"An encounter between Christian medical missions and Chinese medicine in modern history : the case of Benjamin Hobson" / Wong Man Kong 黃文江.

Religions 15 (2024).

This article belongs to the Special Issue Expressions of Chinese Christianity in Texts and Contexts: In Memory of Our Mentor Professor R. G. Tiedemann (1941–2019).

Local access dig.pdf [Wong-An encounter between Christian medical missions.pdf].

Abstract:

This article discusses how and why Christian medical missionaries established their foothold in Chinese society through the medical career of Benjamin Hobson, who was active in China from the late 1830s to the 1850s. Apart from his evangelical work among the Chinese, one of his key contributions was the new medical vocabularies he created to communicate medical knowledge. In addition to literary considerations, Hobson had his strategies for sharing modern medical knowledge. Moreover, he was prepared to debate with the Chinese over the validity of the pulse theory. The debate did not happen, however. His intention to establish the case for the superior position of Western medicine was not contested. His medical texts, at best, became the necessary underpinning for introducing modern Western medicine to China. When Western medical college projects took place in China at the turn of the century, biomedicine took over as the key paradigm, with Hobson’s medical texts being of limited use.

Contents: Pilgrim Legge and the journey to the West, 1870-1874 -- Professor Legge at Oxford University, 1875-1876 -- Heretic Legge : relating Confucianism and Christianity, 1877-1878 -- Decipherer Legge : finding the Sacred in the Chinese classics, 1879-1880 -- Comparativist Legge : describing and comparing the religions of China, 1880- 1882 -- Translator Legge : closing the Confucian Canon, 1882-1885 -- Ancestor Legge : translating Buddhism and Daoism, 1886-1892 -- Teacher Legge : upholding the Whole Duty of Man, 1893-1897.

"In this study, Norman J. Girardot focuses on James Legge (1815-1897), one of the most important nineteenth-century figures in the cultural exchange between China and the West. A translator-transformer of Chinese texts, Legge was a pioneering cross-cultural pilgrim within missionary circles in China and within the academic world of Oxford University. By tracing Legge's career and his close association with Max Muller (1823-1900), Girardot elegantly brings a biographically embodied approach to the intellectual history of two important aspects of the emergent "human sciences" at the end of the nineteenth century: sinology and comparative religions."--Jacket.