‘A Sick Man Shaken by Fits of Madness’

Reviewed by: Discourses of Weakness in Modern China: Historical Diagnoses of the "Sick Man of East Asia." ed. by Iwo Amelung Ying-kit Chan (bio) Iwo Amelung, editor. Discourses of Weakness in Modern China: Historical Diagnoses of the "Sick Man of East Asia." Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 2020. 586 pp. Softcover €45.00, isbn 978-3-593-50902-0. From the late nineteenth century, when Qing China suffered a series of military defeats and "national humiliation" at the hands of Japanese and European powers, to the early 1940s, Chinese officials and scholars created a cache of references to the weakness of China in the face of imperialism and foreign aggression. They established and explained China's links with other nations in the world and sought both inspiration and lessons from them for elevating China in the global hierarchy of national power. Taking its cue from Rebecca E. Karl's conceptualization of nationalism as a "global historical problematic," this book examines how the metaphor of the "Sick Man" in Chinese discourses of weakness has produced a distinct form of Chinese nationalism that "can be consumed and maybe even enjoyed" (p. 14). A collection of papers presented at an international conference held at Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, in December 2015, within the framework of the Collaborative Research Cluster "Discourses of Weakness and Resource Regimes," funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, the book argues for a more historically grounded understanding of contemporary China's national identity, self-image, and self-representation. Featuring mostly German and mainland Chinese scholars, the book ultimately traces the current Chinese government's obsession with sovereignty and fear of foreign intervention in its internal affairs. It also suggests how China, with its innovativeness and economic might, has turned the tables on Europe in recent years, forcing Europe to generate its own discourses of weakness with which Europe's China historians have had to grapple through a comparative lens. Running to almost 600 pages, this massive book is divided into four parts. The first part, "Examining the Sick Man—Describing Symptoms of Weakness," explores the development of the Sick Man metaphor in China. As the four essays in the first part suggest, Chinese elites created and deployed discourses of weakness to define China as a modern polity that was enmeshed in global structures. In doing so, they clarified what modernity meant for China and what China had to do—or not do—to be modern and respectable in the global family of nations. The second part, "Diagnosing the Sick Man—Divided, [End Page 53] Imperiled, Humiliated," discusses the concepts of extraterritoriality, national ruin, and social Darwinism in relation to the decline and disintegration of the Chinese nation. The five essays in the second part reveal that Chinese intellectuals held a Darwinian, realpolitik worldview, in which war, interstate rivalry, and global competition took center stage, and China must learn to adapt and survive in the harsh world of diplomatic realism and military conflicts. The third part, "Prognosis for the Sick Man—Ruin, Resistance, and Restoration," is composed of three essays that delve into the Chinese appropriation of foreign knowledge and contextualize the Chinese discourses of weakness in the world. In the discourses, the partition of Poland was a particularly popular and striking trope, which soon developed into a nationalist symbol, a specter of national ruin that China must avoid at all costs. For Chinese intellectuals, India, a supposedly civilizational nation like China, was another prime example of what could happen to their nation if they did not pull themselves up by their bootstraps. The fourth part, "Treating the Sick Man—Coexistence, Science, and Profit," highlights the rallying power of Chinese discourses of weakness in "awakening" and mobilizing much of the Chinese nation for the cause of overcoming the peril of total annihilation. The three essays in the fourth part show how ideas such as pan-Asianism and scientific progress gained credence in print media among increasingly educated and literate Chinese. The ideas were widely debated as possible solutions to China's weakness, and the public debates reflected a Chinese nation that had come to terms with its weakness. In the present day, however, this has been "overcompensated" for with hyper-defensive diplomatic...

This study explores Chinese cultural nationalism since Xi Jinping became the President, that is, the ways that Xi constructs and politicises culture to serve his nationalist interests. It first situates cultural nationalism in the global context and clarifies its usage in China. Then the article explains how national humiliation, the ‘sick man’ metaphor, the ‘great power’ narrative, and national rejuvenation provide a broader context of understanding Chinese cultural nationalism. Applying summative content analysis to examine the government discourse on its website since Xi Jinping became the president in 2012, this article shows that Xi downplays national humiliation and the ‘sick man’ metaphor while emphasising the ‘great power’ narrative and national rejuvenation. The author argues that this politisation of culture has a strong personal feature of Xi and serves his nationalist purposes in many ways. Finally, this article discusses the rationales and risks of his promotion of such cultural nationalism and the implications of the study.

In January 1853, in a conversation between Czar Nicholas I of Russia and the British ambassador, Sir Hamilton Seymour, the czar suggested that it was time for Britain and Russia to agree on the partition of the collapsing Ottoman Empire. “We have a sick man on our hands,” said the czar, “a man gravely ill. It will be a great misfortune if one of these days he slips through our hands, especially before the necessary arrangements are made.” Seymour, while not disputing the diagnosis, suggested that with proper treatment the “sick man” might recover, and thought that what was needed was a physician, not a surgeon. This disagreement between the British and Russian views led shortly afterward to the Crimean War, and to a long and sustained political conflict. The phrase “the sick man” became famous and, despite differences of policy, reflected the common European view of the state of the Ottoman Empire. With the demise of the Ottoman Empire after the First World War, the sick man may be said to have died, and been succeeded by his sole legitimate heir, the Turkish Republic. The image, however, remained.

European Employment Models in Flux: Pressures for Change and Prospects for Survival and Revitalisation G.Bosch, S.Lehndorff & J.Rubery Revisiting the UK Model: From Basket Case to Success Story? J.Rubery, D.Grimshaw, R.Donnelly & P.Urwin The Swedish Model: Revival after the Turbulent 1990s? D.Anxo & H.Niklasson From the 'Sick Man' to the 'Overhauled Engine' of Europe? Upheaval in the German Model S.Lehndorff, Ge.Bosch, T.Haipeter & E.Latniak Institutional Continuity Masking a Creeping Paradigm Shift in the Austrian Social Model? C.Hermann & J.Flecker Crisis of the Post-transition Hungarian Model L.Neumann & A.Toth Capitalizing on Variety: Risks and Opportunities in a New French Social Model I.Berrebi-Hoffmann, F.Jany-Catrice, M.Lallement & T.Ribault Continuity and Change in the Italian Model A.Simonazzi, P.Villa, F.Lucidi & P.Naticchioni From a State-led Familistic to a Liberal Partly De-familialized Capitalism: The Difficult Transition of the Greek Model M.Karamessini The Transformation of the Employment System in Spain: Towards a Mediterranean Neoliberalism? J.Banyuls, F.Miguelez, A.Recio, E.Cano & R.Lorente

Chapter 4: Social Entrepreneurship Coming to the Aid of the 'Sick Man' (1999-2008)

In England and Wales the Crown Prosecutor is a lawyer who is independent from the investigation and is charged with assessing evidence and evaluating whether a prosecution should proceed or not. The CPS is intentionally authorised to override the decisions of the police to curb any potentially over‐zealous investigations and evidence gathering that might subsequently tarnish the standards of procedure in the courts when applying the criminal law. The increasingly burdensome rules of disclosure have made demands on the CPS which are akin to the overall requirement on the investigating magistrate of civil law jurisdictions to find the truth by examination of the prosecution and defence evidence. The recent moves to return a limited number of lawyers to police stations is a further indication that the future role of the CPS may include an active rather than solely passive role in evidence gathering. The Serious Fraud Office are directly involved in the investigation and prosecution of complex frauds. This office has statutory and judicial authority to conduct investigations which follow an inquisitorial rather than accusatorial model. The juge d'instruction in France has authority to direct and control police investigations and subsequently to compile a dossier of evidence for presentation before a trial court. This paper points out that there are close parallels emerging in pre‐trial procedures in England and Wales and in France and the criticisms of the role of the investigating magistrate, the ‘sick man’, may hold lessons to be learnt for investigators and prosecutors within this jurisdiction.

In this article, I explore the historical resonances between China's 1911 pneumonic plague and our current situation with COVID-19. At the turn of the 20th century, China was labeled "the Sick Man of the Far East": a once-powerful country that had become burdened by opium addiction, infectious disease, and an ineffective government. In 1911, this weakened China faced an outbreak of pneumonic plague in Manchuria that killed more than 60 000 people. After the 1911 plague, a revolutionized China radically restructured its approach to public health to eliminate the stigma of being "the Sick Man." Ironically, given the US mishandling of the COVID pandemic, observers in today's China are now calling the United States "the Sick Man of the West": a country burdened by opioid addiction, infectious disease, and an ineffective government. The historical significance of the phrase "Sick Man"-and its potential to now be associated with the United States-highlights the continued links between epidemic control and international status in a changing world. This historical comparison also reveals that plagues bring not only tragedy but also the opportunity for change.

Chemical drug based human disease healing (CDBHDH) is well established methodology in Medical sciences. The Physician's drug (medicine) dose given to a sick man interacts through chemical reaction with the complex polluted drugs of the sick man which results in the normalization of the disturbed (sick man) ion profiles. In this communication we advocate for the first time creation of an appropriate human tissue based electronic circuit (HTBEC) inside the human body (at appropriate determined location) to normalize the prevailing disturbed ion profiles of sick man and thus HTBEC can act as alternate to CDBHDH in some cases. After review of our relevant reported work a few conceptually realizable HTBEC (digital/analog) to demonstrate the feasibility is presented.

(1981). The sick man and the British physician. Middle Eastern Studies: Vol. 17, No. 2, pp. 147-173.

Anesthetics, narcotics and the sick man

China's plan to use the 2008 Olympics to herald hopes of a coming Chinese global dominion follows a custom established by the US in the preceding century. US leaders and the public routinely hailed the twentieth century as the ‘American century’ and used the Olympics to signify their hegemony. During this period the US perceived China both as a ‘sick man’ that could be rescued by American-style sport and as a ‘sleeping giant’ that might someday awake and challenge US power in sport and other domains. This dual paradigm historically shapes US interpretations that swing between fear of China's potential for challenging the US to glib analyses that China's problems render it an impotent rival. This history chronicles US perceptions of China at the Olympics from the dawn of the modern games to contemporary debates over Beijing's hosting of the 2008 games.

The juxtaposition of the word cosmology with medicine might appear as somewhat discordant to medically trained professionals. It is an odd word; suggestive as it is of a theory of everything. Not surprisingly, perhaps, Jewson goes to considerable lengths to define the term in his opening paragraphs. Thus, cosmologies are referred to as conceptual structures; as metaphysical attempts to define the nature of medical discourse; as intellectual frames in terms of which people make sense of their worlds; as ways of knowing; and things that function as a medium within and through which perceptions of self and other are expressed, and institutionalized. They might be regarded, suggests Jewson, as akin to Foucault’s notion of a ‘discursive formation’. Suffice to say that the language and preliminary content of Jewson’s 1976 paper inevitably reflect the concerns of the age. Thus, the reference to cosmology, in particular, is characteristic of a sociology that was closely focused on the content and role of belief systems (religious and secular) and the place of ideology in social and economic affairs. Equally, characteristic of the age are Jewson’s use of Marxian terminology—especially his deployment of the concept of the ‘mode of production’. Yet, despite the passing years, it is easy to detect the pressing relevance of this style of analysis to an understanding of the ways in which patients and their relationships with their doctors and systems of health care are structured in the modern world. Above all, by applying Jewson’s mode of analysis to the period since 1870 we can see more clearly how and why ‘sick’ men and women became first transposed into patients and thereafter into independent consumers of health care in market-based systems. As I have just remarked, the strength and originality of Jewson’s analysis bears little relation to the definition of cosmology. Rather, the pivotal concept is drawn from Marxist discourse, and turns on the aforementioned notion of the mode of production: in particular, the mode of production of medical knowledge. In that respect Jewson’s work stands at a juncture where an interest in the content of ‘belief’ was developing into a concern with the ways in which knowledge, including scientific and medical knowledge, was produced rather than ‘discovered’; and the ways in which positions (such as those of patient and doctor) were reproduced in and through everyday social practices. Above all, by drawing upon the resources of classical Marxist theory, Jewson proves able to connect changes of medical practice and medical thinking during the period 1770–1870, to the social and economic relationships in terms of which doctors and patients interacted. By extension, his analysis offers fundamental insights into features of more familiar, twenty-first century systems of health care. So how does the ‘sick-man’ fit into such a schema? Essentially, Jewson identifies three phases of medical practice—or, in his words, three types of medical cosmology. The first he calls bedside medicine. This is medicine as practiced on those wealthy enough— during the late eighteenth century—to employ the services of a physician. It is built around a speculative pathology; around ‘disease’ that travels through airs, bodies and systems, around a morbidity that is mercurial and defiant of location. Yet, it is also a medicine—and a form of medical practice—that is specifically tailored to the patient (sick man) considered as a Homo totus (if not in the religious sense, then at least in a modern secular sense). Such practice is, however, supplanted during the earlier part of the nineteenth century by hospital medicine. A key feature of this latter is the connection of disease and pathology to bodily organs—for every disease there is a site, for each pathology there is a lesion. Department of Sociology, School of Sociology & Centre of Excellence for Public Health, Queens University, Belfast BT7 1NN, UK. E-mail: l.prior@qub.ac.uk Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Epidemiological Association

How does one map the mind of Adolf Hitler? One striking formulation of the problem was offered by the émigré journalist Sebastian Haffner, who, in a set of ‘Observations on Hitler’ first published in 1978, opined that ‘the decisive characteristic of this life is its one-dimensionality’ and that, political obsessions aside, it was a life ‘devoid of content’.1 Even more pervasive, perhaps, than the interpretative tradition which proceeds from the assumption that Hitler was an ‘empty nobody’ onto whom ordinary Germans projected their hopes and fears has been a strand of writing which explains his radicalism as a product of illness. There has been no shortage of writing characterising Hitler as a ‘neurotic psychopath’, a ‘psychopathic paranoid’ or simply a ‘very sick man’.2 Typically, such analyses suggest that one or another experience of early-life trauma generated an inferiority or oedipal complex which found expression in a visceral hatred of the Jews. A recent attempt to portray Hitler as a secret homosexual sits very much within this tradition of explaining Hitler’s politics as the product of one or another kind of supposed deviancy from the social, cultural and political norms of mainstream German society.3 KeywordsPolice ReportColonial VisionSocial Democratic PartyOedipal ComplexGerman PeopleThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

EDITOR'S NOTE O my country, I canseethe walls andarches andthe columns andthe statues andlonely towers ofourancestors , but I don't seethe glory. - Giacomo Leopardi, "All'Italia" (1818), tr. Jonathan Galassi z o s l/l < CO -I < o H o X CL Ma had ancient la faded gloria Rome for non and Leopardi vedo. Renaissance If the by the glory early Italy of ancient Romeand Renaissance Italy had fadedforLeopardiby theearly nineteenth century, formanythe Risorgimento (1815-70) that ledtoherunification, after Leopardi 'sdeath, marked Italy'sglorious return. Earlier thisspring, Italians aroundtheworldmarked the 150th anniversary ofunification thathad culminated , symbolically, on March17,1861, withthe proclamation ofVictor Emmanuel II (whobarely spokeItalian) as king. In theweekleadingup to theanniversary, theUniversity ofOklahoma was fortunate to hosttheHonorableFabrizioNava, consulgeneralofItaly,who gave a talkabout theRisorgimento as partofa two-day celebration honoring eminent Italian playwright, novelist, and poetDacia Maraini, who visitedOklahomathat week.Highlights during Maraini's visit tocampus included a galaevening andperformances ofher playMaryStuart , animatedconversations with students andfaculty ininformal settings, andthe interview withMonicaSegerthatappearsas the marquee feature, inthisissue,inourspecialsectiondevotedto contemporary Italianliterature (page 27). Even as celebrations of the Unitad'ltalia echoedup and downthepeninsula thisspring, certain discordant noteswere struck by those whoquestioned whether unification, inthewords of David Gilmour, had trulybeen "an exemplary caseofliberty triumphing overrepression." (Gilmour's newsurvey of"thediversities andcentrifugal inclinations inItalian history," The Pursuit of Italy, waspublished intheUKearlier this spring andisforthcoming intheUS infall2011.)Ifatthe end oftheeighteenth century, according to Gilmour , Italyremained "a literary idea,an abstract concept, animaginary homeland orsimply a sentimental urge," bytheearlytwenty-first century, many wondered whether thecountry, theperennial "sick man"ofEurope, shouldbeconsidered a "failure" asa nation, toechothetitles oftworecent studies. IntheVeneto, oneofthelastregions tobe annexedduring unification, a crowdin Vicenza celebrated thenational holiday inMarch byburningGaribaldi in effigy. Politically, economically, andsocially, theglories ofpastgoldenagesseem mutedinthebright glareofcorruption scandals, anti-immigrant xenophobia, economicstratification , andconstant mediababble. No surprise, then,thatthefourteen Italian authors presented in thisissueareboth"outof stepwiththeirown time"yet"uniquelypositionedtoobserve it,"as Jamie Richards notesin heressayonGianniCelatiandtheEmilian writers (page48).In a country thatsometimes seems "incapable ofrecognizing andvaluing itscultural patrimony," Italy's writers, inthewordsofAlgerian -born novelist AmaraLakhous, shouldnotbe viewedas "saviors ofthenation" or"modern-day Garibaldis" (page 44).Rather, theauthors featured herenurture personal patrimonies, reflecting current realities but,for themost part, onlyobliquely commenting onthem. Emblematic oftheir stance is the speakerin Maria Luisa Spaziani's"The Glory":"thepoetalwaysscatters herwordsto thewind/- three thousand drones diefor oneto touchthequeen- // thisis theheaventowhich other namesaregiven"(page 46).Inherconcludingstanza , Spazianiwrites: "themost famed marblecansuddenly reveal/flaws more slender than a hair, /then everything cracks, crumbles, andthe vainmenhirs / meltintowind-swirls, theysuck awayyourname."InSpaziani'sItaly, as for Leopardi ,theglory ofancient arches, columns, and statuesis veinedwithhistorical - and human mutability . Theauthors inthisissuereflect more thediversity than theunity ofcontemporary Italy, sharing a common languageevenas they scatter their wordstothewind. Editorial note: Dacia Maraini's visit tothe University of Oklahoma was made possible by generous support from the following campus sponsors: the College of International Studies; Friends of the College of Arts &Sciences; Department of Modern Languages, Literatures &Linguistics; School of Drama; and the Puterbaugh Foundation, in cooperation with the Italian Cultural Institute of Los Angeles. JulyAugust 201 11 3 ...

The implosion of the Soviet Union in late 1991 triggered the steepest decline not associated with military defeat of any major power in modern history. Nonetheless, Russia remains the largest polity in the world, its territory comprising 30 per cent of the vast space of Eurasia, with land and sea borders totalling almost 62,000 kilometres. The Russian Federation (RF) has retained most of its old northern and northwestern borders, together with the border with North Korea and a 4,300-km border with China. However, in Europe, Russia's borders were returned to those of the seventeenth century, while its southern borders in the Caucasus and Central Asia were rolled back by almost 1,500-km to where they had been in the 1800s. South of the undefended 7,000-km border between Russia and Kazakhstan, the longest international land border in the world, the five new Central Asian successor states form a huge but fragile buffer zone. Containing around 50 million inhabitants, including 30 million Muslims and six million ethnic Russians, these secular post-Soviet regimes separate Russia's own Muslim regions, containing some 13 per cent of the RF population, from the Muslim south of Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Locked between the EU to the west and China to the east, and between the Artic north and an unstable Muslim south, Russia has the potential to become either the regional hegemon or the 'sick man' of Eurasia.1