Accommodating the Chinese - The American Hospital in China, 1880-1920 (Hardcover)

This in depth comparative study is one of the first books to fully explore the emergence of modern Western-style hospitals in China. The author disscusses how the hospital established in China -- its planning and architecture, financing, and all aspects of day-to-day operation -- differed from its counterpart in the West. These differences were never due to a single or dominant cause. They were a result of a complex process involving accommodation, appreciation, negotiation, opportunism and pragmatism. Doctors were trying to balance the pressures of the political, cultural, economic and physical realities in China whilst maintaining their own professional standards. story. It enriches the history of the Western hospital by describing its manifestation beyond the West. Also, being a place where ordinary Americans met ordinary Chinese in the most intimate of circumstances, the hospital provides a unique window into the economic, political, cultural and social conditions of life in China at the time.