History of Translation||A Historical Survey of the Translation and Dissemination of Western Medicine in China

This article is transferred from: Cultural Communication Journal

The introduction of foreign medicine to the mainland can be traced back to the Northern and Southern Dynasties, but it had little impact on traditional Chinese medicine before the Opium War. In the 19th century, the imperialist powers chose to carry out the need for cultural aggression and missionaries to China, and Western medicine began to spread more and more widely and deeply, from the coast to the interior, from the establishment of clinics to the construction of hospitals, from the establishment of schools to attract foreign students, from the translation of books to the establishment of academic societies. In the 20th century, Western medicine was widely spread and developed in the mainland, which attracted the attention of the medical community and had a great impact on the field of traditional Chinese medicine. For a variety of complex reasons, several different attitudes and assertions emerged in the medical profession at that time. Some people who have directly or indirectly received education in imperialist enslavement and who have serious national nihilistic ideologies despise the traditional culture of the mainland and also have contempt for traditional Chinese medicine, believing that there is no distinction between Chinese and Western medicine, only between the old and the new, and that there is only a distinction between metaphysical medicine and scientific medicine, and advocate total Westernization and oppose traditional Chinese medicine as a part of feudal culture. These arguments later became the ideological basis for the ruling class to eliminate traditional Chinese medicine during the Republican period; In addition, there are some people in the Chinese medicine circles who have been influenced by modern scientific thought, who admit the advanced points of Western medicine, and also realize that Chinese and Western medicine have their own strengths, explore the road of developing Chinese medicine, try to integrate Chinese medicine with Western medicine, and put forward some insights on the integration of Chinese and Western medicine from theory to clinical practice, and gradually form the ideological trend and school of thought of integrating Chinese and Western medicine, which has become the basis for the idea of integrating Chinese and Western medicine in later generations。 (Quoted from https://www.puh3.net.cn/zyk/xxtd/123925.shtml) Western Medicine Introduced to China (Excerpt from Professor Yang Yongqing's article) is divided into three stages: first, most of the ancient traditional medicine introduced to the mainland before the Ming Dynasty belonged to Arab and other Western regions; second, the Western medicine introduced in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, its essence is still the ancient medical knowledge system of Europe; and third, after the Opium War, the Western medical knowledge that belonged to modern science was introduced. The introduction of Hippocrates and Western medicine to China is closely related to the rise and fall of the Church in China. Around the 2nd century B.C., Indian Buddhism spread to the Amu Darya River and Pamir regions, and the monks from the Western Regions mixed with the content of Western Asian ethnic medicine flowed into China. According to the "New Tang Dynasty Book", there is a record that "good doctors can open the brain and produce worms to heal the eyes", which is a record of the introduction of cranial piercing to China. At that time, there were also drugs introduced, and the "Old Tang Book" recorded that the state of Fu sent an envoy to offer Diyejia in the second year of Qianfeng, which was composed of many medicines, including opium. The first cultural exchange between China in the West can be traced back to the ninth year of Zhenguan of the Tang Dynasty (635), when the Jesuits came to the east to spread Nestorian Christianity, and it lasted more than 200 years until Tang Wuzong's "Huichang Annihilation of Buddha" (845). The Eastward spread of Nestorianism mainly brought Western medical knowledge to China, especially in ophthalmology and surgery. Most of the missionary activities of the late Ming Dynasty were limited to Macao. In 1569, the Portuguese Jesuit missionary Canero set up two Western-style hospitals in Australia to treat the faithful and lay the laity. In 1579, there was a leprosy house. From 1622 to 1623, the Swiss physician Jesuit missionary Deng Yuhan, with the assistance of local Jinshi, translated the book "The Theory of the Human Body", which was edited by the Shandong Taoist priest Bi Gongchen and renamed "The Introduction to the Human Body of Taixi" and published in 1634. Deng Yuhan also participated in the translation of "The Diagram of the Human Body", and there are manuscripts in circulation. The merger of the two books is the first complete translation of Western medical anatomy into China. In 1805, Pearson, a ship doctor, inoculated cowpox for Chinese in Macao and Guangzhou, and published the "New Strange Book of Vaccinia in England". From the 18th century to the early 19th century, the Qing Dynasty strengthened autocracy and completely banned Christianity, and the introduction and research of Western medicine, including Western medicine, showed a significant decline. In 1835, the American Congregational missionary Bo Jia, with the financial support of Chinese merchants, opened the "Xindoulan Medical Bureau" in Guangzhou, which can accommodate 100 people and has more than 10 beds, which is considered to be the first Western-style hospital in modern China. In 1838, the "Chinese Medicine Missionary Society" was established to spread medicine, prepare hospital libraries, and train Chinese students. In 1851, the British medical missionary B Hobson cooperated with the Chinese scholar Chen Xiutang to compile and publish the first Western anatomy and physiology book in modern China, "The New Theory of the Whole World", and creatively quoted or borrowed relevant anatomical and physiological terms from Chinese medical books for translation, and the book was accompanied by more than 200 fine human body maps. In 1866, John Jia, an American doctor, and Huang Kuan, China's first Western medical student, jointly established the "Boji Medical School" in Guangzhou, which became the first Western-style medical school in China and the first medical school to train female physicians. Later, medical schools were opened in many places across the country, laying the foundation for the development of modern medical education in China. In 1871, the Jingshi Tongwenguan hired the British physician Dezhen to teach physiology and teach medicine and physiology to Chinese scholars, which became the beginning of official Western medicine education in China. In 1882, Wen Hengli of Shanghai Tongren Hospital set up a nurse training school in the hospital and began to train Chinese nurses. In 1886, the Chinese Doctoral Medical Association, founded by a medical missionary organization, was founded in Shanghai. In 1887, the Journal of the Bo Yi Association was published in Shanghai, which was the predecessor of the Chinese Medical Journal. In 1890, the Bo Medical Association set up a "Terminology Committee" to be responsible for the unification of Western medical terminology. In 1894, the Glossary of Disease Nouns was published. In 1898, the "Ophthalmic Terminology" was published. In 1908, the English-Chinese Medical Dictionary was published. These laid the foundation for the later unification of medical terms. Church statistics for 1897 show that out of more than 660 church hospitals nationwide, 39 all medical education or training records were recorded. The church-led entry of Western medicine into China also has three characteristics: first, it has experienced the transformation from being rejected and untreated, to the poor only to see Western medicine (because it is free), to seeing Western medicine if Chinese medicine is not good, to the poor and rich looking at Western medicine, and then to the rich to see Western medicine; second, the Chinese and Chinese doctors who study Western medicine have played an active role in it, such as Bi Gongchen, who assisted in the translation of Western medical works at the beginning, and the founder and principal of Xiangya Medical College, who has assumed the important task of disseminating Western medicine science in the field of medical clinical and education. Yan Fuqing, the founder and first president of the Chinese Medical Association, pioneered the Chinese translation of Western medical literature and shifted the knowledge of Western medicine from Western to Ding Fubao, who borrowed from Japanese translations and translated his works. (Transferred from Yang Yongqing, The Origin, Integration and Future of Integrated Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine in the Historical Academic Field, published in the 5th issue of Traditional Chinese Medicine Culture, 2022) Guangzhou is the forefront of modern China's earliest contact with the Western world, and it is also the earliest imported and prosperous city of Western medicine. As early as 1835, there was the first ophthalmology hospital established by missionaries in Guangzhou, and in 1838, the "Chinese Medical Missionary Association" was formed in Guangzhou. After the Opium War, in November 1842, he returned to Guangzhou from the United States and reopened the hospital on the old site, and until 1845, surgical cutting operations in the church hospital were performed without anesthesia. In 1846, he introduced ether anesthesia for the first time in his hospital, which made a major progress in the hospital in performing surgical procedures. In October of the same year, Bo Jia bought an anesthetic apparatus developed by Dr. Jackson and a batch of ether from Boston, along with an accompanying letter describing the method of using the instrument and the drug. (Redirected from the Internet)

Research on Higher Education in Western Medicine in the Republic of China (1912-1949) Excerpt from Mu Jingqiang

Western medical translations have had a great impact on the mainland, first recommending Pearson's "The Strange Method of Planting Pox", written in 1805, translated into Chinese by Staunton in 1815, and compiled by Qiu Haochuan into "Acne Strategy" in 1817. Some people believe that the "Introduction to Acne" should be the starting point for the circulation of Western medical literature in China. The introduction of Western medicine more systematically should be since the emergence of Hexin's Chinese works. Dr. Pearson, a medical officer of the British East India Company, introduced the Chenna pox method in Canton in 1805, which was the first time that Western medical technology was imported to China. Pearson wrote "The Theory and Technique of Pox Seeding", which was compiled into a book by his apprentice Nanhai Qiu Haochuan on pox seeding, which was published in 1817 and became very popular after that. The number of patients increased, so in 1806 a number of Chinese employees were recruited, and Pearson taught the technique himself. Qiu himself is also one of his right-hand men, and he has made great contributions to the promotion of pox surgery, and he is the first Western physician to lead apprentices. Before Pearson left China, the technology was almost universally used in Guangzhou, as far as other provinces, as far as Beijing. Going back further, the earliest Western medical literature generally begins with the Italian missionary Matteo Ricci. However, the earliest translation of the book is generally believed to be that of the German missionary Deng Yuhan, who came to China in 1621 to translate the "Introduction to the Theory of the Human Body". It is estimated that the book was written in 1621~1630. He Xin, an Englishman, Master of Medicine, a member of the Royal College of Surgeons, graduated from the University of London Medical School, and was sent to China by the London Society in 1839. He was one of the few people who came to China as a missionary physician and devoted himself to treatment and writing. The medical works translated into Chinese by Hexin include:

《全体新论》（An Outline of Anatomy and Physiology）咸丰元年（1851年）

《西医略论》(First Lines of the Practice of Surgery in the West)咸丰七年（1857年）

《内科新说》(Practice of Medicine and Materia Medica)同上

Medical Vocabulary (1859)

"Treatise on Midwifery and Disease of Children" (Treatise on Midwifery and Disease of Children) in the eighth year of Xianfeng (1858) following Hexin, the earliest systematic translation of Western medicine books should be promoted to the dialect hall, and the enrollment began in the ninth year of Tongzhi (1870), and later changed its name to the Ordnance Engineering Middle School, with a translation hall. In the foreign affairs movement, the Englishman Fu Lanya interpreted 113 kinds of scientific works, and with the same enthusiasm and dedication as a missionary in preaching and preaching, he introduced and publicized scientific and technological knowledge to the Chinese, so that he was called "the priest of science and technology" by missionaries. He dedicated his best years to China. He said: "Half a lifetime of hard work, I hope that China will develop more Western France, promote style, self-improvement and self-prosperity." "In the historical process of importing modern Western scientific and technological knowledge into China at that time, no foreigner did more than him, and even few Chinese did more than him. The main books he translated were Confucian Medicine (1876, 4 volumes, written by Zhao Yuanyi), Dacheng of Western Medicine (1879, 10 volumes, written by Zhao Yuanyi), List of Chinese and Western Names of Western Medicine Dacheng Drugs (1879, 1 volume), Records of Clearing Grievances in England (1888, 2 volumes), Treatise on Children's Hygiene (1893, 1 volume), and Treatise on Hygiene for Beginners (1 volume). The other is John Ka. His translations accounted for about half of the Western medical books of this time, with Fu Lanya focusing on hygiene and John Jia specializing in clinical surgery. Ding Fubao has made great contributions to the translation of Western medicine books. Since the 1890s, there has been a large-scale re-export of Western medicine from Japan in the late Qing Dynasty. Ding Fubao is one of the most representative. Ding Fubao, a native of Wuxi, Jiangsu, studied medicine from Zhao Yuanyi of the Translation Museum, and has been committed to the physiology, anatomy, medicine and hygiene of Chinese and Western medicine, and has a foundation in both Chinese and Western medicine. After studying Japanese, he began to read and translate Japanese medical books. Chen Bangxian recounted this incident: "Since the introduction of Western medicine in China, the average medical student has gradually learned that he has tended to pay more attention to the new principles and new methods; unfortunately there are very few translations, only more than 20 translations by Hexin, Fu Lanya, Zhao Jinghan, and others; they are not superficial, that is, they are outdated; and there is a trend of compiling medical books that are urgently needed. In view of this, my teacher, Mr. Ding Fubao, because he remembered that Japan was of the same species as the mainland, and since ancient times, Oriental countries, such as Korea and Japan, had taken Chinese medicine as the guideline, especially because of the earlier innovation and faster progress, so after the Meiji Restoration, medicine has changed and is now reaching its peak. From 1908 to 1933, Ding Fubao turned over a total of 68 books, called "Ding's Medical Series", which was short and fluent, and although it was not suitable for medical schools, it was quite popular with Chinese medicine and the general society. It involves anatomy, histology, pathology, diagnostics, internal medicine, infectious diseases, psychiatry, dermatology, gynecology, pharmacology, bacteriology, and even the history of Western medicine. The sheer number and breadth of his scope surpassed that of his previous translators, thus introducing Western medicine to China in a more comprehensive way. In 1910, Ding Yi won the best prize at the Nanyang Industry Conference, the best prize at the International Health Association and the Rome Health Competition, and was rewarded by the Ministry of the Interior, which was an unprecedented initiative in the medical field in mainland China at that time. Ding Yi's import of new medical knowledge and achievements from abroad has made Shanghai an important base for the introduction of Western medicine, and has made contributions to promoting Western medicine education and the progress of Western medicine in Shanghai and even the whole country. In addition to Qiu Haochuan, Ding Fubao and others, the Chinese scholars in the work of translating Western medical works also include Fang Yizhi and Yin Duanmo. The Conclusion of Western Medicine in Modern China Excerpt from Liu Qi In a sense, although the missionaries' strategy of promoting proselytizing by passing medicine failed to achieve the desired results in China, it in turn triggered the reform of China's modern all-round medical and health system and triggered a change in China's traditional medical culture. If we want to investigate the reasons for the failure of medical missionaries, we will find that in the process of interacting with missionaries, the Chinese have slowly realized the fact that it is perfectly feasible to accept only the advanced science and technology of the West brought by them, and refuse to accept the Western religious and philosophical ideas they peddle. (Source: Liu Qi, Western Medicine in Modern China (1840-1911)—Changes in Medical Skills, Culture, and Institutions[D])