BUILDING THE NATION THROUGH WOMEN'S HEALTH: MODERN ...

Republican and Nationalist eras (1912-1949), with a special focus on the themes of modernity,
gender, and imperialism. “Modern medicine” and “scientific medicine” are terms used
somewhat interchangeably to designate the particular set of practices and theories about the body,
health, and disease that emerged in Europe beginning in the 1800s and subsequently in the
United States. Scientific medicine is associated with the Enlightenment ideal of human progress
and the scientific method of investigating, observing, measuring, and recording empirical
phenomena. Especially important to scientific medicine was the pathogenic theory of medicine
(germ theory) developed by Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch in the mid-1800s. This theory states
that germs are the cause of disease and illness, and that disease and illness can be prevented with
proper aseptic, or sterile, methods. Specific to childbirth, in the 1840s Ignaz Semmelweis found
that physicians’ hands left unwashed after performing autopsies caused high rates of puerperal
fever in hospitals. 7 These theories and their related practices also greatly advanced the fields of
surgery (as fewer people died of post-surgical infections), public health and hygiene,
bacteriology, epidemiology, and the development of antibiotics. All of these fields are part of
scientific medicine.
The term “modern medicine,” more than the phrase “scientific medicine,” captures the
ideal of striving for improvement that so many Chinese identified with during this period.
“Modern” connotes intangible characteristics of progress, enlightenment, and truth, all
characteristics of the new midwives. Therefore, I use “modern midwife” and “modern
physician” to denote those who had received training in scientific medicine, whether in China or
abroad. If we contrast modern and traditional midwives by looking at early twentieth-century
government documents alone, we would find that modern midwives were examined, licensed,
7 Semmelweis’s theory was initially rejected by the medical community, as germ theory had not yet been adapted at
that time. He died in an insane asylum in 1865.
8