Commodifying and Consuming Endocrine Drugs in Republican China (1920s–1940s)
Name
wang-thelmaw-sm-sts-2025-thesis.pdf
Description
Thesis PDF
Size
1.72 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
2dd3207f8f77b4a8b9fb4da17527fafd
Author(s)
Wang, Thelma Yuanzhi
Advisor(s)
Helmreich, Stefan
Date Issued
February 2025
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
Since the introduction of hormone pharmaceuticals into China during the early twentieth century, these substances became objects of fascination for a growing urban elite class. Drawing from newspapers, medical journals, and advertisements, this article examines the unique trajectories of hormone medicine in China. In conversation with previous scholarship on the dynamics of advertising and consuming hormones in China, this article examines specifically the discourses around the production and science of hormones. The circulation of hormones was informed by ideas of traditional Chinese medical cosmologies and enrolled in a nationalist movement encouraging the consumption of hormones produced by emerging Chinese medical entrepreneurs. This article provides a case study in a postcolonial context that problematizes historiographies depicting a linear transition of global hormone science from backwards to scientific, from traditional to modern.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Program in Science, Technology and Society
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