De París a Pekín, de Pekín a Parísla misión jesuita francesa como interlocutor médico en la china de la era Kangxi (r. 1662-1722)

Resumen

This work investigates the exchange of medical ideas and practices between China and the West during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century within the context of the French Jesuit Mission sent to the court of the Emperor Kangxi (r. 1661-17 22). The main actors in this historical process were members of the Jesuit mission sent to the Middle Kingdom by Louis XIV, the Sun King, on the one hand, and the court-centered Chinese power circle with the Kangxi emperor, the Sun of Heaven, as the main actor at its top on the other. Part I provides an introduction to the role of medicine in Church legislation, thus elucidating the legal and ecclesiastical background on which the China-bound Jesuits operated. This is then followed by Part II in which I analyze the importance of medicine in imperial communication, control and power relations and the active role of the Emperor in conferring medical advise and graciously bestowing rare, efficacious and even supernatural drugs and recipes to a selected circle of trusted relatives, ministers, officials and officers. Part III discusses the importance of Jesuit medical practice at the court and the role of non-Chinese medicines imported or ordered by them from places as far away as America. In Part IV I will investigate which and how much information about Chinese medical practice and knowledge trickled down to Europe through reports in Jesuit publications or in scientific journals and proceedings. By means of a thorough quantitative and qualitative analysis of the surviving documentation in both China and Europe, not only the crucial role of the Kangxi emperor as benevolent patriarch, medical expert and both patron and monopolizer of Western knowledge is unveiled, but also the relevance of medicine for the Jesuit mission hoping to gain close personal access to the emperor and thus to realize its aim of proselytizing China. Another important result of my research is that it provides additional surprising insights in the inge nious role of the Jesuits as interlocutors ¿ not only in the field of mathematics, astronomy and other arts as has been made clear by recent research, but also in the area of medicine. Moreover, these historical episodes investigated here are related to the emerging world system insofar as an intensification of exchange of medical knowledge and practice as well as drugs and recipes was one part of it. At the same time, this thesis makes clear that a number of political, economic, social, cultura...