Founded in 1952, the Shanghai Library obtained various documents over the years through purchases, donations, and other channels. Nowadays, it has a wide collection of more than 1.7 million ancient Chinese books, over 900 000 books for the Republic of China period, nearly 20 000 kinds of Chinese newspapers and periodicals spanning the period from the late Qing Dynasty to the Republic era, including more than 500 000 volumes of old foreign language books and more than 5000 volumes of foreign language newspapers.
Among the library’s collections, Chinese periodicals collected from the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China and the old foreign language historical collections are especially remarkable. As the earliest city designated by treaty as an international port in modern China, Shanghai played an important role in the history of newspaper publishing in modern China. At the same time, the city also accumulated a big quantity of documents that recorded the Sino-Western relations in modern times. These documents, which include a large number of medical and health-related historical documents, were kept and preserved by the librarians and have become indispensable historical references for all kinds of historical research. This article aims to provide an introduction on the Chinese and foreign health-related medical literature available in the library, and also information on reader services in order to assist the use of these documents.
At present, the library’s foreign historical documents service is primarily located in the Bibliotheca Zi-ka-wei. The building was formerly the library of the Society of Jesus residence, and it was then incorporated into Shanghai Library in 1956, thus becoming the department which specialises in collecting, keeping, and archiving foreign historical documents. In 2015, Shanghai Library set up a research centre for studying Chinese–Western cultural exchanges with the aim of organising foreign historical material better and to increase public access.
The collection of foreign language historical documents in Shanghai Library is currently diverse in its sources, including books inherited from several big institutions. The first is the collection from the former Bibliotheca Zi-ka-wei, which is a library of the Society of Jesus. From the original collection of the Society of Jesus, there are now more than 50 000 copies, including 1800 kinds of rare books, totalling more than 2000 volumes, that were published before 1800. Among them is a large collection of missionary books about medicine and health – for instance: Specimen Medicinae Sinicae by Michel Boym, who came to China at the end of Ming Dynasty; The Medical Missionary in China by William Lockhart during the later Qing Dynasty; and Health Hints for Missionaries to China written by Philip Brunelleschi Cousland and others. There are also French–Chinese versions of Bulletin Medical, 1932–49, a journal by the School of Medicine in the former Aurora University, and publications such as The Chinese Recorder and Missionary Journal (1877–1941), Nouvelles de La Mission (1873–89), and Relations de Chine (1909–39), which contain medical and health information.
Another collection includes books from the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, an academic and cultural institution established and presided over by foreigners who lived in Shanghai. Currently, the library holds 30 000 books and journals in foreign languages from this Society. The enormous collection contains a great amount of information related to medicine and health. There are medical journals such as Imperial Maritime Customs Medical Reports and China Medical Missionary Journal (later renamed as Chinese Medical Association Journal (English Edition)). The Imperial Maritime Customs Medical Reports was a semi-annual publication started in 1871 by R.A. Jamieson, the chief medical officer of Shanghai Customs, with investigative reports on diseases and medical papers written by the medical officers working with Customs and other physicians in China. The journal was suspended in 1904, and was later published once in the form of a booklet in 1911 and then finally discontinued. This publication is a valuable resource for studying medical development and epidemiology in modern China, and also marks the beginning of modern Chinese medical journals. At the moment, Shanghai Library houses all copies of this journal from 1881 to 1911. The China Medical Missionary Journal is the earliest publication of modern medical journals in English in China. Whether with regard to the early era of the China Medical Missionary Association or the later period of the Chinese Medical Association, the information contained in this important medical journal was extensive and pertinent. The collection contains all the editions from 1891 to 1941, except for the three years of 1894, 1903, and 1908. There are also editions of the Chinese Medical Association Journal (English Edition) from 1946. Other journals in the collection, such as the Chinese Repository and the Far East Review, also contain a wealth of information on medical and health care.
As for books, the library’s huge collection includes The Diseases of China by James L. Maxwell, A Medical Vocabulary in English and Chinese by Benjamin Hobson, Lexicon of Medical Terms by Philip Brunelleschi Cousland, and so on. It also contains a great number of English translations of Chinese medical literature written or published in Shanghai and books about Western studies of Chinese medicine, such as Chinese Medicinal Plants from the Pen T’ao Kuang Mu and Famine Foods excerpted and translated by Bernard Emms Read, and other books on medical treatment and medical education; for example, Ninety-five Years: A Shanghai Hospital (1844–1938) and Transactions of the Ninth Congress held in Nanking, China, October 2–8, 1934. There are also monographs on medical history, such as the famous History of Chinese Medicine written by Wang Chi Ming and Wu Lien-Teh, which are valuable historical materials for the study of medical and health history.
The third collection consists of foreign newspapers spanning the period 1850 to 1953, in five different languages and more than ninety varieties (more than half of them are published in Shanghai). For example, there are newspapers in English: North-China Herald, North-China Daily News, The China Press, The Shanghai Times; in German: Der Ostasiatische Lloyd; in French: Le Journal de Shanghai and L’Echo de Chine; and in Japanese: Shanghai Daily News, Shanghai Everyday News, etc. In both quality and quantity, the historical information contained in these foreign newspapers is invaluable.
Currently, readers with membership cards for Shanghai Library can get access to the above-mentioned foreign documents at the Bibliotheca Zi-ka-wei from 9am to 5pm on Monday to Saturday. However, some English newspapers have been digitised – for example, the North-China Herald and the North-China Daily News. Therefore, readers can not only read these newspapers in the reading room of the library, but can also access them remotely through the database ‘North-China Daily News & Herald Newspapers and Hong Lists (1850–1951)’.
One of the great features of Shanghai Library is the collection of modern Chinese periodicals. At present, there are nearly 20 000 kinds of periodicals published in the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China, which constitutes the largest holding in this category at a public institution. Among them, more than 600 journals are directly related to medical and health care. According to the main contents of these journals, they can be divided into thirteen groups, namely: medical journals, popular medical readings, preventive medicine, hygiene, health organisations and their undertakings, traditional Chinese medicine, basic medicine, clinical medicine, obstetrics and gynaecology, ophthalmology, stomatology, special medicine, and pharmacy. They range from the earliest medical journals in China, such as the Liji Academy News, to the journals of various medical schools, including Hsiang-Ya Medical College. There are also popular works of medical science, such as Popular Health, Road to Health, and journals from medical organisations, such as Shanghai Siming Hospital News, Shanghai Dental Association Journal, Shanghai Medical Association Monthly, and Chinese Medical History Magazine. These Chinese publications of different categories present historical data at different periods and at different levels, which can provide interesting perspectives on the medical and health conditions at the time. For instance, the chief editors of the journal Pharmaceutical Science were the three brothers Huang Minglong, Huang Mingju, and Huang Minggu, who published many academic papers and also some articles on pharmacy to publicise and advertise different brands of medicine. From these documents, readers can get a glimpse of how companies specialising in Western medicine promoted their own products in China.
At the moment, readers can consult these modern Chinese periodicals in the Modern Literature Reading Room of the Shanghai Library, and more than half of the publications can be searched and directly viewed on the computers in the reading room. In addition, readers can remotely access these materials through the ‘Late Qing and Republic China Periodical Full-text Database’.
