A Humanist Analysis on Periodicals of Chinese Medicine from the Late Qing and Republican Periods

Abstract

This article introduces English-language scholars to The Compilation of Chinese Medicine Periodicals from the Late Qing and Republican Periods, a valuable new scholarly resource edited by Wang Youpeng. Compilation projects like this one have been a major field of scholarship in China from imperial times and serve the purpose of both preserving and selecting texts from around the empire. The medical journals included in this compilation took advantage of the newly available technology of print capitalism in Shanghai to respond to the challenge posed by a rapidly organizing Western medicine that sought to regulate and abolish Chinese medical practitioners. This article is a translation of Wang Youpeng’s introduction to The Compilation and was first published in the China Reader’s Journal (Zhonghua dushu bao) in August 2012. Wang argues that Chinese medical journals of this period are one of the best sources for observing the changing nature of medical practice and education during the late Qing and Republican eras so crucial to the development of medicine and science in China. The Compilation is a massive primary source not only for understanding the modern transformation of Chinese medicine from a private to a public endeavor, but also the larger role of medicine in Chinese society, seen through published documents on the battle between proponents and enemies of Chinese medicine. Literature specialists will be interested in the many short stories on medicine by important Chinese writers like Bing Xin. Ultimately, Wang argues, The Compilation should stimulate a multitude of new research projects. Given its importance in bringing together these journals from repositories all over China, we might add that research libraries and specialists may consider acquiring this substantive source and the separate index and abstracted table of contents.