-European medical exchanges. Gianna Pomata researches the history of medicine in early modern Europe and Marta Hanson researches the history of medicine in early modern China. The following covers the concept of epistemic genres that Pomata first developed out of her research on the history of the genres historia, observationes, recipes, medical cases, and the commentary in Europe. She connected these genres variously to empiricism, erudition, scientific observation, norm-making, and recording practice. The paper then evaluates how Pomata and Hanson used epistemic genres as a method for doing cross-cultural research on 17th–18th-century Sino-European medical exchanges. Pomata then wrote a comparative history of the medical case in Europe and China. The article concludes with how Hanson applied the distinction of epistemic genres to analyze the history of Chinese medicine from a new perspective.