Special Associate Research Fellow, School of History and Cultural Heritage, Xiamen University.
Uisahak. 2024 Aug;33(2):431-475. doi: 10.13081/kjmh.2024.33.431.
Unlike Western medical journals such as The Lancet which focused on Western-centric medical cases, Medical Reports analyzed medical and sanitary issues in East Asia, including China, Korea, and Japan and sought solutions to these problems. Medical Reports, a medical project initiated by the Chinese Maritime Customs Service (CMCS) in 1871, aimed to compile reference materials on the health conditions and diseases in ports. It was launched by the British Inspector General Robert Hart, who appointed the British Shanghai Customs Surgeon R. Alexander Jameson as the editor. Beginning in the 1860s, the British-led CMCS began expanding its reach from major cities to border areas, western regions, Taiwan Island, and Hainan Island, as well as territories beyond Qing Dynasty, such as Seoul, Busan, Incheon, Hong Kong, and Macau. This expansion required multinational cooperation, leading to the participation of Customs Surgeons, medical missionaries, and military doctors from ten countries, including the UK, the United States, France, China, Germany, Canada, Portugal, Norway, the Netherlands, and Australia, in the Medical Reports project. The Medical Reports were directly tied to the medical and sanitary initiatives in that community. They were authored by Customs Surgeons from a country with substantial regional influence. An analysis of the authors' nationalities, primary research focuses, and the relationship between the customs regions they covered revealed a statistically significant correlation. Even after Robert Koch discovered bacteria in the late nineteenth century, the miasma theory remained dominant, and most British doctors in India did not acknowledge the possibility that diseases could be caused by parasites. Despite this conservative historical context, the Medical Reports featured progressive research, including studies on leprosy based on germ theory and studies that actively embraced the emerging theory that parasites could be the cause of certain illnesses. In this process, the relatively unknown young physician named Patrick Manson, while working at the CMCS for 13 years, significantly advanced his medical knowledge by publishing numerous studies on filaria in the Medical Reports. His work led to the groundbreaking discovery that mosquitoes transmit infectious diseases. These research achievements pioneered the field of tropical medicine, a discipline that had not been established even in the extensive colonial holdings of France and Britain in tropical regions. Manson's work for the Medical Reports significantly advanced human efforts to prevent and respond to infectious diseases.
与专注于以西方为中心的医学案例的西方医学期刊（如《柳叶刀》）不同，《医报》分析了东亚（包括中国、韩国和日本）的医疗和卫生问题，并寻求解决这些问题的方法。《医报》是 1871 年由中国海关总署（CMCS）发起的一个医学项目，旨在编纂有关港口卫生状况和疾病的参考资料。该项目由英国海关总监罗伯特·哈特（Robert Hart）发起，他任命英国上海海关外科医生 R.亚历山大·詹姆森（R. Alexander Jameson）担任编辑。自 19 世纪 60 年代以来，英国领导的 CMCS 开始将其业务范围从主要城市扩展到边境地区、西部地区、台湾岛和海南岛，以及清朝以外的地区，如首尔、釜山、仁川、香港和澳门。这种扩张需要跨国合作，导致来自英国、美国、法国、中国、德国、加拿大、葡萄牙、挪威、荷兰和澳大利亚等十个国家的海关外科医生、医疗传教士和军医参与了《医报》项目。《医报》与该地区的医疗和卫生倡议直接相关。它们的作者是具有相当区域影响力的国家的海关外科医生。对作者国籍、主要研究重点以及他们所涵盖的海关区域之间的关系进行分析，揭示了一种具有统计学意义的相关性。即使在罗伯特·科赫（Robert Koch）在 19 世纪后期发现细菌之后，瘴气理论仍然占据主导地位，印度的大多数英国医生也不承认疾病可能是由寄生虫引起的可能性。尽管存在这种保守的历史背景，但《医报》仍以进步的研究为特色，包括基于细菌理论的麻风病研究，以及积极接受寄生虫可能是某些疾病病因的新兴理论的研究。在这个过程中，相对不知名的年轻医生帕特里克·曼森（Patrick Manson）在 CMCS 工作了 13 年，通过在《医报》上发表大量关于丝虫的研究，大大提高了他的医学知识。他的工作导致了蚊子传播传染病的突破性发现。这些研究成果开创了热带医学领域的先河，即使在法国和英国在热带地区广泛的殖民地中，这一学科也尚未建立。曼森在《医报》上的工作极大地推动了人类预防和应对传染病的努力。
