Medical care in nineteenth-century China was spectacularly pluralistic: herbalists, shamans, bone-setters, midwives, priests, and a few medical missionaries from the West all competed for patients. This book examines the dichotomy between Western and Chinese medicine, showing how it has been greatly exaggerated. As missionaries went to lengths to make their medicine more acceptable to Chinese patients, modernizers of Chinese medicine worked to become more scientific by eradicating superstition and creating modern institutions. Andrews challenges the supposed superiority of Western medicine in China while showing how traditional Chinese medicine was deliberately created in the image of a modern scientific practice.
