BOTH A DONKEY AND A HORSE: THE CHINESE MEDICAL UNION AND HYBRIDIZED CONFUCIAN MEDICINE IN THE STRAITS SETTLEMENTS

Abstract

<p>In the first half of the 20th century in Republican China, Western medicine would engage in numerous polemics against Chinese medicine, claiming that Chinese medicine was hindering the modernization of the state. Cumulating in a failed attempt by doctors of Western medicine to abolish Chinese medicine in 1929, these conflicts would result in what Sean Hsiang-lin Lei has called “neither a donkey nor a horse”, with the resulting synthesis of Chinese medicine and science being undesirable for both advocates of Chinese and Western medicine in China. </p> <p>Chinese medicine in the Straits Settlements would however, move in a vastly different direction compared to that in Republican China. The Chinese Medical Union, which emerged as a response to the attempts to abolish Chinese medicine in Republican China in 1929, would come to push for modernization and unity by integrating science and Western medicinal knowledge into the practice of Chinese medicine. In so doing, Chinese medicine in the Straits Settlements would come to hybridize Chinese medicine. </p> <p>This thesis seeks to investigate the Chinese Medical Union from the Straits Settlements, to understand why they developed in a very different manner from that in China, how they were so effective in their modernization efforts, and the implications of efforts. </p>