Imperfect Conceptions

Frank Dikotter's work analyzes the relationship between medicine and ideas about reproduction in China, from the late Ming to the present. Drawing on sources ranging from treatises on reproductive disorders to flyers advertising freak shows, he shows how the notion of reproduction as a potentially dangerous phenomenon - one that has to be strictly regulated to safeguard the nation's eugenic future - permeated Chinese society. The process was accelerated by the appropriation of genetics and embryology in the late 19th century and by the publication of works of popular medicine.