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

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After the start of the Nationalist era, the Ministry of Health (weisheng bu 卫生部) was<br />

established in 1928 and issued a mandate that emphasized public health “for the sake of the<br />

nation.” 191 With the help of the League of Nations Health Organization (LON-HO), the<br />

government attempted to create a state-run central health program. Their goal, according to<br />

AnElissa Lucas, was to build a “national network of medical and health care institutions,<br />

functionally divided and hierarchically organized from rural villages to urban centers, which<br />

could distribute accumulated medical resources to the entire Chinese population.” 192 The LON-<br />

HO Report on Medical Schools in China recommended a two-tier educational system: national<br />

medical schools for “high-grade physicians” with an eight-year curriculum, and “special medical<br />

schools” for a larger number of “medical practitioners” with a five-year curriculum. 193 Both<br />

included coursework in public health. However, the report’s author, Knud Faber, only indirectly<br />

referred to medical education for women – in short sections on midwife and nurse training – a<br />

grave oversight given the interest of other foreign and domestic policymakers towards this issue<br />

in other publications. In fact, the China Medical Commission of the Rockefeller Foundation<br />

devoted a portion of its 1914 report to plans for women’s medical education. 194<br />

As part of the push for Western scientific learning in China, in 1929 the Nationalist<br />

government “decreed that in university and specialized education, emphasis must be laid on<br />

applied sciences to strengthen the contents of all courses of study, in order to train students in<br />

special knowledge and skill and mould their character for the service of the country and<br />

society.” 195 Universities were divided into four categories: national, provincial, municipal and<br />

191<br />

Yip, Health and National Reconstruction, 26. See Yip, Chapter 5, for a description of Nationalist Ministry of<br />

Health policies.<br />

192<br />

Lucas, Chinese Medical Modernization: Comparative Policy Continuities, 1930s - 1980s, 10.<br />

193<br />

Knud Faber, Report on Medical Schools in China (LON-HO, June 31, 1931).<br />

194<br />

Rockefeller Foundation, Medicine in China.<br />

195 Choa, "Heal the Sick," 97.<br />

76

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