Health, medicine and nation in Shanghai, ca. 1900--1945.

Abstract

This dissertation explores various connotations and transformations of the idea of health in late 19th and early 20th century Shanghai. By examining the relations between health, Shanghai society, and municipal politics, this dissertation discusses how political power expressed through an ideology of health developed in Shanghai, and the hegemony exercised by those who defined it. The study begins with a discussion of Shanghai's health care providers: hospitals and drugstores. In the late 19th century, hospitals were introduced into the city by missionaries. In the 20th century, not only medical missionaries but also the local elite as well as Chinese-style doctors engaged in management of hospitals. Hospitals served multiple purposes, including charity, research, education and business. At the same time, Shanghai's entrepreneurs opened new-style drugstores to sell Chinese-made Western medicine. These entrepreneurs not only introduced Western medicine to Shanghai residents but also incorporated health into commercial strategies. The dissertation next examines the public health administration in Shanghai in the early 20th century. While the Nationalist state created nationwide health care systems, the Shanghai Municipal Health Bureau took charge of health-related work in the city. The Shanghai Health Bureau had its origin in local organizations. As health care became a part of municipal administration, the connotations of health also expanded. In early 20th century Shanghai, health meant not only personal well-being but also civic order and national strength. This connection of health, civic order and the nation is manifested in health campaigns, in which health became a political slogan and a subject of mass mobilization activities. A wide range of measures, which evolved from Shanghai's urban culture, was adopted to disseminate the idea of health. The dissertation also discusses the coercive dimensions of health-related work. It points out the political power of health and science by focusing on wartime cholera control work in the 1940s. The Japanese occupation during the war was accompanied by the desire of the Japanese forces and the puppet government to enforce policies and to control Shanghai society. As health based on modern science became a part of wartime politics, health administrators used health to enforce regulations and to supervise people's lives.