Hygienic Modernity

by Rogaski, Ruth

• ISBN13: 9780520240018
• ISBN10: 0520240014
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-11-30
• Publisher: Univ of California Pr

Summary

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,weishengwas associated with diverse regimens of diet, meditation, and self-medication.Hygienic Modernityreveals how meanings ofweisheng,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 Biography

Ruth Rogaski is Associate Professor of History at Vanderbilt University.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	vii
Acknowledgments	ix
Prologue: Sun the Perfected One's Song of Guarding Life	xiii
INTRODUCTION	1	(284)
1. "CONQUERING THE ONE HUNDRED DISEASES": WEISHENG BEFORE THE TWENTIETH CENTURY	22	(26)
2. HEALTH AND DISEASE IN HEAVEN'S FORD	48	(28)
3. MEDICAL ENCOUNTERS AND DIVERGENCES	76	(28)
4. TRANSLATING WEISHENG IN TREATY-PORT CHINA	104	(32)
5. TRANSFORMING EISEI IN MEIJI JAPAN	136	(29)
6. DEFICIENCY AND SOVEREIGNTY: HYGIENIC MODERNITY IN THE OCCUPATION OF TIANJIN, 1900-1902	165	(28)
7. SEEN AND UNSEEN: THE URBAN LANDSCAPE AND BOUNDARIES OF WEISHENG	193	(32)
8. WEISHENG AND THE DESIRE FOR MODERNITY	225	(29)
9. JAPANESE MANAGEMENT OF GERMS IN TIANJIN	254	(31)
10. GERM WARFARE AND PATRIOTIC WEISHENG	285	(15)
CONCLUSION	300	(7)
Glossary	307	(12)
Notes	319	(46)
Bibliography	365	(32)
Index	397