‘To Cure a Hundred Diseases’: Animal Blood Therapies in Mao’s China

Abstract

This article discusses the practice in Mao-era China of creating new medical ‘therapies’ based on the blood of fowls (chickens, geese and ducks), which were emblematic of an expanded interest in the use of animal tissue in general. The logic and charisma of these practices stemmed from their hybridity: references culled from classical Chinese texts, suggestions taken from Soviet medicine (particularly tissue therapy), identification with the countryside and their seeming expression of political ideologies. My primary focus is chicken blood therapy, which emerged in the atmosphere of the Great Leap Forward and reached its height of popularity in the Cultural Revolution. While ultimately discredited, similar practices such as goose blood therapy were legitimised in its wake. Such therapies helped originate the still-current claim that modern Chinese drug discoveries could be ‘miracle cures’, and may represent a neglected early chapter in the ongoing craze for animal-based drugs in Chinese medicine.