英文摘要 |
By analyzing and comparing three Chinese texts on cowpox vaccination, this article attempts to reconstruct the history of cowpox vaccination in early 19th century China. Examination of these three texts provides compelling historical insights for understanding the Chinese cultural context of the introduction, promotion, acceptance, and dissemination of this Western technique. The first vaccination text analyzed in this article is the one entitled Yingjiliguo Xinchu Zhongdou Qishu (The Extraordinary History of a New Method of Inoculation Discovered in the Kingdom of England, 1805), written by Dr. Alexander Pearson and translated into Chinese by Sir George Thomas Staunton in 1805. This work was published with the help of Zheng Chongqian, a merchant who conducted foreign trade in Guangdong. The second text analyzed in this paper is Xiyang Zhongdou Lun (On the Western Cowpox Vaccination, 1815), written by Huang Anhuai in 1815 with the aim of promoting cowpox vaccination. This was the first Chinese text to apply traditional Chinese medical theory to accommodate this Western technique. Two years later, Qiu Xi, who was a businessman in Macau and an apprentice of Alexander Pearson, published the Yindou Lue (Introduction to the Extraction of the Cowpox Vaccine, 1817) which became the most popular vaccination text throughout the nineteenth century. The publication quantity and geographic areas of circulation of these texts not only reflected their individual popularity, but also showed different degrees of attention and acceptance of these texts by their readers. The authors of these three texts engaged in different writing strategies to introduce and advocate the cowpox vaccination technique, but all three played an indisputably vital role in the promulgation of the vaccination technique in 19th century China. Huang Anhuai and Qiu Xi applied traditional medical doctrines to incorporate the English cowpox vaccination into the Chinese socio-cultural context. Their approach represented some typical Chinese views on this Western medical practice in early nineteenth century China. By examining the subtle differences between how these Chinese authors understood, introduced and localized this vaccination technique, we can gain insight into the diverse array of thoughts on the relationship between this Western medical technique and the Chinese medical tradition. |