E.V. Bretschneider as a doctor and his personal archives: Chinese period

S.A. Silakova

Kazan Federal University, Kazan, 420008 Russia

E-mail: silakova.sa@mail.ru

Received September 20, 2018

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Abstract

The works of E.V. Bretschneider (1833–1901), a German physician in the Russian service and a doctor at the Russian embassy in Beijing, have been studied. Many of his works dating back to the “Beijing period” of life (1866–1884) were not published, settled in a personal archive, and then, according to the personal testament, were transferred to the Archives of Orientalists at the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences. E.V. Bretschneider was more famous abroad than in Russia. His works, except the handwritten albums on the daily life of Chinese people, have not been thoroughly studied earlier. However, they shed light on such little-studied aspects as the state of Chinese medicine in the second half of the 19th century and its development, Chinese terminology and the most common medicines, comparative analysis of the achievements of Chinese and European medical science of the period under consideration and the possibility of adopting treatment methods, some aspects of the history and geography of China and adjacent countries in the Middle Ages and modern times, the history of European botanical discoveries in China, as well as the life, traditions, and daily life of Chinese people during the late Qing Dynasty.

Keywords: China, Russia, Chinese traditional medicine, botany, Russian embassy, doctors

References

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2. Skachkov P.E. Ocherki istorii russkogo kitaevedeniya [Essays on the History of Russian Sinology]. Moscow, Nauka, 1977. 503 p. (In Russian)
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4. Popova I.F. The folk life (minsuhua) in the collection of the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In: Tsinskii Pekin. Kartiny narodnoi zhizni (min’sukhua) [Qing Beijing. Folk Life (Minsuhua)]. St. Petersburg, Slaviya, 2009, pp. 3–18. (In Russian)

For citation: Silakova S.A. E.V. Bretschneider as a doctor and his personal archives: Chinese period. Uchenye Zapiski Kazanskogo Universiteta. Seriya Gumanitarnye Nauki, 2018, vol. 160, no. 6, pp. 1478–1486. (In Russian)

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