"Compilation of Historical Materials of China's Three Thousand Years of Epidemic Disasters".
Yangtze River Daily Wuhan client january 20 news (reporter Chen Xiaotong correspondent Dang Botao Zhang Tao) Recently, the Yangtze River Daily reporter learned from Central China Normal University that the "Chinese Historical Plague Image Collation and Epidemic Culture Research" declared by the school won the 2021 National Social Science Fund's special funding for unpopular research. This research was undertaken by the "Chinese Historical Medical Geography Research Team of Central China Normal University" with Professor Gong Shengsheng as the chief expert, which is also the first team project of Huashi And the only team project in Hubei Province that was approved by the national unpopular research fund this year.
It is understood that the special funding of the National Social Science Fund for unpopular research aims to focus on supporting the undesirable studies that are of great significance to national development, civilization inheritance, and cultural security, but at present, there is insufficient investment, lack of talents, research is broken, and it is urgent to rescue the unpopular students. Among them, unpopular disciplines mainly refer to some traditional humanities fields and research directions with low academic attention, difficult output of results, and small research groups; absolute learning is an endangered discipline with unique cultural value, high academic threshold, extremely difficult research, small research group and even no successor.
They spent 20 years to fill the gap in the history of "epidemics"
Research team of Chinese historical medical geography of Central China Normal University.
Prior to this, Gong Shengsheng's team had spent more than 20 years to complete the "Compilation of Historical Materials of China's Three Thousand Years of Epidemic Disasters", filling the gap that there had been no special, systematic and comprehensive compilation of epidemic historical materials in the mainland.
From ancient times, which mainly relied on escape, superstition, and witchcraft to deal with epidemics, to today's perfect epidemic prevention and control chain, Gong Shengsheng said that every epidemic will promote the establishment of the national public health system, the improvement of the government epidemic prevention system, and the cultivation of public health awareness, providing valuable epidemic prevention experience for future generations. This is also the original intention and core of Gong Shengsheng's team to carry out historical epidemic research.
Over the years, the team has traveled to major libraries and archives across the country to extensively collect historical materials on the epidemic in historical documents such as zhengshi, fangzhi, records, archives, anthologies, medical cases, newspapers, magazines, compilations, etc., and compiled the historical materials of the epidemic in the mainland for more than 2,700 years from the Western Weekend to 1949. At present, they have completed a series of research results such as "Compilation of Historical Materials of China's Three Thousand Years of Epidemic Disasters" (5 volumes, 2.8 million words), "Compilation of Historical Materials of Epidemics in Modern Chinese Newspapers and Periodicals" (4 volumes, 3.2 million words), "Geography of China's Historical Epidemics" (6 volumes, 2 million words), "Historical Atlas of Epidemics in China" (375 maps) and a series of research results.
"Doing this research requires interdisciplinary skills such as geography, history, and medicine, as well as the perseverance and determination to sit on the 'cold bench.'" Gong Shengsheng introduced that the "Chinese Historical Plague Image Collation and Epidemic Culture Research" funded this time will deepen the extensive collation of plague images in China's history on the existing basis. They strive to spend four to five years collecting and sorting out images related to the history of the Chinese plague, including oracle bones, stone carvings, murals, and photographs, and further excavating the material, spiritual, and institutional cultural evolution behind the history of the epidemic.
Epidemics have occurred frequently for nearly 3,000 years
The Qing Dynasty painting "The Great Ship Delivery" records the ancient Han ritual customs of driving away disasters and eliminating epidemics.
"Pathogens evolve with humans, and plagues are consistent with humans. On the stage of human history, the epidemic has never been absent as an important factor affecting the process of human civilization. Gong Shengsheng, who studied geography as an undergraduate and a historical geography as a graduate student, began to pay attention to, sort out and study the history of The epidemic in China more than 20 years ago, "From the perspective of Chinese history, the epidemic has had a major impact on the population, economy, politics, culture, religion and other aspects of the mainland. ”
He introduced that the vast majority of epidemics in China's history are secondary disasters induced by other disasters, and drought, locust, famine and soldiers are the most common superposition forms of epidemics, especially epidemics and wars. From the "severe abuse of diseases" after King Keshang of Zhou Wu to the great epidemic of Cao Cao's defeat at Chibi at the beginning of the Three Kingdoms, from the great epidemic encountered by Li Zicheng's peasant army in Beijing at the end of the Ming Dynasty to the great epidemic encountered by Hong Xiuquan's Taiping army in Nanjing in the Qing Dynasty, all confirm the fact that "after the big soldiers, there will be a big epidemic". At the time of the epidemic, the description of the death of a large number of people, such as "the dead are too half", "the dead are seven or eight", and "the dead are innumerable", are endless.
According to team statistics, in the 2720 years from the Spring and Autumn Warring States to 1949, at least 893 years were epidemic years, and on average, less than 3 years, there was a year of epidemics, of which at least 224 years of military epidemics were combined. International large-scale epidemics of plague, cholera, smallpox, etc., have also spread in China.
From the perspective of dynastic distribution, the pre-Qin and Han dynasties and the Wei and Jin dynasties and the southern and northern dynasties periods were the first peak period of epidemic disasters in Chinese history; the five dynasties of Sui and Tang dynasties were relatively rare; the Northern Song Dynasty, southern Song Dynasty, Yuan Dynasty, Ming Dynasty, Qing Dynasty, and Republic of China period were the second peak period of epidemic disasters in Chinese history. Overall, in the past three thousand years, the trend of epidemics has become more and more frequent, with an epidemic of about 20 years in the pre-Qin and Han dynasties, an epidemic in about 5 years in the Wei and Jin dynasties, and an epidemic in about 3 years during the Northern Song Dynasty.
As early as the Qin Dynasty, the mainland built a "furuncle relocation office"
"The Chinese nation is a nation that is good at summing up. While people continue to suffer from the epidemic, they also continue to record the epidemic to warn future generations. Gong Shengsheng said that ancient Chinese society attached great importance to epidemic prevention, and successive historians and literati left a large number of epidemic records in the zhengshi, Fang zhi, archives and other documents.
He said that from the perspective of epidemic prevention and control, there was no modern medical knowledge in ancient times, but the Chinese nation has continuously used wisdom to promote the progress of preventive medicine and even the whole society through tenacious struggle against the epidemic. For example, isolation, as early as the Qin Dynasty, Hubei had a special isolation hospital for leprosy patients "Furunculosis Relocation", and the northeast of the Qing Dynasty also had a "pox shelter" set up by isolating smallpox patients, and even prevented infection through "planting pox".
In the fight against the plague, many famous doctors and medical books were also born to promote medical progress. For example, in the typhoid fever pandemic at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, Zhang Zhongjing wrote "Treatise on Typhoid Fever and Miscellaneous Diseases"; the plague in the Xiaoice River period of the Ming Dynasty created Wu Youke's "Plague Theory"; the plague pandemic in Guangdong in the late Qing Dynasty made Wu Xuanchong and Luo Rulan's "Plague Covenant"; the plague pandemic in the northeast region of the late Qing Dynasty contributed to the establishment of the national epidemic prevention institution.
【Editor: Zhang Ling】
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