Mary Augusta Brazelton
Biographic Data
| ID | 995776 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Mary Augusta Brazelton |
| GIVEN NAMES | Mary Augusta |
| FAMILY NAME | Brazelton |
| SIGNATURE | BRAZELTON M A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Cambridge |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5941-9576 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 9 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 20 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
The Politics of Medical Education at the Lyon Sino-French Institute
This paper considers an unusual programme of medical education organized through the Lyon Sino-French Institute, which sponsored the postgraduate studies of over four hundred Chinese youths in France between 1921 and 1951. Forty of these students studied at the Faculty of Medicine in Lyon and affiliated organizations. An examination of the students’ correspondence, publications, and medical theses provides an opportunity to learn what kinds of kn…
Uneasy Allies
This timely collection of essays examines Sino-American relations during the Second World War, the Chinese Civil War and the opening of the Cold War. Drawing on new sources uncovered in China, Taiwan, the UK and the US, the authors demonstrate how 'grassroots' engagements - not just elite diplomacy - established the trans-Pacific networks that both shaped the postwar order in Asia, and continue to influence Sino-US relations today. In these cruci…
Knowledge Production in Mao-Era China
China under Mao represented a historical moment of unparalleled scientific pluralism.That is what Rui Kunze and Marc Matten argue in this slim yet ground-breaking new volume, which claims that "epistemological flexibility" shaped discourses on science and politics in Maoist and post-1978 China.The authors suggest that science under Mao actively incorporated and recontextualized local knowledges as a consequence of its emphasis on practice.Rui and…
Yi-Tang Lin, Statistics and the Language of Global Health
Journal Article Statistics and the Language of Global Health: Institutions and Experts in China, Taiwan and the World, 1917–1960 Get access Yi-Tang Lin, Statistics and the Language of Global Health: Institutions and Experts in China, Taiwan and the World, 1917–1960, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. Pp. xiv + 262. £75.00 and open access online. Hdbk. ISBN 978-1-108-84592-2. Mary Augusta Brazelton Mary Augusta Brazelton University of Ca…
Aviation infrastructures in the Republic of China, 1920-37
This essay investigates technical aspects of the history of aviation in the Republic of China, focusing on the period between 1920 and 1937. It suggests that Chinese authors and administrators came to see the establishment of technical infrastructure as dependent on the education of personnel who could assume responsibility for maintaining and expanding Chinese aviation ventures, rather than on specific technologies or practices. Magazines and jo…
Techniques of repair, the circulation of knowledge, and environmental transformation
It is the aim of this article to put questions of maintenance and repair in the history of science and technology under scrutiny, with a special focus on technologies and methods of transportation. The history of transportation is a history of trying to avoid shipwrecks and plane crashes. It is also a history of broken masts, worm-eaten hulls, the flat tires of cars, and endless delays at airports. This introductory article assesses the technolog…
Some Reflections on the History of Masked Societies in East Asia
Zhou Xun, The People’s Health
Health for all
This essay presents a survey of recent work in the history of international and global health from the mid‐nineteenth to the early twenty‐first centuries. It considers longstanding narratives alongside recent studies that have deployed approaches consonant with scholarship in the emerging global history of science and medicine. The cumulative impact of this work is to show how the history of international health has long been embedded in colonial…
Teaching and learning guide for
Recovering Hygienic Modernity in the World of Covid-19
NotesMary Augusta Brazelton is a University Senior Lecturer in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. She is a historian of science and medicine in modern China, focusing on the twentieth century, and the author of Mass Vaccination: Citizens' Bodies and State Power in Modern China (Cornell, 2019). Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, Free School Lane, Cambridge CB2 …
Viral Reflections
Public health in China has become a global concern as a consequence of the outbreak and worldwide spread of COVID-19. This article examines the historical place of China in international and global health. Contrary to prevalent narratives in the history of medicine, China and Chinese historical actors played key roles in this field throughout the twentieth century. Several episodes illustrate this argument: the Qing organization of the Internatio…
Mass Vaccination
While the eradication of smallpox has long been documented, not many know the Chinese roots of this historic achievement. This book examines the People's Republic of China's public health campaigns of the 1950s to explain just how China managed to inoculate almost six hundred million people against this and other deadly diseases. The book tells the story of the people, materials, and systems that built these campaigns, exposing how, by improving …
Mass Vaccination
While the eradication of smallpox has long been documented, not many know the Chinese roots of this historic achievement. In this revelatory study, Mary Augusta Brazelton examines the PRC's public health campaigns of the 1950s to explain just how China managed to inoculate almost six hundred million people against this and other deadly diseases.Mass Vaccination tells the story of the people, materials, and systems that built these campaigns, expo…
Liping Bu, Public Health and the Modernization of China, 1865–2015
In Public Health and the Modernization of China, Liping Bu seeks to provide an overview of the history of public health in China from 1865 to 2015 and, in doing so, demonstrate the links between modernity and medicine. The modernisation of public health in China, Bu claims, was intrinsically also a narrative of China’s social, cultural and political development. In following such an argument, the book owes much to the work of Ruth Rogaski, Sean H…
Engineering Health
During the Second Sino-Japanese War, the technological project of mass immunization united state health administrations and international aid organizations seeking to prevent epidemics in unoccupied China's wartime hinterland. This article examines a joint wartime effort between the Chinese government's National Epidemic Prevention Bureau and the League of Nations Health Organization to manufacture and distribute vaccines against smallpox, choler…
Farewell to the God of Plague
Villagers picking up snails with chopsticks, unruly wards where patients drank and gambled, temples repurposed as hospitals: these are the details, borne of meticulous archival research, that make
Western Medical Education on Trial
In the early twentieth century, Beijing's Peking Union Medical College (PUMC) stood as a prominent symbol of Western medical science and education in China. After the People's Republic of China was established in 1949, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) took control of the College between 1952 and 1956.This article argues that the endurance of PUMC as an institute of scientific, Western biomedicine in China was largely contingent upon reforms tha…
Barefoot Doctors and Western Medicine in China
When American diplomatic delegations traveled to the People's Republic of China during the 1970s, they were deeply impressed by rural medicine in the Maoist state. Physician Victor Sidel spoke glowingly of “barefoot doctors,” health workers who had received minimal training in Chinese and Western medicine and who performed basic medical care in rural areas (Victor W. Sidel, “The Barefoot Doctors of the People's Republic of China,” New England Jou…
Saving Lives in Wartime China
Aviation infrastructures in the Republic of China, 1920-37
This essay investigates technical aspects of the history of aviation in the Republic of China, focusing on the period between 1920 and 1937. It suggests that Chinese authors and administrators came to see the establishment of technical infrastructure as dependent on the education of personnel who could assume responsibility for maintaining and expanding Chinese aviation ventures, rather than on specific technologies or practices. Magazines and jo…
Viral Reflections
Public health in China has become a global concern as a consequence of the outbreak and worldwide spread of COVID-19. This article examines the historical place of China in international and global health. Contrary to prevalent narratives in the history of medicine, China and Chinese historical actors played key roles in this field throughout the twentieth century. Several episodes illustrate this argument: the Qing organization of the Internatio…
Engineering Health
During the Second Sino-Japanese War, the technological project of mass immunization united state health administrations and international aid organizations seeking to prevent epidemics in unoccupied China's wartime hinterland. This article examines a joint wartime effort between the Chinese government's National Epidemic Prevention Bureau and the League of Nations Health Organization to manufacture and distribute vaccines against smallpox, choler…
Health for all
This essay presents a survey of recent work in the history of international and global health from the mid‐nineteenth to the early twenty‐first centuries. It considers longstanding narratives alongside recent studies that have deployed approaches consonant with scholarship in the emerging global history of science and medicine. The cumulative impact of this work is to show how the history of international health has long been embedded in colonial…
Recovering Hygienic Modernity in the World of Covid-19
NotesMary Augusta Brazelton is a University Senior Lecturer in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. She is a historian of science and medicine in modern China, focusing on the twentieth century, and the author of Mass Vaccination: Citizens' Bodies and State Power in Modern China (Cornell, 2019). Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, Free School Lane, Cambridge CB2 …
Saving Lives in Wartime China
Barefoot Doctors and Western Medicine in China
When American diplomatic delegations traveled to the People's Republic of China during the 1970s, they were deeply impressed by rural medicine in the Maoist state. Physician Victor Sidel spoke glowingly of “barefoot doctors,” health workers who had received minimal training in Chinese and Western medicine and who performed basic medical care in rural areas (Victor W. Sidel, “The Barefoot Doctors of the People's Republic of China,” New England Jou…
Western Medical Education on Trial
In the early twentieth century, Beijing's Peking Union Medical College (PUMC) stood as a prominent symbol of Western medical science and education in China. After the People's Republic of China was established in 1949, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) took control of the College between 1952 and 1956.This article argues that the endurance of PUMC as an institute of scientific, Western biomedicine in China was largely contingent upon reforms tha…
Farewell to the God of Plague
Villagers picking up snails with chopsticks, unruly wards where patients drank and gambled, temples repurposed as hospitals: these are the details, borne of meticulous archival research, that make
Mass Vaccination
While the eradication of smallpox has long been documented, not many know the Chinese roots of this historic achievement. This book examines the People's Republic of China's public health campaigns of the 1950s to explain just how China managed to inoculate almost six hundred million people against this and other deadly diseases. The book tells the story of the people, materials, and systems that built these campaigns, exposing how, by improving …
Mass Vaccination
While the eradication of smallpox has long been documented, not many know the Chinese roots of this historic achievement. In this revelatory study, Mary Augusta Brazelton examines the PRC's public health campaigns of the 1950s to explain just how China managed to inoculate almost six hundred million people against this and other deadly diseases.Mass Vaccination tells the story of the people, materials, and systems that built these campaigns, expo…
Liping Bu, Public Health and the Modernization of China, 1865–2015
In Public Health and the Modernization of China, Liping Bu seeks to provide an overview of the history of public health in China from 1865 to 2015 and, in doing so, demonstrate the links between modernity and medicine. The modernisation of public health in China, Bu claims, was intrinsically also a narrative of China’s social, cultural and political development. In following such an argument, the book owes much to the work of Ruth Rogaski, Sean H…
Engineering Health
During the Second Sino-Japanese War, the technological project of mass immunization united state health administrations and international aid organizations seeking to prevent epidemics in unoccupied China's wartime hinterland. This article examines a joint wartime effort between the Chinese government's National Epidemic Prevention Bureau and the League of Nations Health Organization to manufacture and distribute vaccines against smallpox, choler…
Recovering Hygienic Modernity in the World of Covid-19
NotesMary Augusta Brazelton is a University Senior Lecturer in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. She is a historian of science and medicine in modern China, focusing on the twentieth century, and the author of Mass Vaccination: Citizens' Bodies and State Power in Modern China (Cornell, 2019). Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, Free School Lane, Cambridge CB2 …
Viral Reflections
Public health in China has become a global concern as a consequence of the outbreak and worldwide spread of COVID-19. This article examines the historical place of China in international and global health. Contrary to prevalent narratives in the history of medicine, China and Chinese historical actors played key roles in this field throughout the twentieth century. Several episodes illustrate this argument: the Qing organization of the Internatio…
Health for all
This essay presents a survey of recent work in the history of international and global health from the mid‐nineteenth to the early twenty‐first centuries. It considers longstanding narratives alongside recent studies that have deployed approaches consonant with scholarship in the emerging global history of science and medicine. The cumulative impact of this work is to show how the history of international health has long been embedded in colonial…
Teaching and learning guide for
Some Reflections on the History of Masked Societies in East Asia
Zhou Xun, The People’s Health
Knowledge Production in Mao-Era China
China under Mao represented a historical moment of unparalleled scientific pluralism.That is what Rui Kunze and Marc Matten argue in this slim yet ground-breaking new volume, which claims that "epistemological flexibility" shaped discourses on science and politics in Maoist and post-1978 China.The authors suggest that science under Mao actively incorporated and recontextualized local knowledges as a consequence of its emphasis on practice.Rui and…
Yi-Tang Lin, Statistics and the Language of Global Health
Journal Article Statistics and the Language of Global Health: Institutions and Experts in China, Taiwan and the World, 1917–1960 Get access Yi-Tang Lin, Statistics and the Language of Global Health: Institutions and Experts in China, Taiwan and the World, 1917–1960, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. Pp. xiv + 262. £75.00 and open access online. Hdbk. ISBN 978-1-108-84592-2. Mary Augusta Brazelton Mary Augusta Brazelton University of Ca…
Aviation infrastructures in the Republic of China, 1920-37
This essay investigates technical aspects of the history of aviation in the Republic of China, focusing on the period between 1920 and 1937. It suggests that Chinese authors and administrators came to see the establishment of technical infrastructure as dependent on the education of personnel who could assume responsibility for maintaining and expanding Chinese aviation ventures, rather than on specific technologies or practices. Magazines and jo…
Techniques of repair, the circulation of knowledge, and environmental transformation
It is the aim of this article to put questions of maintenance and repair in the history of science and technology under scrutiny, with a special focus on technologies and methods of transportation. The history of transportation is a history of trying to avoid shipwrecks and plane crashes. It is also a history of broken masts, worm-eaten hulls, the flat tires of cars, and endless delays at airports. This introductory article assesses the technolog…
Uneasy Allies
This timely collection of essays examines Sino-American relations during the Second World War, the Chinese Civil War and the opening of the Cold War. Drawing on new sources uncovered in China, Taiwan, the UK and the US, the authors demonstrate how 'grassroots' engagements - not just elite diplomacy - established the trans-Pacific networks that both shaped the postwar order in Asia, and continue to influence Sino-US relations today. In these cruci…
The Politics of Medical Education at the Lyon Sino-French Institute
This paper considers an unusual programme of medical education organized through the Lyon Sino-French Institute, which sponsored the postgraduate studies of over four hundred Chinese youths in France between 1921 and 1951. Forty of these students studied at the Faculty of Medicine in Lyon and affiliated organizations. An examination of the students’ correspondence, publications, and medical theses provides an opportunity to learn what kinds of kn…
China (17 works) · Political science (17 works) · Law (15 works) · Chinese history and philosophy (10 works) · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis (10 works) · History (10 works) · Medicine (10 works) · Politics (8 works) · History (6 works) · History of Science and Medicine (6 works)