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Continuities in State-Society Interactions across Broad Spatio-temporal Realms: Gong Tingxian as Both an Author of Popular Medical Texts and an Imperial Medical Secretary in Early Modern China

Aricanli, Sare

Continuities in State-Society Interactions across Broad Spatio-temporal Realms: Gong Tingxian as Both an Author of Popular Medical Texts and an Imperial Medical Secretary in Early Modern China Thumbnail


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Abstract

Medical popularisation in late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth-century China has been understood within the context of the state’s retreat from medicine. This article points to ongoing state-societal continuities and thus suggests that the process was more complicated than it had been assumed to be. Analyses with more limited spatial or temporal frames tend to underestimate the extent of continuities forged by societal figures such as Gong Tingxian (fl. 1581-1616), an imperial medical doctor and author of popular medical texts. Gong’s self-fashioning illustrates state-society connections that are also apparent in the reception of his work, and his later legacy. These continuities crossed political, linguistic, and cultural lines as Gong’s popular texts were translated to Manchu and housed in a state medical library of the ensuing dynasty. Moreover, Gong’s texts were not only transmitted in China, but reached Japan and Korea, and even found a place within a European collection by the early eighteenth century.

Citation

Aricanli, S. (2022). Continuities in State-Society Interactions across Broad Spatio-temporal Realms: Gong Tingxian as Both an Author of Popular Medical Texts and an Imperial Medical Secretary in Early Modern China. Social History of Medicine, 35(1), 302-322. https://doi.org/10.1093/shm/hkab036

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Mar 9, 2021
Online Publication Date Feb 7, 2022
Publication Date 2022-02
Deposit Date Jun 8, 2021
Publicly Available Date Mar 29, 2024
Journal Social History of Medicine
Print ISSN 0951-631X
Electronic ISSN 1477-4666
Publisher Oxford University Press
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 35
Issue 1
Pages 302-322
DOI https://doi.org/10.1093/shm/hkab036

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Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2022. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for the Social History of Medicine.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.




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