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Too Sick to Serve: The Politics of Illness in the Qing Civil Bureaucracy
- Late Imperial China
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 33, Number 2, December 2012
- pp. 40-75
- 10.1353/late.2012.a494426
- Article
- Additional Information
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Illness among officials posed perennial challenges to the local order of governance. During the Yongzheng reign (1723-35), a new set of policies emerged that enabled provincial officials to take a temporary sick leave and resume their careers after recovery. I use archival sources to examine how sick leave petitions were generated and handled in civil bureaucracy, and find that matters of personal health were treated increasingly as an impersonal routine. In coping with malingerers, the Qing state relied heavily on peer inspection rather than professional medical opinions. Certain types of illness were frequently reported, reflecting widespread health risks associated with official careers.