Dissertation Research: Science and Social Negotiation; Chinese Patients and the Culture of Biomedicine at PUMCH, 1928-1952

Rutgers University New Brunswick, New Brunswick NJ

Investigators

Abstract

This dissertation research project will use Peking Union Medical College and Hospital as a site for examining how early 20th century American style "scientific medicine" functioned in a different cultural environment, that of early 20th century China. Founded in 1921, Peking Union Medical College and Hospital (PUMCH) was the Rockefeller Foundation's single largest project in medical philanthropy anywhere in the world. Its mission was to establish the first (sic) world class institution of scientific medicine, along an American model, in China. Patients accustomed to traditional Chinese medical practices, and staff at PUMCH trained in biomedicine, generally entertained differing assumptions about health, illness and treatment. Situated at the juncture of historical ethnography and medical history, this project will shed light on the problems and politics of health care delivery in the context of contact between two cultures. What role has science played - both objectively and rhetorically - in encounters between cultures? How have rhetorical claims about science structured relations between people and between intellectual traditions? What exactly is scientific medicine, as a social practice, rather than an abstract theory? Is there a "culture of biomedicine," and on what terms does it negotiate with other medical cultures and worldviews? Such broad, perennial questions may be explored empirically through the relations between Peking Union Medical College and Hospital and its Chinese patient base. How does an applied science that deals with human beings in social settings operate as a science. By paying close attention to laboratory research and its relation to the hospital setting, the researcher hopes to realistically assess the meaning of "scientific medicine" as promoted in that era. The researcher will explore records from PUMCH's social work department, which left behind detailed documentation of the negotiations occurring at the interface between the hospital and its patients. The research will also draw on the Rockefeller Archive Center's underutilized collection of reprinted articles to explore the relation of basic medical research conducted at PUMC to the practical art of medicine in a pluralistic medical environment. PUMC's medical and social work case records, located in Beijing, which were not available to previous scholars who studied PUMC, will be central to this work. Combined, the medical and social work portions of the files form a multi-faceted picture of each patient, offering rich information on the doctors', social workers', and patients' perspectives. These records will allow the researcher to address questions regarding both the social relations of medicine as an applied science, and the role of science in relations between cultures.