Around the turn of the twentieth century, disorders that Chinese physicians had been writing about for over a millennium acquired new identities in Western medicine--sudden turmoil became cholera; flowers of heaven became smallpox; and foot qi became beriberi. Historians have tended to present these new identities as revelations, overlooking evidence that challenges Western ideas about these conditions. In Forgotten Disease, Hilary A. Smith argues that, by privileging nineteenth century sources, we misrepresent what traditional Chinese doctors were seeing and doing, therefore...

Around the turn of the twentieth century, disorders that Chinese physicians had been writing about for over a millennium acquired new identities in Western medicine--sudden turmoil became cholera; flowers of heaven became smallpox; and foot qi became beriberi. Historians have tended to present these new identities as revelations, overlooking evidence that challenges Western ideas about these conditions. In Forgotten Disease, Hilary A. Smith argues that, by privileging nineteenth century sources, we misrepresent what traditional Chinese doctors were seeing and doing, therefore...