Translating the Body: Medical Education in Southeast Asia ed. by Hans Pols, C. Michele Thompson, and John Harley Warner (review)

Writing about the history of medical education in Southeast Asia presents a formidable task, especially in a region that has a plurality of medico-cultural traditions under colonial and postcolonial experiences. However, this did not deter Hans Pols, C. Michele Thompson, and John Harley Warner to put together an edited collection that not only adequately represents the countries of the region but also situates these accounts within the global history of medicine. Translating the Body is a welcome addition to the growing historical literature on medical education and an excellent contribution to Southeast Asian studies as well. Written clearly, this book is a must-read for historians and students of medicine, global health, and Southeast Asia.

It begins with the concept of "translating the body," which the editors define as "processes where medical ideas, practices, epistemologies are formulated in pedagogical contexts, selectively taken up and sometimes refashioned, and involving both interpretation and transmission" (2). This implies that medical education is not a passive tool to train and professionalize doctors but also an active means for people to think differently about their own bodies, ailments, and relations between health and environment, all of which are directed to change their current health behaviors.

Covering a time frame from the mid-nineteenth century to the development of postcolonial nations, the book covers eleven case studies from Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam, and it aims to offer a historiographically strategic framework for the understanding of health and medicine in the region, to serve as an important resource for guiding health policy and development work in the present, and to integrate Southeast Asia into the global historical narrative of medicine, especially for those who are unfamiliar with the region. Furthermore, it attempts to work on a vision of what "a global history of medicine can and should be like," in a way that means that local experiences do not have to compete with other histories (29).

The organization of the chapters does not strictly adhere to a chronological order. Although it is not readily visible from the table of contents, the chapters cluster into three major themes: adopted and refashioned biomedical approaches, public health education and health citizenship, and the invention of "traditional medicine."

The first theme expounds on Western medical curricula, ideas, and practices that were brought into and appropriated in the region. The first two chapters deal with the challenges presented by introducing nursing education to the region. Liesbeth Hesselink (chapter 1) examines the establishment of nursing and midwifery in Semarang through a biographical case study of Nel Stokvis-Cohen Stuart (1881–1964). While she managed to lay the foundation and system of schools, Stokvis-Cohen Stuart encountered challenges including educating Javanese women, class-related problems related to patient care, and the continued aversion of the native population to Western medicine. Meanwhile, Rosemary Wall and Anne Marie Rafferty (chapter 2) focus on the contending models of British and North American nursing education in British Malaya. The former approach underscored the subordination of Asian nurses to British ones, while the latter emphasized technological and educational leadership. It also emphasized the transformation of nursing as a woman's vocation, where "feminization was equated with modernization," a pattern found in the British military stations and in the Philippines under the Americans (72).

In great measure, political, personal, and professional tensions shaped the aims and strategies of medical instruction. Here, Michitake Aso (chapter 5) illustrates this by showing how medical training in Indochina shaped one particular cohort of doctors who graduated in 1950. The "Western medical training" received by these graduates was used against their colonizers in assisting the military and strengthening patientdoctor relations. Vivek Neelakantan (chapter 6) examines the refashioning of medical instruction in Universitas Indonesia in Jakarta and Universitas Airlangga in Surabaya since the 1950s. As a strategy to address the shortage of...