Just as our society is at present logging the collective experience of the pandemic on multiple platforms of media, historians, bureaucrats, medics, and religious leaders in early China had also recounted maladies that plagued the general populace in a variety of texts. Ranging from a terse chronicle entry on an outbreak of unknown epidemic among soldiers of an expeditionary corps to a detailed forensic report on a leprosy case, these documents shed light on the symptoms, transmission, and treatment of diseases in ancient East Asia as well as their effects on politics, livelihood, and social relations. Likewise, archaeological research in paleopathology and funerary customs has also revealed long-term changes in health conditions of local communities that resulted from agricultural intensification, demographic growth, changes in diet and settlement behavior, and increased social stratification. This course introduces historical and archaeological approaches to the study of health and disease in early China. Through a series of source materials and case studies, we examine the social and environmental histories of disease, medicine, and public health in early China.
- Teacher: Annie Chan
- Teacher: Maxim Korolkov