This presentation makes the case for a new concept of “global medicine" to highlight the multivalent and multidirectional flows of medical practices and ideas circulating around the world in the 20th century through the examination of two case studies on how the Chinese diaspora came to shape biomedicine in China and Taiwan from 1937 to 1970. First, the presentation examines how Chinese American women medical personnel came to establish the first Chinese blood bank in New York and Kunming, China. Second, this talk reveals how Singapore-born and Edinburgh-educated Dr. Robert Lim successfully relocated the National Defense Medical Center from China to Taiwan in 1948 despite the longstanding challenges posed by the Chinese Civil War. This presentation highlights the essential intersections of scientific expertise, political freedoms, and diasporic power in shaping global medicine in China and Taiwan through a critical examination of these two medical encounters between the diaspora and the local Chinese and Taiwanese.

Wayne Soon (PhD Princeton) is an Assistant Professor of History at Vassar College. His book, "Global Medicine in China: A Diasporic History" (Stanford University Press, 2020), tells the global medical histories of Chinese East Asia through the lens of diasporic Chinese medical personnel, who were central in introducing new practices of military medicine, blood banking, mobile medicine, and mass medical training to China and Taiwan. Universal care, practical medical education, and mobile medicine are all lasting legacies of this effort on both sides of the Taiwan Straits. Dr. Soon’s published and forthcoming articles can be found in "Twentieth Century China," "Bulletin of the History of Medicine," "American Journal of Chinese Studies," and "East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal."

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Zoom webinar; attendance requires registration: https://umich.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_zruicPE8SpOGti5PJxsvAA