Sex, Culture and Modernity in China

5. 'Civilization is Syphilization': The Cultural Meanings of 'Disease'

5 'CIVILIZATION IS SYPHILIZATION': THE CULTURAL MEANINGS OF 'DISEASE' Controversies over population control and race improvement were closely related to discussions about public hygiene, venereal disease and prostitution in Republican China. The physical vigour and moral purity of the nation demanded the elimination of deviant practices. They were described as 'social problems' (shehui wenti), and the debates on sexual hygiene and venereal disease were indicative of social anxieties among the new professional elites of the urban centres. Thought to be a product of 'modern civilization', syphilis in particular conjured up images of urban decay and racial decline: sex could transmit diseases, infect the body of society and threaten future generations. Dispensaries for treating venereal disease, licensed houses to regulate prostitution, medical dossiers for the registration of infected individuals - in short, an entire disciplinary system was required in publications about sex. Through discourses on sex, modern-educated elites pushed for an increased intervention of the medical professions and the state in the sexual lives of citizens. The transformation of sex into a medical category denoting degeneracy, disease and contamination was also part of a broader shift in emphasis towards biology and the body as the foundation for prescriptions about social order. Medical rationalizations about human reproduction included an emphasis on 'diseases' as entities which had their own 'personality' consisting of signs and symptoms, with a cause, a clinical picture, a natural history, a prognosis and an appropriate treatment. Venereal diseases were assumed to be universal in form, progress and content, and numerical definitions were provided through the use of blood tests, radiographs and scans in specialized laboratories and clinics. Despite an increased emphasis on the obligation of the state to supervise the sexuality of its citizens, 122 HYGIENE AND THE CONCEPT OF DISEASE 123 discourses about disease also contributed to the construction of personhood as a relatively autonomous and responsible category. 'THE BODY IS A BATTLEFIELD': HYGIENE AND THE CONCEPT OF DISEASE Although the term 'hygiene' (weisheng) first appeared during the Song dynasty (960-1279), it achieved an unprecedented status of power and prestige only in the early twentieth century. Hygiene referred to a specialized field, a distinct discipline defined by a body of knowledge and a set of social practices based on medical science. Its status was enhanced by new social formations in the cities, which emphasized the scientific competence of new knowledge in order to further their own claims to professional autonomy. Medical professions in particular were instrumental in the development of new institutions, organizations, committees and periodicals, such as the World of Hygiene (Weisheng shijie, 1907), soon followed by the Vernacular Journal ofHygiene (Weisheng baihuabao, Shanghai, May 1908) and the Journal of Medical Hygiene (Yixue weishengbao, Canton, August 1908). The first professional organization to appear was the China National Hygiene Committee, established by students abroad in Japan in 1907. The spread of sub-disciplines in the 1920s and '30s like 'personal hygiene' (geren weisheng), 'public hygiene' (gonggong weisheng) , 'social hygiene' (shehui weisheng) and 'racial hygiene' (zhongzu weisheng) indicated that this new branch of medicine was located at the intersection of the private and the public, straddled the boundary of the personal and the social, and linked the individual to the species. New norms and attitudes towards bodily cleanliness were explained by a burgeoning number of family handbooks, manuals on hygiene and treatises on physiology. Under the guise of science, these popular booklets liberally dispensed advice and enunciated precepts on hygiene, housekeeping, proper clothing, diet and related matters. They were written in simple language and served as a guide to the new social formations of the coastal regions. Primary and secondary schools also became centres for 124 THE CULTURAL MEANINGS OF 'DISEASE' the dissemination of new knowledge. Textbooks were printed for a new curriculum which included classes in hygiene, and teachers preached the physiology of health. A textbook used in primary schools for boys explained how 'rotting objects and filthy places breed a kind of microscopic insect called a germ. Germs are so small that the eye cannot see them. Light and tiny, they spread everywhere and get into the human body where they proliferate.'1 Within the coastal citadels, public bathhouses, water distribution networks and sewage systems were gradually installed: 'public hygiene' as a social practice spread. With the creation of the Ministry of Health by the Guomindang in 1928, social regeneration and a strengthening of the nation became official slogans used in campaigns of public...