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This is book is quite simply the best history book about China I’ve read in at least a year if not longer. It has such strong and in-depth analysis, a great use of sources, a thorough understanding of European and Chinese history, philosophy, religion, and medicine. I got it on interlibrary loan for the parts that overlapped with my book of the month but found myself wanting to read the whole thing, and get my own copy as it is such an amazing book for reference as well that I know I’ll be looking back in it for years to come.
Chinese medicine is not one of the areas I’m particularly interested in about China, but this book does an excellent job of looking at the differences between early European medicine and Chinese medicine and how the two were attempting to interpret the other. It doesn’t take the view that one type was “right” and the other “wrong”, neither does she take them as static, but looks at the different beliefs and practices of the different time periods.
The parts that I found the most interesting were looking at the religious role of healing, including exorcisms, and physical healing. It was interesting to see the way that different Taoist and Buddhist techniques were interpreted by the Europeans in China. She also looks not just at the Jesuit or religious sources, but also those of politicians, traders as well as Western physicians.
Without a doubt I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the relationships between China and Europe, culture-clashes, Chinese medicine, the history of medicine, and the relationship between medicine, magic, and religion. All around a fantastic read which I can’t find a single thing to criticise.
Introduction to 13th century European medicine, humours, urine, Marco Polos trip.
Chapter 2, a new wave of Europeans 1492-1659
38 “BY calling Chinese sages ‘philosophers’, Jesuits avoided defining Chinese teachings as being religious and therefore in conflict with Christianity”
800 missionaries in China between 1552 and 1795
38-39 Mendoza (which we have in French in Foyle) was published in 46 editions in 7 languages.
39 Late in the Ming several of royal family converted. 1650 Empress Yong Li dispatched Michael Boym (whose work is translated) to seek papal assistance for Ming., Wrote “treatise on the flowers, plants and animals particular to china 1656 – latin name in book)
40 Jesuit Martino Martini (also mentioned)
3rd physician Dane Jakob de Bondt (1592-1631) was surgeon general for dutch east india company
46 quote about education to be compared with quote about education in THE BOOK suspiciously similar!
56 Ricci’s incorrect interpretations of the wuxing (五行)
65-66 imortality
66-68 expelling demons
72, not until 1710 that british merchants were allowed to trade through canton
73, “Johannes Nieuhof (1618-1672) stward to a China delegation of the Dutch East India Company, published a report that was later translated as An embassy… Nieuhof padded his narrative with exceprts from Martino Martini’s 1654 Atlas Sinensis (Check passages against SOAS copies) Unfortunately Nieuhof’s observations were flawed, as were someof Martini’s. Navarrete (?)described a dinner party where guests debated whether Marco Polo or Martini had been more uninformed about China. As martini had, on occasion, cribbed from Polo, they concluded that “both of them had writ many mere Chimeras” (SPENCE 1998 41)
79- Quotes Nieuhof as saying that Chinese are “almost as white in complextion as the people of Europe”
84 Quotes nieuhof as paraphrasing Ricci saying that medical degrees did little to advance the recipient.(Nieuhof quote 163)
93 quotes N. on pulse theory 105, “He assumed that these terms referred literally to physical organs. (93)
121 “Western observers commented on Chinese responses to death and their connections with health. N was struck by funerals, during which “several images of men…205) the burning conveyed such things, along with paper figures representing life’s comforts to the yin world of the dead. (it is not clear why elephants, tigers and lions). (Interesting Note Barnes does NOT acknowledge Niehof’s statement that this was not for the dead, but a Confucian ritual for the living! But then goes on to talk about Jesuit’s belittling the practice)
122 quotes Comte (1698) as talking about women travelling to shrines, particularly Guan Yins for freedom. (interesting to follow up with)
142 – good treatment of women, and only criticism was, “the first officers of the state make no hesitation in publicly avowing {homosexuality} Barrow 1804 p.101
198 - Grosier (1788) description of using the sticks for divination.
199-200 on immortals
200-201 on Taoist exorcists, but Buddhists are still considered worse
202 gongfu
204-207 linking gong fu with Mesmer and magnetism.
207 – much better arguments about the Chinese passing out of fashion, “Long standing tropes representing the Chinese as suspect, curel and untrustworthy gained momentum in popular imagination, challenging concurrent representations of friendship, collegiality and mutual respect. The spirit of Chinoiserie did not die
Early 19th century saw protestant missions inspired by millenrarism, but foreigners were still forbidden to learn Chinese and spent most time in the south with the Hong merchants.
224- 231Interesting part about the construction of Race and Racism, particularly relating to Chinese abroad.
231-235 description of Chinese exhibition in 1828 Philadelphia, and subsequent exhibitions on china to promote better understanding and support and Chinese “freaks”
234 – growing criticism of foot-binding, oftern from medical missionaries, “Such polemics buttressed the argument that the gospels “civilised” men toward women. By targeting “heathen” women as “ignorant-degraded-oppressed-enslaved”, Western men represented thie own women as enjoying relative freedom and respect (Drucker 1981 – The influence of western women on the anti-footbinding movement in Guisso and Johannesen Women in China: Current directions in historical scholarship)
291-293 – Horrific story of “hoo-loo” who came to Guy’s hospital for a removal of a tumour on 5 April 1831, tumour weighed 70-80 pounds, operating theatre was so packed they had to move to a different one accommodating 1100 people. A reporter stated that “during the whole of the operation the patient appearted to be unusually affected by the loss of blood.” Brandy was admisitered to the patient as well as directly to the stomach. His heart stopped and he died from blood loss and shock. The lancet blamed the airlessness of the theatre due to the crowd, the length of time the procedure took, and performing the surgery so soon after his arrival. A month later the Asiatic Journal stated that hoo-loo had been calling out in Chinese, “unloose me, unloose me, Water, help water, Let me go, Let it be, let it remain I can bear no more unloosen me!” The surgeons of course had provided no translator.
341 – Possession by ghosts - story of a woman who murdered 2 slave girls after on became pregnant by her husband, and hung them up to look like suicide, case was dismissed but woman was haunted by the ghosts and went mad. Ghosts then possessed the old servant tending the woman, she was sent to a convent, and was released from possession as long as husband and the woman’s daughters worshiped her as a goddess. (letter to the editor of the Indo-Chinese Gleaner from Amicus (1818).
Chinese medicine is not one of the areas I’m particularly interested in about China, but this book does an excellent job of looking at the differences between early European medicine and Chinese medicine and how the two were attempting to interpret the other. It doesn’t take the view that one type was “right” and the other “wrong”, neither does she take them as static, but looks at the different beliefs and practices of the different time periods.
The parts that I found the most interesting were looking at the religious role of healing, including exorcisms, and physical healing. It was interesting to see the way that different Taoist and Buddhist techniques were interpreted by the Europeans in China. She also looks not just at the Jesuit or religious sources, but also those of politicians, traders as well as Western physicians.
Without a doubt I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the relationships between China and Europe, culture-clashes, Chinese medicine, the history of medicine, and the relationship between medicine, magic, and religion. All around a fantastic read which I can’t find a single thing to criticise.
Introduction to 13th century European medicine, humours, urine, Marco Polos trip.
Chapter 2, a new wave of Europeans 1492-1659
38 “BY calling Chinese sages ‘philosophers’, Jesuits avoided defining Chinese teachings as being religious and therefore in conflict with Christianity”
800 missionaries in China between 1552 and 1795
38-39 Mendoza (which we have in French in Foyle) was published in 46 editions in 7 languages.
39 Late in the Ming several of royal family converted. 1650 Empress Yong Li dispatched Michael Boym (whose work is translated) to seek papal assistance for Ming., Wrote “treatise on the flowers, plants and animals particular to china 1656 – latin name in book)
40 Jesuit Martino Martini (also mentioned)
3rd physician Dane Jakob de Bondt (1592-1631) was surgeon general for dutch east india company
46 quote about education to be compared with quote about education in THE BOOK suspiciously similar!
56 Ricci’s incorrect interpretations of the wuxing (五行)
65-66 imortality
66-68 expelling demons
72, not until 1710 that british merchants were allowed to trade through canton
73, “Johannes Nieuhof (1618-1672) stward to a China delegation of the Dutch East India Company, published a report that was later translated as An embassy… Nieuhof padded his narrative with exceprts from Martino Martini’s 1654 Atlas Sinensis (Check passages against SOAS copies) Unfortunately Nieuhof’s observations were flawed, as were someof Martini’s. Navarrete (?)described a dinner party where guests debated whether Marco Polo or Martini had been more uninformed about China. As martini had, on occasion, cribbed from Polo, they concluded that “both of them had writ many mere Chimeras” (SPENCE 1998 41)
79- Quotes Nieuhof as saying that Chinese are “almost as white in complextion as the people of Europe”
84 Quotes nieuhof as paraphrasing Ricci saying that medical degrees did little to advance the recipient.(Nieuhof quote 163)
93 quotes N. on pulse theory 105, “He assumed that these terms referred literally to physical organs. (93)
121 “Western observers commented on Chinese responses to death and their connections with health. N was struck by funerals, during which “several images of men…205) the burning conveyed such things, along with paper figures representing life’s comforts to the yin world of the dead. (it is not clear why elephants, tigers and lions). (Interesting Note Barnes does NOT acknowledge Niehof’s statement that this was not for the dead, but a Confucian ritual for the living! But then goes on to talk about Jesuit’s belittling the practice)
122 quotes Comte (1698) as talking about women travelling to shrines, particularly Guan Yins for freedom. (interesting to follow up with)
142 – good treatment of women, and only criticism was, “the first officers of the state make no hesitation in publicly avowing {homosexuality} Barrow 1804 p.101
198 - Grosier (1788) description of using the sticks for divination.
199-200 on immortals
200-201 on Taoist exorcists, but Buddhists are still considered worse
202 gongfu
204-207 linking gong fu with Mesmer and magnetism.
207 – much better arguments about the Chinese passing out of fashion, “Long standing tropes representing the Chinese as suspect, curel and untrustworthy gained momentum in popular imagination, challenging concurrent representations of friendship, collegiality and mutual respect. The spirit of Chinoiserie did not die
Early 19th century saw protestant missions inspired by millenrarism, but foreigners were still forbidden to learn Chinese and spent most time in the south with the Hong merchants.
224- 231Interesting part about the construction of Race and Racism, particularly relating to Chinese abroad.
231-235 description of Chinese exhibition in 1828 Philadelphia, and subsequent exhibitions on china to promote better understanding and support and Chinese “freaks”
234 – growing criticism of foot-binding, oftern from medical missionaries, “Such polemics buttressed the argument that the gospels “civilised” men toward women. By targeting “heathen” women as “ignorant-degraded-oppressed-enslaved”, Western men represented thie own women as enjoying relative freedom and respect (Drucker 1981 – The influence of western women on the anti-footbinding movement in Guisso and Johannesen Women in China: Current directions in historical scholarship)
291-293 – Horrific story of “hoo-loo” who came to Guy’s hospital for a removal of a tumour on 5 April 1831, tumour weighed 70-80 pounds, operating theatre was so packed they had to move to a different one accommodating 1100 people. A reporter stated that “during the whole of the operation the patient appearted to be unusually affected by the loss of blood.” Brandy was admisitered to the patient as well as directly to the stomach. His heart stopped and he died from blood loss and shock. The lancet blamed the airlessness of the theatre due to the crowd, the length of time the procedure took, and performing the surgery so soon after his arrival. A month later the Asiatic Journal stated that hoo-loo had been calling out in Chinese, “unloose me, unloose me, Water, help water, Let me go, Let it be, let it remain I can bear no more unloosen me!” The surgeons of course had provided no translator.
341 – Possession by ghosts - story of a woman who murdered 2 slave girls after on became pregnant by her husband, and hung them up to look like suicide, case was dismissed but woman was haunted by the ghosts and went mad. Ghosts then possessed the old servant tending the woman, she was sent to a convent, and was released from possession as long as husband and the woman’s daughters worshiped her as a goddess. (letter to the editor of the Indo-Chinese Gleaner from Amicus (1818).