ODES ON GUIDING SMALLPOX OUT. QIU XI’S CONTRIBUTION TO VACCINATION IN CHINA邱熺及《引痘題咏》
The article analyzes the contribution of Qiu Xi (邱熺, 1774–1851) to the introduction and consolidation of smallpox vaccination in China, with a particular focus on the text *Yin Dou Ti Yong* (引痘体用, “Odes on Guiding Smallpox Out”), which records, in literary form, Chinese modes of understanding and in...
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| Published in: | Review of Culture |
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| Format: | Articles |
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Instituto Cultural de Macau
April 2006
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| Online Access: | https://www.icm.gov.mo/rc/viewer/pdfViewerParts/40018/3767 |
| Summary: | The article analyzes the contribution of Qiu Xi (邱熺, 1774–1851) to the introduction and consolidation of smallpox vaccination in China, with a particular focus on the text *Yin Dou Ti Yong* (引痘体用, “Odes on Guiding Smallpox Out”), which records, in literary form, Chinese modes of understanding and integrating a foreign biomedical technique. The research situates Qiu Xi within the context of the transnational events that marked the arrival of the vaccination method in Macau and Canton Province—following the successful inoculation associated with Huet (1805) and the subsequent circulation of lymph and instructions—arguing that historiographical narratives emphasizing individual rivalries (Huet, Pearson, Balmis, and Chinese physicians/merchants) obscure the cultural and interpretive processes through which the practice became socially legible. Methodologically, the study proceeds with a comparative interpretive reading of Chinese and Western sources, reconstructing Qiu Xi’s trajectory and extracting from his poem the attitudes, expectations, and moral/epistemic frameworks concerning vaccination. It concludes that, beyond acting as a key practitioner and propagator, Qiu Xi offered a discursive model for negotiating the authority of “foreign” medicine and promoting its acceptance in the local milieu, revealing multiple forms of cultural appropriation of vaccination in early nineteenth-century China. |
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| ISSN: | 1682-1106 |