In May 2011, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention of a Chinese county found a rapid increase in the number of hepatitis A case notification; these were traced to an outbreak in an elementary school. Twenty-eight cases aged between 7 and 13 years with onset between 7 May and 8 June were serologically confirmed. Network method was conducted to reconstruct an outbreak network and to quantify the relative importance of those involved in the outbreak. A case-control study was used to study the association between the outbreak and putative risk factors. The network analysis suggested this was a disseminated outbreak originating from a 4-year-old boy with propagated spread. Evidence from the case-control study supported consumption of well water as a potential risk factor; however, this was unable to be established through field investigation. Outbreak networks can be used to identify the possible source of infectious disease outbreak, especially when the environmental investigation information is negative or not available.

Based on the advertisements in the Dagong bao 大公報, this article first attempts to understand the concept of weisheng 衛生 as promoted by advertisers, arguing that during the first decade of the twentieth century, when social reformers had already used this old Chinese term to translate the Western concept of hygiene and associated it with public health programs and a stronger state, the general public as consumers in Tianjin continued to understand the concept according to its traditional meaning of “guarding life.” However, new ideas, such as disease-causing germs, cleanliness, and odor, were grafted on to this old weisheng concept as a result of strong Western influence. Still, Chinese “weisheng” differed from Western “hygiene” even in the context of private health, as foreign ideas were often transformed drastically to fit into the Chinese medical tradition. The second part of this article further explores the consumption activities involving products that were associated with the weisheng concept and discusses three questions: What did weisheng products include? Who were the consumers of weisheng products? And what kind of role did gender play in weisheng consumption?