Book Summary:
Those historians of bio-medicine and its institutions who have turned their attentions away from the West have chosen, mainly to focus on the role of Western medicine in colonial societies. China provides the rare opportunity to investigate intercultural transfer of medical technology and social institutions in a society where the power-relations were not necessarily colonial.
This in depth comparative study demonstrates that the hospital established in China-its planning and architecture, financing, and all aspects of day-to-day operation-differed from its counterpart at home. These differences were never due to a single, or even dominant cause. They were a result of a complex process involving accommodation, appreciation, negotiation, opportunism and pragmatism. Doctors were trying to balance the pressures of the political, cultural, economic and physical realities in China whilst maintaining their own professional standards.
Rather than the currently popular micro-studies, this book tells alarger story. It enriches the history of the Western hospital by describing its manifestations beyond the West. Also, being a place where ordinary American met ordinary Chinese in the most intimate of circumstances, the hospital provides a unique window into the economic, political, cultural and social conditions of life in China at the time.
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