F.-X. D’ENTRECOLLES S. J. AND CHINESE MEDICINE. A JESUIT’S INSIGHTS IN THE FRENCH CONTROVERSY SURROUNDING SMALLPOX INOCULATION殷弘緒神父和中醫：了解法國對接種牛痘疫苗的爭論
The article analyzes the 1726 letter from François-Xavier D’Entrecolles, S.J., to Jean Baptiste Du Halde, taking it as a Jesuit intervention in the French controversy over smallpox inoculation. The author argues that the text constitutes not merely an ethnographic account of “how” the technique was...
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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/40018/3766 |
| Summary: | The article analyzes the 1726 letter from François-Xavier D’Entrecolles, S.J., to Jean Baptiste Du Halde, taking it as a Jesuit intervention in the French controversy over smallpox inoculation. The author argues that the text constitutes not merely an ethnographic account of “how” the technique was practiced in China, but a deliberative exercise that simultaneously articulates medical, philosophical, and religious dimensions. Methodologically, the research conducts a contextualized reading of the epistolary corpus, confronting the theological framework of the Catholic stance of the Society of Jesus with the arguments debated in French scientific periodicals and within the clash between medical currents, especially the opposition between institutional conservatism and the reception of foreign innovations. It concludes that D’Entrecolles, while informed by the European intellectual environment, defends inoculation by resorting to comparison with Chinese procedures and to the idea that local medical theories could enrich European knowledge. The article also highlights how the controversy in France involved three fronts—physicians, *philosophes*, and the Church—and how Jesuit authority allowed missionary observation to be converted into argumentative legitimacy within debates on prevention, risk, and “divine plans.” |
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| ISSN: | 1682-1106 |