The patients' perspectives and medical practices : diagnosis and treatment of women in the Ming and Qing dynasties = 病患視角與醫療實踐 : 明清女性的診療歷程

Abstract

In the existing studies of medicine for women in imperial China, the image of women patients and their diagnosis and treatment experiences are often constructed only through the gaze of male healers due to the reliance on medical texts. However, there is a significant discrepancy between medical knowledge and medical practices, which means it is often difficult for scholars to understand to what extent the medical rules have practical implications for the social life of women patients. As a study of women's/gender history and the social history of medicine, applying the patients’ perspectives helped to broaden the horizon and complete the picture of medicine for women in the Ming and Qing dynasties. By closely reading the diaries, chronicles, epitaphs, as well as texts written by women patients in the Ming and Qing dynasties, it is not difficult to recognize the illness and emotions in the medical context, which was not paid enough attention to in the previous studies. By shifting the women patients’ perspectives from object to subject, the leeway between medical rules and medical practices, as well as the role of gender plays in it, can be closely discovered. This study takes Ming-Qing women patients' diagnosis and treatment process as a clue, chronologically examining the medical environment and ecology that women patients faced in three different situations, namely before, during, as well as after their diagnosis and treatment. It reinterprets the existing gender perceptions of women and the gender norms in the medical context in this period. Women patients' feelings and emotions led to leeway between medical rules and medical practices; moreover, those experiences with gender bias played an essential role in the stage. More importantly, this study shows that patients' gender does not directly determine the performance of the medical practices because it is a much more complex and fluid gender mechanism.