A Trauma Doctor’s Practice in Nineteenth-century China: The Medical Cases of Hu Tingguang

<span class="paragraphSection"><div class="boxTitle">Abstract</div>This paper analyses the medical activities of Hu Tingguang, an early nineteenth-century Chinese healer who specialized in treating traumatic injuries. Hu aimed to improve the state of medical knowledge about injuries by writing a comprehensive treatise titled <span style="font-style:italic;">Compilation of Teachings on Traumatology</span>, completed in 1815. This work notably included a set of medical cases describing the experiences of Hu and his father, which Hu used to teach readers how to employ and adapt different therapies: bone setting, petty surgery, and drugs. By examining how Hu dealt with different forms of damage to the body's material form, this paper shows how manual therapies could be a focus of medical creativity and innovation. It also contributes to a growing corpus of scholarship exploring the way that awareness of and concern with the structure of the body historically shaped Chinese medical thought and practice.</span>

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