On Monday 29 January 2024, a packed audience at the Kin-ku Cheng Lecture Theatre (University of Oxford China Centre) attended a HSMT - Medical Humanities workshop on ‘Public Health in China’. Chaired by Henrietta Harrison (Asian and Middle Eastern Studies) and Jennifer Altehenger (History), and organized by Erica Charters (History / Medical Humanities), the workshop featured a range of speakers who provided a long-term and multidisciplinary approach to public health in China. The introduction noted that because Covid-19 has focused attention on public health in China, discussion on this subject can often be polarised, or can use China to contrast public health practices implemented elsewhere.
Professor Dong Guoquiang, Professor of History at Fudan University and British Academy Visiting Fellow with AMES at the University of Oxford, opened the workshop by sharing his current research-in-progress on the influence of Western missionaries on Chinese medical practices. He outlined the history of Cheeloo University as well as the nature of everyday life for Western medical missionaries in the first half of the twentieth century, providing insight into the history of medical education in China, and interactions between China and Western intellectual networks more broadly. Dr Du Xianbing, Associate Professor at the Institute of European Civilization at Tianjin Normal University and Visiting Scholar at the University of Oxford’s Centre for the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology, spoke about Chinese responses to cholera outbreaks from the nineteenth century to the early twentieth century within the context of globalizing disease transmission, and their significance for early conceptualizations of international health. He pointed out the hierarchives and inequalities in public health in China during this period. Medical anthropologists Binli Dai (Oxford) and Professor Eben Kirksey (Oxford) presented on their current research on smallpox variolation and early vaccination through an analysis of 17th-century Chinese texts, contextualised by a discussion on the translation and transmission of medical terms and concepts. Mary Brazelton, Professor in Global Studies of Science, Technology, and Medicine at Cambridge University, outlined a series of thoughtful provocations on the role of humanities expertise in public and global health practices. She also reflected on where China fits into standard narratives of global health – suggesting that scholars consider what might happen if their research begins with China, rather than seeing it as the end point.
Opening with comments and questions from Mark Harrison, Professor of the History of Medicine (Oxford), the workshop allowed for a lengthy and lively discussion on various aspects of public health as well as disease in China. Questions and contributions from the audience prompted interdisciplinary reflections on the nature of translation – not only translating words, but also how to translate and transmit disease concepts, systems of health, and the nature of epidemics as social and cultural phenomena. There was also a lively discussion on the theme of public health in relation to global dynamics, whether biological or political. Speakers and the audience noted that although the mechanisms and systems of public health are nation-based, they require an understanding of relations between countries, including competition. There were also plenty of practical suggestions from speakers and audience members as to how research on public health might start with China, including reframing a focus on maritime quarantine to one that recognizes the vast land expanse of China, providing a mixture of pragmatic and conceptual analyses of a wide-ranging and pertinent subject.
Medical Humanities Research Hub, TORCH Research Hubs
