Examining matters from the changing ideas of contagion in classical Chinese medical thought to attempts to eradicate SARS in 2003, the essays in this collection explore efforts to overcome disease and improve human health in Chinese regions of East Asia from the late nineteenth century to the present. The contributors, most of whom are based in Taiwan, consider the science and politics of public health policymaking and implementation not only in Taiwan but also in Manchuria, Hong Kong, and the Yangtze River delta, focusing mostly on towns and villages rather than cities. Whether discussing the resistance of lay midwives in colonial Taiwan to the Japanese campaign to replace them with experts in "scientific motherhood" or the reaction of British colonists in treaty-port Shanghai to Chinese diet and health regimes, the essays illuminate the effects of international interventions and influences in particular situations and localities. While they discuss responses to epidemics from the plague in early-twentieth-century Manchuria to SARS in southern China, Singapore, and Taiwan, they also emphasize that public health is not just about epidemic crises. As essays on marsh drainage in Taiwan, the enforcement of sanitary ordinances in Shanghai, and vaccination drives in Manchuria help to show, throughout the twentieth century public health bureaucracies have primarily been engaged in the mundane activities of education, prevention, and monitoring. Contributors: Warwick Anderson; Charlotte Furth; Marta Hanson; Sean Hsiang-lin Lei; Angela Ki Che Leung; Shang-Jen Li; Yushang Li; Yi-Ping Lin; Shiyung Liu; Ruth Rogaski; Yen-Fen Tseng; Chia-ling Wu; Xinzhong Yu

Angela Ki Che Leung is Director of the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Hong Kong, and Adjunct Research Fellow with the Institute of History and Philology at the Academia Sinica in Taipei. She is the author of Leprosy in China: A History. Charlotte Furth is Professor of History Emerita at the University of Southern California. She is the author of A Flourishing Yin: Gender in China’s Medical History, 960–1665.

Charlotte Furth is Professor of History Emerita at the University of Southern California. She is the author of A Flourishing Yin: Gender in China’s Medical History, 960–1665.