BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Talks.cam//talks.cam.ac.uk//
X-WR-CALNAME:Talks.cam
BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY:Visualizing the geography of diseases in China\, 1870s–1920s - M
 arta Hanson (Johns Hopkins University)
DTSTART:20120308T163000Z
DTEND:20120308T180000Z
UID:TALK35060@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Karin Ekholm
DESCRIPTION:From the beginning\, medical mapping was not just a way of thi
 nking but also a way to visualize certain conceptions of knowledge. Physic
 ians used them for various functions in China from the 1870s\, when they f
 irst published them to work out causal relationships\, to the 1910s and 20
 s\, when they transformed them for new political purposes. They were also 
 one of the most succinct ways to circulate complex syntheses of then curre
 nt medical knowledge. The earliest disease maps were statements in an argu
 ment\, evidence furthering a specific case\, and visualizations of possibl
 e causal relationships. On the one hand\, disease incidence\, and on the o
 ther hand\, potential causes – the climate or weather\, water and air qu
 ality\, geological features such as elevation\, waterways and mountains\, 
 or an unknown poison in the environment. Over 50 maps of diseases in China
  were published from the 1870s to the 1920s. They were both analytical too
 ls intended to visualize the relationship between space and disease and po
 litical images that legitimated colonial control (Russian in Harbin\, Engl
 ish in Hong Kong)\, and later\, provided evidence of Chinese state power o
 ver their populations. They also present a visual history of major changes
  in the conception of what was modern Western knowledge within China from 
 the mid 19th-century peak of medical geography to the eventual victory of 
 laboratory medicine by the early 20th century. The earliest disease maps\,
  like 19th-century vital statistics and Petri-dishes\, made causal relatio
 ns newly visible. During the 1910–20s\, however\, new kinds of maps of d
 iseases in China functioned more to legitimate colonial and later Chinese 
 state-populace relationships than to elucidate causal disease-agent ones. 
 Finally\, the first disease maps in vernacular Chinese were of the distrib
 ution of bubonic plague\, pneumonic plague\, cholera\, and apoplexy in Chi
 na and the world. Published on public-health posters in the late 1920s\, t
 hey attempted to convince a wary public of an entirely novel way of seeing
  epidemic disease\, themselves\, and their place in a newly globalizing wo
 rld.
LOCATION:Seminar Room 2\, Department of History and Philosophy of Science
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR