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Robust Northerners and Delicate Southerners: The Nineteenth-Century Invention of a Southern Medical Tradition

Robust Northerners and Delicate Southerners: The Nineteenth-Century Invention of a Southern... Winter 1998 ical, essentialist, and evolutionary terms of the modern conception of race until Western influence became dominant after the turn of the century. Before 1895, the year when Darwin’s views on evolution first influenced the political writings of the Chinese scholar Yan F u (@@), the modern biological-and still at times evolutionary--conception of race can do nothing to illuminate pre-twentieth-century history when retrospectively projected as a catchall category onto indigenous Chinese discourses regarding human variation.4 Second, scholars have not systematically examined indigenous naturalistic conceptions of difference. Chinese explained human diversity in cultural and ecological rather than biological terms by employing an or ancient concept of resonant and not deterministic local qi (diqi f&s tuqi km.5 Physicians, in particular, used this conception of local qi to explain regional differences between peoples living within China’s borders and the different therapies local practitioners recommended to treat them. This article discusses medical explanations of regional body types, which I believe have broad implications for how to approach Chinese explanations of difference between themselves, as well as their conceptions of the other and, later, of race. I approach these implications somewhat indirectly by giving an account of the invention of one of http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png positions asia critique Duke University Press

Robust Northerners and Delicate Southerners: The Nineteenth-Century Invention of a Southern Medical Tradition

positions asia critique , Volume 6 (3) – Dec 1, 1998

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Publisher
Duke University Press
Copyright
Copyright 1998 by Duke University Press
ISSN
1067-9847
eISSN
1527-8271
DOI
10.1215/10679847-6-3-515
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Winter 1998 ical, essentialist, and evolutionary terms of the modern conception of race until Western influence became dominant after the turn of the century. Before 1895, the year when Darwin’s views on evolution first influenced the political writings of the Chinese scholar Yan F u (@@), the modern biological-and still at times evolutionary--conception of race can do nothing to illuminate pre-twentieth-century history when retrospectively projected as a catchall category onto indigenous Chinese discourses regarding human variation.4 Second, scholars have not systematically examined indigenous naturalistic conceptions of difference. Chinese explained human diversity in cultural and ecological rather than biological terms by employing an or ancient concept of resonant and not deterministic local qi (diqi f&s tuqi km.5 Physicians, in particular, used this conception of local qi to explain regional differences between peoples living within China’s borders and the different therapies local practitioners recommended to treat them. This article discusses medical explanations of regional body types, which I believe have broad implications for how to approach Chinese explanations of difference between themselves, as well as their conceptions of the other and, later, of race. I approach these implications somewhat indirectly by giving an account of the invention of one of

Journal

positions asia critiqueDuke University Press

Published: Dec 1, 1998

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