The Politics of Chinese Medicine Under Mongol Rule (Needham Research Institute Series)

Reiko Shinno is Professor in the Department of History at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, USA.

. About the Author Reiko Shinno is Professor in the Department of History at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, USA

The Politics of Chinese Medicine under Mongol Rule emphasizes the impact of the political and institutional changes caused by the Mongols and their collaborators on the social and cultural history of medicine, which culminated in the medical theory of Zhu Zhenheng (1282–1358), still influential in East Asian medicine. Using a variety of Chinese-language sources including gazetteers, legal texts, biographies, poems, and medical texts, it analyses the roles of the Mongols and West and Central Asians as cultural brokers and also as unifiers of China. As the first comprehensive monograph on history of medicine in China under the Mongols, it argues that this period was a separate moment in Chinese history, when a configuration of power different from that of previous and succeeding periods created its own medical culture. During this period, further major steps were also taken towards the codification of medical knowledge and promotion of physicians’ social status.This book traces the history of the politics, institutions, and culture of medicine of China under Mongol rule, through the eyes of a successful South Chinese official Yuan Jue (1266-1327). Further, it views North and South Chinese elites as agents of historical change