Reproducing Women: Medicine, Metaphor, and Childbirth in Late Imperial China
Yi-Li Wu
Abstract
This book uses the lens of cultural history to examine the development of medicine in Qing dynasty China. Focusing on the specialty of “medicine for women” (fuke), the book explores the material and ideological issues associated with childbearing in the late imperial period. It draws on an array of medical writings that circulated in seventeenth- to nineteenth-century China to analyze the points of convergence and contention that shaped people's views of women's reproductive diseases. These points of contention touched on fundamental issues: How different were women's bodies from men's? What d ... More
Keywords: development of medicine, Qing dynasty, China, medicine for women, fuke, childbearing, late imperial medicine, medical writings, women's reproductive diseases, childbirth
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2010 | Print ISBN-13: 9780520260689 |
| Published to California Scholarship Online: March 2012 | DOI:10.1525/california/9780520260689.001.0001 |
