The Medical Missionary’s Changing Conceptions of Traditional Chinese Medicine

Abstract

Chinese medicine and Western medicine first met when Western missionaries came to China in the late Ming and early Qing period. Initially, they regarded the two types of medicine as almost equals, but gradually their evaluation of traditional Chinese medicine became more negative. After the Opium War, with the establishment of missionary hospitals, Western medical missionaries commonly criticized the theories of Chinese medicine, denigrated its practitioners and questioned its value. However, after the founding of Republic of China, the emergence of medical schools in Christian universities provided favorable conditions for the in-depth study of traditional Chinese medicine; at the same time, the fact that Western trained Chinese medical men in China were providing an introduction to traditional Chinese medicine corrected many of the missionaries’ misinterpretations of its canonical texts. In particular, some medical missionaries who had worked together with practitioners of Chinese medicine for many years began to take a “sympathetic view” of the theories and clinical experience of traditional Chinese medicine and the value of its pharmacopeia, thus pioneering Western understanding and use of traditional Chinese medicine.