Medical Treatment and the Poor : Medical Care in Beijing during the Mid-Qing Period

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  • 治療と貧民―清代中期北京の医療について―
  • チリョウ ト ヒンミン : シンダイ チュウキ ペキン ノ イリョウ ニ ツイテ

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Abstract

This paper examines social relationships formed in the process of providing medical care in the city of Beijing during the mid-Qing Period. In Qing Period Beijing, its citizens not only relied on physicians to cure their physical illnesses, but secret religious sects like Hongyang Jiao 紅陽教 also offered medical treatment in order to attract believers, combining the use of tea leaves and prayer. In the villages surrounding Beijing, some shrines served as medical care facilities in accordance with indigenous customs. Since there was no established medical licensing system in place at the time, people’s confidence in physicians was not especially high, and medical examinations were not readily available. These are two reasons why medical care methods involving the use of tea leaves and prayer proliferated. Since tea and prayer healing did not require any special arduous training or a great deal of working capital, the practice provided an excellent way for foreign refugees and poor women, especially widows, to earn a livelihood. Furthermore, irrespective of gender, providing medical treatment created opportunities for practitioners to come into contact with people of higher status and their families. Banned from the higher civil service examinations and lacking land for farming or capital for commercial enterprises, there were those among the poorest underclasses who found themselves able to approach higher status households and receive expensive medical (or prayer) fees by claiming that they possessed healing abilities, even though there was always the possibility of being accused as witch doctors. In response to such endeavors, the Qing dynasty would expose such groups which tried to act as medical care intermediaries, and intensified its efforts after the Tianli Jiao 天理教 Rebellion of 1813, but was not successful in severing ties between the people and their medical care providers, as the Qing dynasty’s efforts targeted virtually unassailable relationships formed out of people’s anxieties about illness and sincere hopes for recovery. While, in terms of medical care, the administrative and fiscal burden on the Qing dynasty may not have been very great, the government had to continue the effort for exposure, though its intensity varied depending on the periods.

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