"Finch and Plum Blossoms" by Emperor Huizong (1082-1135, r.1101-1125 C.E.), the last emperor of the Northern Song dynasty. He was a great patron of medicine as well as a patron of the arts and an accomplished painter.

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This website is dedicated to making available resources on teaching, research, academic exchange, publications, and funding related broadly to the development of the field of the history of science, technology, and medicine in East Asia. Within this broader field, this website also specifically seeks to deepen understanding of medicine, health, and disease in Chinese history and to engage critically with the widespread practice of Chinese medicine throughout the world today.

Marta Hanson joined the faculty of the Department of the History of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University in the summer of 2004 to fill a new position in the history of Chinese medicine. She completed her dissertation 1997 in the History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania. The title of her dissertation is "Inventing a Tradition in Chinese Medicine: From Universal Canon to Local Medical Knowledge in South China, The Seventeeth to the Nineteenth Century." (It is available through UMI Dissertation Services 1-800-521-0600 or through their website.)

She also co-edited with Judith Farquhar a special issue titled "Empires of Hygiene" of Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique 6.3 (winter 1998). This issue published one of her articles titled "Robust Northerners and Delicate Southerners: The Nineteenth-Century Invention of a Southern Medical Tradition," 515-550. [See Publications.]