Barefoot Doctors and Western Medicine in China, by Xiaoping Fang

Abstract

Barefoot Doctors and Western Medicine in China, by Xiaoping Fang. Rochester, University of Rochester Press, 2012. xii, 310 pp. $90.00 US (doth). During decade-long Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976, rural experienced a remarkable improvement in public health conditions despite nationwide political chaos. This improvement, according to author Xiaoping Fang, is attributed to doctor (chijiao yisheng) program--a radical system of health-care delivery for rural masses officially endorsed in 1968. The centrepiece of this program was introduction of into Chinese villages. The barefoot doctors, defined officially by People's Daily in 1968, young commune members who were selected to receive basic medical training and then returned to their brigades to serve their (p. 30). The term (chijiao) addresses both doctors' peasant-class origin and their socialist revolutionary passion. With implementation of rural-reform policies and dismantling of people's commune system after 1978, barefoot doctor program began to gradually disintegrate. Barefoot doctors who passed medical examinations and continued practicing medicine in villages were then renamed doctors. Fang provides a reliable and comprehensive account of barefoot doctor movement and its significant impact on contestation between Chinese and Western medicine, evolution of rural China's health-care system, and formation of a new professional group. The greatest strength of this book is author's effort to challenge orthodox interpretation of barefoot doctors' role in contest between Chinese and Western medicine in village arena. Employing evidence from local archives of Cultural Revolution period and personal interviews with villagers and former barefoot doctors in seven counties in eastern China, Fang closely examines a shifting constellation of factors including knowledge transmission, pharmaceutical prices and supply chains, healing styles, and medical beliefs. Fang argues against portrayal of barefoot doctors as a revolutionary vanguard, a perspective championed by prevailing government propaganda. He argues alternatively that barefoot doctors were more effective in facilitating entry of Western medicine into villages hitherto dominated by Chinese medicine through scientificization, institutionalization, and professionalization (p. 3), which consequently led to marginalization of traditional Chinese medicine and practice. In this sense, Fang concludes, the barefoot doctors program lasted from 1968 to 1983, [and] was a pivotal stage in displacement of Chinese medicine by Western medicine in rural China (p. …