Barefoot doctors and western medicine in China
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Barefoot doctors and western medicine in China
(Rochester studies in medical history)
University of Rochester Press, 2015, c2012
- : pbk
Available at 1 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
"First published 2012. Reprinted in paperback 2015"--T.p. verso
Includes bibliographical references (p. [252]-278) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
The first study in English that examines barefoot doctors in China from the perspective of the social history of medicine.
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.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Village Healers, Medical Pluralism, and State Medicine
Revolutionizing Knowledge Transmission Structures
Pharmaceuticals Reach the Villages
Healing Styles and Medical Beliefs: The Consumption of Chinese and Western Medicines
Relocating Illness: The Shift from Home Bedside to Hospital Ward
Group Identity, Power Relationships, and Medical Legitimacy
Conclusion
Appendixes
The Organization of the Three-Tiered Medical System in Rural China, 1968-83
Common Medicines in Chinese Villages during the 1960s-70s
by "Nielsen BookData"