Speaking of Epidemics in Chinese Medicine is the latest book by Marta Hanson, historian of Chinese science and medicine at the Department of the History of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University. This book draws on her PhD dissertation and on the many research projects that have followed it (Hanson 1997, 2001, 2006, 2011). It explores the Chinese medical discourse on epidemics in Chinese history and highlights the changes and bifurcations of this discourse elaborated not only in the face of a changing epidemiological reality but also of shifting political, social, economic, and cultural realities which have always played a significant part in the conceptualization of the body and its ailments. To capture the different tenets of this discourse, Hanson focuses on one disease concept, "warm disease" (wenbing), that Chinese authors linked to epidemics in the most ancient medical texts and examines how the diseases associated with this label have been considered, treated, and described by the Chinese doctors throughout Chinese history. In fact, the term wenbing has remained important throughout the history of Chinese medicine and still continues to be used in People's Republic of China's traditional Chinese medicine, today conveying the biomedical idea of acute infectious diseases.
