This book traces the history of the Chinese concept of "Warm
diseases" (wenbing) from antiquity to the SARS epidemic. Following
wenbing from its birth to maturity and even life in modern times
Marta Hanson approaches the history of Chinese medicine from a new
angle. She explores the possibility of replacing older narratives
that stress progress and linear development with accounts that pay
attention to geographic, intellectual, and cultural diversity. By
doing so her book integrates the history of Chinese medicine into
broader historical studies in a way that has not so far been
attempted, and addresses the concerns of a readership much wider
than that of Chinese medicine specialists. The persistence of
wenbing and other Chinese disease concepts in the present can be
interpreted as resistance to the narrowing of meaning in modern
biomedical nosology. Attention to conceptions of disease and space
reveal a previously unexamined discourse the author calls the
Chinese geographic imagination. Tracing the changing meanings of
"Warm diseases" over two thousand years allows for the exploration
of pre-modern understandings of the nature of epidemics, their
intersection with this geographic imagination, and how conceptions
of geography shaped the sociology of medical practice and knowledge
in late imperial China. Speaking of Epidemics in Chinese Medicine
opens a new window on interpretive themes in Chinese cultural
history as well as on contemporary studies of the history of
science and medicine beyond East Asia.
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