Neither Donkey nor Horse tells the story of how Chinese medicine was transformed from the antithesis of modernity in the early twentieth century into a potent symbol of and vehicle for China’s exploration of its own modernity half a century later. Instead of viewing this transition as derivative of the political history of modern China, Sean Hsiang-lin Lei argues that China’s medical history had a life of its own, one that at times directly influenced the ideological struggle over the meaning of China’s modernity and the Chinese state.
Far from being a remnant of China’s premodern past, Chinese medicine in the twentieth century coevolved with Western medicine and the Nationalist state, undergoing a profound transformation—institutionally, epistemologically, and materially—that resulted in the creation of a modern Chinese medicine. This new medicine was derided as “neither donkey nor horse” because it necessarily betrayed both of the parental traditions and therefore was doomed to fail. Yet this hybrid medicine survived, through self-innovation and negotiation, thus challenging the conception of modernity that rejected the possibility of productive crossbreeding between the modern and the traditional.
By exploring the production of modern Chinese medicine and China’s modernity in tandem, Lei offers both a political history of medicine and a medical history of the Chinese state.
Review
“In this insightful and provocative book, Lei shows us what it meant to practice ‘modern’ medicine in Mao Zedong’s semicolonial and semifeudal society. Drawing on rich historical sources, Neither Donkey nor Horse reveals that modern medicine will always be mongrel medicine. Importantly, Lei gives us the critical postcolonial genealogy for ‘Traditional Chinese Medicine,’ the epitome of Chinese modernity, now a global phenomenon.”
(Warwick Anderson, University of Sydney)
“Reaching far beyond the history of modern China, Neither Donkey nor Horse challenges conventional understanding of modernity, science, and state power through an intellectual and social history of medical debate and development in East Asia from the late nineteenth century forward. This is a thoughtful and meticulously researched investigation of transnational modernizing processes in the twentieth century as they touched down and transformed worlds in China. The book demonstrates that medical knowledge and practice, whether ‘modern’ or ‘traditional,’ historicized or fixed as policy, are nowhere innocent of politics, culture, and social hierarchy. It offers surprising historical lessons for everyone interested in science and local knowledge, socialism and capitalism, institutions and ideas about nature as they weave together in modern regimes of health and population governance.”
(Judith Farquhar, University of Chicago)
“Neither Donkey nor Horse is a tour de force of how both Western and Chinese medicine played central roles not only in Chinese modernity but also the formation of the state in Republican China. Lei thus adroitly relates the politics of medicine and debates over making Chinese medicine more scientific to the big themes of nationalism, the state, and modernity that dominated the political struggles of early twentieth-century China.”
(Marta Hanson, Johns Hopkins University)
“Neither Donkey nor Horse is a major work by the leading scholar in the field of modern Chinese medical history. Lei argues that what we now know as traditional Chinese medicine as it emerged as a discourse in the early twentieth century was fundamentally shaped by the encounter with Western medicine and the relationship with the state that this dictated. Chinese medicine was something new that was created during this period in response to themes with Western biomedicine as traditional practitioners sought social mobility through participation in the state. Lei’s argument is backed up by research of the highest standard: his knowledge of the historical sources is outstanding, and he is impressively familiar with the secondary and theoretical literature in both English and Chinese. His book will be of interest not only to historians of Republican China but also to those interested in the history of science more widely.”
(Henrietta Harrison, University of Oxford)
“If you are going to read just one book on the modern history of Chinese medicine, this is the work to read. Lei’s analysis of the entwinement of medicine, science, modernity, and the state is brilliantly original and persuasive, and argued with admirable clarity. Neither Donkey nor Horse is a major contribution to science studies and the history of global health, as well as to the study of twentieth-century China.”
(Shigehisa Kuriyama, Harvard University)
Sean Hsiang-lin Lei is associate research fellow at the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, Taiwan; associate professor at the Institute of Science, Technology, and Society at National Yang-Ming University; and a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He lives in Taipei, Taiwan.
As Lei is writing this book, he is conscious of Chakrabarty’s criticism of the repeated “temporal structure of the statement, ‘first in the West, and then elsewhere,’” which leads to a certain type of “academic discourse” that “all these other histo...
評分As Lei is writing this book, he is conscious of Chakrabarty’s criticism of the repeated “temporal structure of the statement, ‘first in the West, and then elsewhere,’” which leads to a certain type of “academic discourse” that “all these other histo...
評分As Lei is writing this book, he is conscious of Chakrabarty’s criticism of the repeated “temporal structure of the statement, ‘first in the West, and then elsewhere,’” which leads to a certain type of “academic discourse” that “all these other histo...
評分As Lei is writing this book, he is conscious of Chakrabarty’s criticism of the repeated “temporal structure of the statement, ‘first in the West, and then elsewhere,’” which leads to a certain type of “academic discourse” that “all these other histo...
評分As Lei is writing this book, he is conscious of Chakrabarty’s criticism of the repeated “temporal structure of the statement, ‘first in the West, and then elsewhere,’” which leads to a certain type of “academic discourse” that “all these other histo...
初步感覺本書是雷教授對其博士論文“When Chinese Medicine Encountered the State: 1910-1949”的擴展,其中有一些章節與原文還是比較類似的,比如第5章“醫學革命與國醫運動”、第9章“常山”等,在此基礎上增加瞭許多新內容,比如20世紀早期的滿洲鼠疫、30-40年代的鄉村醫療等。閱讀本書也許同時參閱他的幾篇文章可能更容易理解,比如“常山—一種新抗瘧藥物的誕生”、“負責任的醫生與有信仰的病人”、“衛生為何不是保衛生命”、“杜聰明的漢醫藥研究”等。另外,“非驢非馬”的說法是來自毛澤東1956年“同音樂工作者的談話”,而這時中醫的地位與1949年以前相比,即將發生翻天覆地的變化。因此“非驢非馬”似乎用來形容中醫在進入體製之後的尷尬地位更閤適。
评分問瞭好久的問題“是否modernization就等於westernization”,雷教授給瞭答案,中國也有自己的現代性。
评分很不錯。Lei關於中醫現代史的基本論點是:因為中醫無法如現代的生物醫學/西醫那樣預防疾病、保障公共健康和進入教育係統,所以為瞭成為進行現代國傢建設的“中國”的國醫,必須科學化中醫,繼而創造齣一種“非驢非馬”的雜醫。但這並不意味著他們是反現代的,這群中醫從業者恰恰是探索中醫現代性和作為整體的中國現代性的積極行動主體。在共和、國民和共産主義時期,他們在“國傢場域”之下代錶中醫與國傢互動,不斷使中醫進化。自然-文化這一內在分界帶來西方-非西方的外在分界,在現代化過程中,我們應該采取Latour的觀點,關注兩極中的雜閤體。在本書中,則是“雜中醫”,它不是傳統的餘孽,也非單純的試驗失敗品,它能嚮我們證明現代科學和非西方文化間可能的關係。我們從未現代過,或者說,他者們也為現代性做齣許多貢獻。
评分好長,讀的纍死瞭。
评分不用說瞭,從民族國傢發明國醫,從摩登瞭踢拯救各種醫。我老從來不認為中醫就是中醫,中醫必須是各種醫~ intro 讀的我拍桌子在傢裏狂喊吼吼吼,不是小吼是大吼是特吼是非常棒棒的吼。實證部分讀的我就有點無聊瞭,想拿榖歌翻譯看,不過無論怎樣這本書有點問題也是瑕不隱瑜。
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