On April 30th 2020, Professor Ding Jianmin, a researcher from the American research team of the base, was invited to participate in an online lecture on Disease and History held by Capital Normal University. The topic of the lecture was Multiple Historical Aspects: A Preliminary Study of the Trends in Early American Medical History Research.
Professor Yao Baihui, deputy dean of the School of History of Capital Normal University, presided over the lecture, and nearly 300 people attended the online lecture.
Professor Ding Jianmin pointed out in the lecture that medical history is a new “old topic”.
After the middle of the 20th century, with the rise and development of new historiography, medical treatment and history are truly integrated, and medical history has become a new perspective, new method, new field, and even a new discipline in historical research.
In the early medical history research of the United States, various research paradigms such as professional narrative, socio-cultural turn, gender and race, constructed multiple aspects of American medical history before the Civil War from different perspectives and dimensions.
Of course, although the various paradigms appear in order, they are not a substitute relationship, and it does not mean that the former paradigm is abandoned and the latter paradigm comes later.
In fact, professional narratives continue to exist even after the research results of sociocultural turn, gender and race have become popular.
Moreover, various research paradigms are also infiltrating and merging with each other, jointly showing the various aspects of the early medical history of the United States and revealing the complexity of the medical history of this period.