We are pleased to announce that Sean Hsiang-lin Lei’s Study of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute Neither Donkey nor Horse: Medicine in the Struggle Over China’s Modernity has received the 2016 William H. Welch Medal from the American Association for the History of Medicine.
Published in 2014 by the University of Chicago Press, Neither Donkey nor Horse tells the story of how Chinese medicine was transformed from the antithesis of modernity in the early twentieth century into a potent symbol of and vehicle for China’s exploration of its own modernity half a century later. Reviewing the book, Shigehisa Kuriyama of Harvard University wrote that “If you are going to read just one book on the modern history of Chinese medicine, this is the work to read. Lei’s analysis of the entwinement of medicine, science, modernity, and the state is brilliantly original and persuasive, and argued with admirable clarity. Neither Donkey nor Horse is a major contribution to science studies and the history of global health, as well as to the study of twentieth-century China.”
The William H. Welch Medal is awarded to one or more authors of a book (excluding edited volumes) of outstanding scholarly merit in the field of medical history published during the five calendar years preceding the award. The award is named in honor of a major American figure in the history of medicine and public health, who was also one of the first faculty members at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. The Medal was first presented in 1950 to Henry Sigerist.
Learn more about the Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute book series here.
