Forgotten Disease

Hilary A. Smith is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Denver.

"The writing of the history of diseases has played a crucial but often invisible role in shaping Chinese medicine as we know it today. Forgotten Disease challenges the dominant historiography with great insights, enabling us to relate anew to the past and to reopen possibilities for further developing this living tradition."—Sean Hsiang-lin Lei, Academia Sinica, Taiwan "Forgotten Disease makes significant contributions to the history both of Chinese medicine, and of medicine in a globalizing era. By resisting the easy translation of 'jiaoqi' into a biomedical entity, this book stands as a stellar example of how historians of Asian medicine can decenter the West."—Ruth Rogaski, Vanderbilt University "This fascinating, meticulous study of the unstable concept of foot qi provides a welcome perspective on Chinese medical thought and highlights the pitfalls of retrospective diagnosis. It is a valuable contribution to the nuanced and deeper understanding of Asian medical traditions with broader lessons for all medical historians."—William C. Summers, Yale University "Smith traces jiaoqi's history from its first mention in a fourth-century Chinese medical formulary as an affliction of northerners when living in "South China" to its thirteenth-century identity as a northerner's dietary disorder, through a sixteenth-century shift to a disease of consumption akin to gout, and into modern permutations from beriberi to athlete's foot in East Asia....Its potential readership...extend[s] to historians of Western medical imperialism, colonial medicine, East Asian public health history, and the global history of public health."—Marta Hanson, Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review "[T]his is a highly original monograph. Its greatest accomplishment is that, in contrast to a medical history about foot qi in China and Japan, Forgotten Disease uses foot qi to think more thoroughly about medical history in China and Japan." Alexander R. Bay, Asian Medicine

• Introduction1. Foot Qi in Early Chinese Medicine2. Competing for Medical Authority over Disease3. Simplifying and Standardizing Disease4. The Northerner's Dietary Disorder5. Getting Rich and Getting Sick6. Creating Beriberi in Meiji Japan7. Foot Qi's Multiple Meanings in Modern East AsiaConclusion