This paper examines the reasons why Physician He (Yi–He, sixth century BCE) was regarded as a founder in the classical medical tradition of China. By most accounts, Physician He’s importance owes much to his theoretical innovations. In contrast to earlier healers, Physician He purportedly framed the aetiology of illnesses solely in terms of natural causes, as opposed to attributing sickness to gods or demons. In this paper, I reread a famous episode in the Commentary by Zuo, which is often cited as evidence of the physician’s naturalism. By paying close attention to the formal elements of the narrative as well as its larger discursive context, I argue that the standard reading of Physician He falls short. The episode provides little evidence of any secular challenge to religious conceptions of illness, and Physician He was, in fact, patterned after occult experts. A careful look moreover at the reception of Physician He in premodern histories of medicine reveals that the physician was extolled for his attunement to the will of the spirits as well as his powers of examination. Physician He’s reputation as a naturalist furthermore represents a modern interpretation, one that reflects efforts to defend the indigenous medical tradition against its biomedical detractors.

It is commonly argued that the decision to introduce a new vaccine is properly based on objective and measurable criteria, including disease burden and efficacy of the vaccine. Moreover, new vaccines are to be introduced rapidly and globally: delay is difficult to justify. Historical studies of new vaccine introductions paint a rather different and more complex picture. The few studies comparing new vaccine introduction in different countries suggest that ‘evidence’ for the efficacy of a vaccine was commonly subjected to varying interpretations. This paper, based on analysis of the introduction of the measles–mumps–rubella (MMR) vaccine in Denmark and the Netherlands, takes this argument further. Though both countries are – and were – small welfare states with well-organised national immunisation programmes, both adopted MMR a full decade after its introduction in the USA. The paper suggests that the reasons for delaying, in each case, are a reasonable reflection of each country’s concerns, perceptions of the three diseases, and technological approaches already adopted. There were differences in each of these respects. The decision to adopt MMR, which each country eventually took, was significantly influenced by the political and ideological changes taking place in the 1980s, including a growing emphasis on costs and benefits, as well as the growing influence of the international context.

The historiography of medicine in South Asia often assumes the presence of preordained, homogenous, coherent and clearly-bound medical systems. They also tend to take the existence of a medical ‘mainstream’ for granted. This article argues that the idea of an ‘orthodox’, ‘mainstream’ named allopathy and one of its ‘alternatives’ homoeopathy were co-produced in Bengal. It emphasises the role of the supposed ‘fringe’, ie. homoeopathy, in identifying and organising the ‘orthodoxy’ of the time. The shared market for medicine and print provided a crucial platform where such binary identities such as ‘homoeopaths’ and ‘allopaths’ were constituted and reinforced. This article focuses on a range of polemical writings by physicians in the Bengali print market since the 1860s. Published mostly in late nineteenth-century popular medical journals, these concerned the nature, definition and scope of ‘scientific’ medicine. The article highlights these published disputes and critical correspondence among physicians as instrumental in simultaneously shaping the categories ‘allopathy’ and ‘homoeopathy’ in Bengali print. It unravels how contemporary understandings of race, culture and nationalism informed these medical discussions. It further explores the status of these medical contestations, often self-consciously termed ‘debates’, as an essential contemporary trope in discussing ‘science’ in the vernacular.