Ding Fubao and the Morals of Medical Modernization

Abstract

This paper surveys the life and medical activities of Chinese scholar, physician, and translator Ding Fubao 丁福保 (1874-1952). Ding’s career as an early adopter and translator of scientific medicine, and as a broker between western-trained physicians and reform-minded practitioners of Chinese medicine, affords rare insight into both the promise and the shortcomings of western-style medical modernization. In particular, Ding’s experiences illustrate the ways in which illness and healing remained closely associated with moral virtue, even in the mind of this most committed modernizer. Through Ding, we can examine the growth of modern professions in China and the struggle to achieve any kind of professional monopoly on practice; the huge influence of Japan on China’s modernization, and aspects of the relationship between culture and scientific change.