The Translation between Biomedicine and Traditional Chinese Medicine in the Colonial Taiwan (1895-1945)

• In Event: Citizen Bureaucraft - II

Abstract

Japan adopted the germ theory and this idea strongly shaped colonial medicine and public health in all Japanese colonies.The existing historical studies of medicine thus emphasize the Japanese policy and colonial modernity. However, traditional medicine was never eliminated in Taiwan and developed the translation between medicines that it is commonly seen today.
In the late 1920s, the practitioner of traditional medicine started to organize activities to revival traditional medicine, including policy lobbying and the public education of traditional medicine. These practitioners of traditional medicine launched a translation project to translate the symptoms-based diagnosis of traditional medicine into the germ-based diagnosis of biomedicine. These translations were catalog-style references which indicated, for example, cholera causes by vibrio cholera and is the same thing as Huo-Luan in traditional Chinese medicine and can be further differentiated into cold Huo-Luan and warm Huo-Luan.
My research will focus on what and how traditional healers in Taiwan translated, and how these practitioners of traditional medicine tried to build the legitimacy of clinical effectiveness and earn recognition from patients and practitioners of biomedicine. To explore these translations, I will review the journal of this medical revivalism, the official documents, such as Archives of Taiwan Government and the journals of Japanese practitioners of biomedicine, to collect the colonial narratives, as well as the local newspaper for the records and information about underground healers.
This study will contribute to the fields of colonial medicine, medical modernization, and alternative medicine.

Author

• HungYin Tsai, Virginia Tech