Author: William C. Summers
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 030018476X
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 236
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Book Description
When plague broke out in Manchuria in 1910 as a result of transmission from marmots to humans, it struck a region struggling with the introduction of Western medicine, as well as with the interactions of three different national powers: Chinese, Japanese, and Russian. In this fascinating case history, William Summers relates how this plague killed as many as 60,000 people in less than a year, and uses the analysis to examine the actions and interactions of the multinational doctors, politicians, and ordinary residents who responded to it.Summers covers the complex political and economic background of early twentieth-century Manchuria and then moves on to the plague itself, addressing the various contested stories of the plague's origins, development, and ecological ties. Ultimately, Summers shows how, because of Manchuria's importance to the world powers of its day, the plague brought together resources, knowledge, and people in ways that enacted in miniature the triumphs and challenges of transnational medical projects such as the World Health Organization.
Author: Terence Ranger
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521558310
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 364
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Book Description
From plague to AIDS, epidemics have been the most spectacular diseases to afflict human societies. This volume examines the way in which these great crises have influenced ideas, how they have helped to shape theological, political and social thought, and how they have been interpreted and understood in the intellectual context of their time.
Author: Qizi Liang
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822348268
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 347
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Book Description
Examines the intersections of power, culture and science that went into the struggle to overcome disease and improve people's health in Chinese regions of 20th century East Asia.
Author: Yu-lin Wu
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 9814632821
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 199
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Book Description
Dr Wu Lien-teh (1879 - 1960) was a distinguished scientist and Cambridge-trained Chinese physician who, at the age of 31, was sent to Manchuria in the severe winter of 1910 to fight the terrifying pneumonia plague which then threatened the world and claimed a deathtoll of 60,000 victims. The successful ending of this major plague epidemic, covering a distance of 2,000 miles from the north-western border of Siberia to Peking, within a short period of four months, brought him international fame and marked the beginning of almost thirty years of devoted humanitarian service to China.In 1912, Dr Wu established the Manchurian Plague Prevention Service, and it was on this foundation that he, despite immense difficulties, began to modernise China's medical services and medical education. Some twenty modern hospitals, laboratories and research institutions, including the Peking Central Hospital, built by Dr Wu in different parts of China are memorials to his work. He founded the Chinese Medical Association and established the first national quarantine service in China. He embarked on arduous work for the League of Nations and became a world authority on plague.This volume contains more than 200 historically important photographs vividly depicting the medical scenes and anti-plague work in China during the years 1908 - 37 that came from Dr Wu's private collection — an extraordinary collection filled with unforgettable images. This book, written with sensitivity and tenderness, is a worthy companion to Dr Wu Lien-teh's autobiography entitled Plague Fighter: The Autobiography of a Modern Chinese Physician, published by Heffer, Cambridge, in 1959.
Author: Mary Allerton Kilbourne Matossian
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300051216
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 210
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Book Description
Did food poisoning cause the Black Plague, the Salem witch-hunts, and other significant events in human history? In this pathbreaking book, historian Mary Kilbourne Matossian argues that epidemics, sporadic outbursts of bizarre behavior, and low fertility and high death rates from the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries may have been caused by food poisoning from microfungi in bread, the staple food in Europe and America during this period. "A bold book with a stimulating thesis. Matossian's claims for the role of food poisoning will need to be incorporated into any satisfactory account of past demographic trends."--John Walter, Nature "Matossian's work is innovative and original, modest and reasoned, and opens a door on our general human past that historians have not only ignored, but often did not even know existed."--William Richardson, Environmental History Review "This work demonstrates an impressive variety of cross-national sources. Its broad sweep also reveals the importance of the history of agriculture and food and strengthens the view that the shift from the consumption of mold-poisoned rye bread to the potato significantly contributed to an improvement in the mental and physical health of Europeans and Americans."--Naomi Rogers, Journal of American History "This work is a true botanical-historical tour de force."--Rudolf Schmid, Journal of the International Association of Plant Taxonomy "Intriguing and lucid."--William K. Beatty, Journal of the American Medical Association
Author: Ruth Rogaski
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520930606
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 419
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Book Description
Placing meanings of health and disease at the center of modern Chinese consciousness, Ruth Rogaski reveals how hygiene became a crucial element in the formulation of Chinese modernity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Rogaski focuses on multiple manifestations across time of a single Chinese concept, weisheng—which has been rendered into English as "hygiene," "sanitary," "health," or "public health"—as it emerged in the complex treaty-port environment of Tianjin. Before the late nineteenth century, weisheng was associated with diverse regimens of diet, meditation, and self-medication. Hygienic Modernity reveals how meanings of weisheng, with the arrival of violent imperialism, shifted from Chinese cosmology to encompass such ideas as national sovereignty, laboratory knowledge, the cleanliness of bodies, and the fitness of races: categories in which the Chinese were often deemed lacking by foreign observers and Chinese elites alike.
Author: Marcos Cueto
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108483577
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 391
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Book Description
A history of the World Health Organization, covering major achievements in its seventy years while also highlighting the organization's internal tensions. This account by three leading historians of medicine examines how well the organization has pursued its aim of everyone, everywhere attaining the highest possible level of health.
Author: TJ Hinrichs
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674047370
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 477
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Book Description
In covering the subject of Chinese medicine, this book addresses topics such as oracle bones, the treatment of women, fertility and childbirth, nutrition, acupuncture, and Qi as well as examining Chinese medicine as practiced globally in places such as Africa, Australia, Vietnam, Korea, and the United States.
Author: Carol Benedict
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Epidemiology
Languages : en
Pages : 884
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Book Description
Author: Maddison Angus
Publisher: OECD Publishing
ISBN: 9264163557
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 196
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Book Description
The study provides a major reassessment of the scale and scope of China’s resurgence over the past half century, employing quantitative measurement techniques which are standard practice in OECD countries, but which have not hitherto been available for China.
