Neither Donkey nor Horse: Medicine in Struggle over China's Modernity, by Sean Hsiang-Lin Lei. Chicago & London, The University of Chicago Press, 2014. x, 376 pp. $35.00 US (cloth). The central theme in history of in modern China is legitimacy crisis Chinese faced from twentieth century onward, as modern and state challenged traditional practice. Throughout Republican Period, reform-minded Chinese practitioners attempted to bring about profound institutional, epistemological, and material changes in their field. Their attempt to find a modern form for pre-modern Chinese attracted criticism from staunch advocates of both Chinese and Western medicines, who scorned resulting practice as being a mongrel medicine--or neither donkey nor horse. This highly innovative and provocative book is based on rich original material and secondary literature. Sean Hsiang-Lin Lei has re-interpreted Chinese medicine's entangled and complicated relationships with state, science, and modernity in changing political and social contexts from late nineteenth century to 1949. The book reaches beyond dual history framework of survival of traditional medicine and the development of modern and shifts focus from policy struggle over role of Chinese to an ideological struggle over very nature of China's modernity. Under this perspective, Chinese in modern China was not passively abolished, but rather actively participated in construction of modern state. The key issues facing Chinese prior to scientizing efforts of these reformers are subject of chapter two through six. The author traces impact of Manchurian Plague of 1910-1911 on Chinese medicine, changing face of in China from 1860 to 1928, early Chinese medical practitioners' efforts to accommodate Chinese with Western medicine, so-called Chinese Medical Revolution of 1929 and consequent struggle of practitioners of Chinese against Western medicine, and medical landscape of 1930s Shanghai. The way reformers of Chinese strove to scientize Chinese is focus of chapter seven through nine. This process began with National Medicine Movement, development of incipient form of pattern differentiation and treatment determinations (pp. 167-192), scientific research on antimalarial efficacy of changshan (Dichroa febrifuga root), and experimental efforts to implement State Medicine in rural China. Lei presents fresh arguments concerning Chinese medicine's relationship with state. …