Ruling and Healing: Managing Health and Empire in Qing China 1644-1912

This paper investigates the Qing state’s efforts in providing medicine and medical practitioners to elite and commoners, revealing the intricate procedures, vast scale, and political motivations driving these initiatives. Based on a database of 1,356 Manchu and 2,133 Han-language memorials, I argue that Qing emperors, in contrast to existing medical history literature, relied on healing as a political tool. It performs three functions in governance: supporting the military, providing gifts of care to build alliances and to gather intelligence information, and epidemic and crisis response. The state deployed medical practitioners and medicines to all inner provinces, Tibet, Xinjiang, Manchuria, and Kazakhstan to attract allegiance, legitimize governance, monitor officials, and reinforce ruler-subject ties.