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Experimenting Socialist Medicine: The Practice and Teaching of a Localized Acupuncture in Algeria
Abstract
In April 1963, a Chinese medical team arrived in a rural province in northwestern Algeria, which was in dire need of medical professionals after the “exodus” of French and other European medical staff. Thereafter, a steady trickle of Chinese doctors and nurses followed suit, providing health care for rural and suburban communities with a Chinese “socialist medicine.” This socialist medicine bolstered rejuvenated Chinese medical therapies—the “new acupuncture” and herbal formula medicines—and embodied the Maoist revolutionary ethics of health care. This paper examines how the Chinese medical aid workers attempted to transplant an alternative mode of healing and healthcare ethics to Algeria by focusing on the practice and training of acupuncture in local hospitals in the 1960s-1970s. In their practice, the Chinese biomedical doctors and acupuncturists crossed the boundaries between biomedicine and Chinese medicine, and between different medical specialties, to provide cost-effective cures for their Algerian patients. They further promoted acupuncture as a cheap, effective, and safe method of healing by running training courses for local paramedics. By using archival documents, testimonies, and published memoirs, this paper explores how certain aspects of Chinese medical knowledge were “scientized” and transferred and how the method of practicing acupuncture was transformed and localized in response to the needs and preferences of patients and students. This paper shows that the boundary-crossing moment in Algeria was important in shaping the meaning of “socialist medicine” and giving a medical legitimacy to Chinese acupuncture and medical knowledge.
Discipline
History
Geographic Area
Algeria
China
Sub Area
19th-21st Centuries