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Chapter 17: Chinese Traditional Ideas and the Treatment of Disease: Two Examples from Hong Kong
- Hong Kong University Press, HKU
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Chapter 17 Chinese Traditional Ideas and the Treatment of Disease: Two Examples from Hong Kong (1970)* A number of anthropologists working in Hong Kong in the last two decades have tackled problems concerning traditional China. The main interest has been in social structure but a few studies dealing with problems of cognition have been carried out since the early ’60s. The published results, which are just beginning to appear, already indicate the value of Hong Kong for research in this field.1 This article is based on data obtained during a study of child-rearing in Hong Kong and deals with problems in the perception, conception, and treatment of two human disorders by Chinese traditional methods.2 The disorders are measles, and an emotional complaint called haak-ts’an (C) [xiaqin] [Cantonese idiom]: “injury by fright”. 3 Data were obtained mainly by depth interviews with twenty women living in urban Kowloon, and all the women considered the disorders common in childhood and made use of traditional ideas and treatments. * The analysis of ritual and medicine in this article was first presented at the annual conference of the Hong Kong Psychological Society, The University of Hong Kong, 12 December 1969. Here I have expanded the argument and added the sections on the medical tradition, and on the identification of the syndrome haak-ts’an. First published in Man, n.s., 5(3): 421–37. Reprinted by permission of WileyBlackwell . 1 A description of some social science research projects undertaken in Hong Kong since 1950 is contained in Topley (1969). A bibliography contained in the proceedings has been updated and revised and is published in the Journal of Oriental Studies, 8, 219–25. 2 The study was requested by the Child Development Programme of the University of Hong Kong. The Programme is investigating the growth and development of a sample of the Chinese child population from birth and for the first five years of life. I am grateful to the organizers of the Programme for allowing me to include questions which are of only tangential relevance to their interests. 3 Many terms and expressions appearing in the article are peculiar to the Cantonese and I therefore use a Cantonese Romanization, following the system used by Meyer & Wempe (1947). Exceptions are yin, yang and wu-hsing which I have left in their more familiar Mandarin form. 450 Chapter 17 I use the terms “disorder” and “complaint” rather than disease for semantic reasons. Measles, a disease by modern clinical definition and one with a high mortality rate in Hong Kong, was regarded as something rather different by many informants. Haak-ts’an on the other hand, was seen by all as a disease — a malfunctioning of the human system — but it can be given no precise diagnostic label in modern medicine. Both were treated by medical and by ritual means. The more general aim of the article is to present new material on a subject much neglected by anthropology, and for this reason I say something about the relation of my findings to existing knowledge of the medical tradition. This has led me to look rather closely at current definitions and categories and the difficulties they raise for the fieldworker. My purpose, however, is analytical rather than descriptive. Part of the analysis concerns the relationship between medical and ritual treatments and its basis in terms of the conceptual material; and part deals with the ritual treatments themselves and their further relationship to a wider system of ritual and ceremony. There is a further problem which I cannot ignore. Haak-ts’an is not included in modern disease taxonomy so that I have to examine the nature of the syndrome in terms of certain assumptions of Chinese culture. Since I am not directly concerned with the contemporary scene I do not take up the question of “traditional” versus “modern” medicine and all that implies. In a socially heterogeneous and rapidly modernizing community like Hong Kong, this is a difficult issue and requires separate investigation and analysis. All interviews were conducted in 1969, most information being supplied during sessions on childhood disorders, and informants’ religious and other views of the world. The interviews were conducted personally in Cantonese. No informant spoke English; nineteen were Cantonesebelonging to Hong Kong’s major dialect group and the remaining person was Hakka. All came from Kwangtung [Guangdong] Province; and, although the Hakka woman belonged to a different sub-culture, there was no indication of any major difference in her views on...