Barefoot Doctors and Western Medicine in China
eBook - PDF

Barefoot Doctors and Western Medicine in China

  1. 310 pages
  2. English
  3. PDF
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

Barefoot Doctors and Western Medicine in China

About this book

In 1968, at the height of the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese Communist Party endorsed a radical new system of health-care delivery for the rural masses. Soon every village had at least one barefoot doctor to provide basic medical care, creating a national network of health-care services for the very first time. The barefoot doctors were portrayed nationally and internationally as revolutionary heroes, wading undaunted through rice paddies to bring effective, low-cost care to poor peasants.
This book is the first comprehensive study to look beyond the nostalgia dominating present scholarship on public health in China and offer a powerful and carefully contextualized critiqueof the prevailing views on the role of barefoot doctors, their legacy, and their impact. Drawing on primary documents from the Cultural Revolution and personal interviews with patients and doctors, Xiaoping Fang examines the evidence within the broader history of medicine in revolutionary and postreform China. He finds that rather than consolidating traditional Chinese medicine, as purported by government propaganda, the barefoot doctor program introducedmodern Western medicine to rural China, effectively modernizing established methods and forms of care. As a result, this volume retrieves from potential oblivion a critical part of the history of Western medicine in China. Xiaoping Fang is assistant professor of Chinese history at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

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Yes, you can access Barefoot Doctors and Western Medicine in China by Xiaoping Fang in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Medicine & 20th Century History. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Frontcover
  2. Contents
  3. List of Illustrations
  4. Acknowledgments
  5. Maps
  6. Introduction
  7. 1 Village Healers, Medical Pluralism, and State Medicine
  8. 2 Revolutionizing Knowledge Transmission Structures
  9. 3 Pharmaceuticals Reach the Villages
  10. 4 Healing Styles and Medical Beliefs: The Consumption of Chinese and Western Medicines
  11. 5 Relocating Illness: The Shift from Home Bedside to Hospital Ward
  12. 6 Group Identity, Power Relationships, and Medical Legitimacy
  13. Conclusion
  14. Appendixes
  15. Abbreviations
  16. Glossary
  17. Notes
  18. Bibliography
  19. Index
  20. Backcover