Expectations and Expertise: Early British Responses to Chinese Medicine and Technology

Abstract

In the 1840s with Britain teetering on the brink of empire, G. Tradescant Lay’s pleas for a sensitive and receptive approach to what were rapidly becoming ‘mere’ colonial cultures fell on deaf ears. In his own day, Lay was exceptional particularly for directing attention to the scientific and specifically medical expertise of colonial peoples. In fact, his words recalled a tradition of discovery-scholarship which was already in decline when Britain sent its first official embassy to China in 1792. This mission, led by Lord Macartney, was primarily aimed at enhancing Britain’s status and trading position in the Far East. Its members, while eager to see as much of China and the Chinese as possible, did not expect to learn much from Chinese culture — only to learn more about it.² Their expectations reflected a more general shift in European self-positioning with respect to other cultures. European travellers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had observed with interest the inventions and expertise of the exotic peoples whom they encountered. Upon returning to Europe, they met with intellectually receptive audiences, to whom they were able to present non-western cultural productions and regimes as worthy of imitation. However, by the mid-eighteenth century, the tone and content of such accounts were rapidly changing, as were the demands of both audiences and governments; reports began to emphasize local products and raw materials, rather than indigenous knowledge and expertise.

Every nation and tribe has what we may call its national therapeutics and nosology. It has some conceptions of disease peculiar to itself, some modes of treatment not observed elsewhere. In principle and extent, they may be very humble, in detail united with error and mistake, but I think we should have to search a long time before we found one that would not afford one fact for our information, or one hint to awaken our curiosity.¹

G. T. Lay, 1841