The Rosenthal Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine

 

 

 

presents

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bridie Andrews Minehan, Ph.D.

 

History Dept, Bentley College, Waltham MA

 

 

 

Making Chinese Medicine Modern

 

                                                                               

Monday May 15, 2006

12:00 pm to 1:00 pm*

 

Location: Hammer Health Sciences Center (HHSC) 

Room 301, 701 W. 168th Street, 3rd floor*
*(see below for directions)

 

 

 

 

Dr. Bridie Andrews Minehan is Assistant Professor of History at Bentley College, Waltham MA.  Dr. Andrews-Minehan is interested in the history of Chinese medicine; gender in Asian history, science, and medicine; and East Asia in the modern world order.   Her talk will focus on the transformation of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) over the 20th century.            (See over for speaker brief biography)

 

 

 

 

 

*Directions to HHSC, Room 301, 701 W. 168th St.,@ NW Corner West 168th St. & Ft. Washington Ave., 1 long block west of B’way (W. 168th St. becomes Haven Ave. west of Ft. Washington Ave.). For a map (HHSC is #4 on map) go to http://www.cumc.columbia.edu/about/map.html.  Parking garage at W. 165th St. & Ft. Washington Ave.

 

 

 

 

Prof. Bridie Andrews Minehan

 

 



Photo by Tony Rinaldo

An assistant professor of history at Bentley College, Waltham MA, and previously assistant professor of history of medicine at Harvard, Bridie Andrews Minehan is interested in the history of Chinese medicine; gender in Asian history, science, and medicine; and East Asia in the modern world order.  A revised version of her dissertation, "The Making of Modern Chinese Medicine," will soon be published by Cambridge University Press.  In this book, she examines the transfer to and assimilation of Western medical science in China, using sources from both traditions.

As a Radcliffe Institute fellow in 2001-2002, Andrews Minehan worked on a history of acupuncture, the therapy that defines modern Chinese medicine.  Her research included an investigation into the practices of moxibustion (the burning of moxa leaves on or near the skin) and minor surgery in late imperial and modern China.  In her book, Andrews Minehan aims to explain how these vulgar, hands-on techniques became respectable.

Andrews Minehan, who studied Chinese at Xiamen University in China, earned her PhD in the history of medicine from the University of Cambridge.  She was the recipient of an Andrew W. Mellon fellowship in the humanities at the University of Pennsylvania, and a Wellcome Trust postdoctoral fellowship at the University of London.

 
 
 
 
Selected publications:
 
 

The Making of Modern Chinese Medicine.  Book to be published by Cambridge University Press, in their History of Medicine series, edited by Charles Rosenberg.

 

“From case records to case histories: The modernization of a Chinese medical genre, 1912-1949.”  Innovation in Chinese Medicine, ed. Elisabeth Hsu.  Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2001.

 

“From bedpan to revolution: Qiu Jin and western nursing in China.”  In Women and Modern Medicine, eds. Anne Hardy and Lawrence Conrad. Amsterdam and London: Rodopi, 2000.

 

“Chinese medicine” in A. Hessenbruch (ed.) A Reader’s Guide to the History of Science.  London: Fitzroy

Dearborn, 2000.

 

“Tuberculosis and the assimilation of germ theory in China, 1895 - 1937.”  In Journal of the History of

Medicine and Allied Sciences  52 (1 1997): 114-157.

 

“Tailoring tradition: The impact of modern medicine on traditional Chinese medicine, 1887-1937.”  In

Notions et Perceptions du Changement en Chine, eds. Viviane Alleton and Alexei Volkov. 149-166. Paris: Collège de France, Institut des Hautes Études Chinoises, 1994.