The Development of Modern Medicine in Non-Western Countries: Historical Perspectives

The history of medicine in non-European countries has often been characterized by the study of their native 'œtraditional'� medicine, such as (Galenico-)Islamic medicine, and Ayurvedic or Chinese medicine. Modern medicine in these countries, on the other hand, has usually been viewed as a Western corpus of knowledge and institution, juxtaposing or replacing the native medicine but without any organic relation with the local context.This essentialist perspective, believing in fixed Western and non-Western systems, has led many historians to neglect the assimilative properties of these systems and the evolution that can occur in them. As a result, we witness a chronological as well as conceptual discontinuity in the historiographical narrative for non-European countries: Traditional local system on the one hand, and modern medicine on the other. Nevertheless, not only traditional medical systems have changed at various levels due to local dynamics, even though sometimes spurred by outsideinfluence, but also, as the chapters of this book will show, modern medicine introduced in non-Western countries, was readapted and articulated according to local contexts.This book for the first time bridges the gap in medical history between modern Western and non-Western medicines. It opens a new perspective in medical historiography in which 'modern medicine' becomes an integral part of the history of medicine in non-European countries.