Imperial Chinese history, History of medicine and public health in China
ACADEMIC POSITIONS

04.2025 – 03.2028: Principal Investigator, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität (FAU), Erlangen Germany, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation): “Wissende Hände: Chinesische Hand-Gedächtnis-Techniken & Handy-Wissen in Situation, Vergleich und Kontak” (“Knowing Hands: Chinese Hand-memory techniques and Handy Knowledge in situ, comparison, and contact”). Based at CAS-E (Center for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences), Alternative Rationalities and Esoteric Practices from a Global Perspective, at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität (FAU), Erlangen, Germany

10.2024 – Present: Retired Faculty member of the Academy at Johns Hopkins

01.2024 – 06.2024: Visiting Professor, Hunan University, Yuelu Academy

06-09/2023 & 10.2021 – 10.2022: Visiting Scholar, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin

2011 – 2021: Associate Professor, Department of the History of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University, School of Medicine (Retired as of July 1, 2021) (Joint appointment in Department of the History of Science and Technology)

2004 – 2011: Assistant Professor, Department of the History of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University, School of Medicine (Joint appointment in Department of the History of Science and Technology)

1997–2004: Assistant Professor, Department of History, University of California at San Diego

1997: Instructor, Religious Studies Department, Macalester College, spring semester

1995–1996: Lecturer, Complete and Practical Scholar Program, University of Minnesota

EDUCATION

12.1997: Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania, History and Sociology of Science, Dissertation: “Inventing a Tradition in Chinese Medicine: From Universal Canon to Local Medical Knowledge in South China, the Seventeenth to the Nineteenth Century.”

Marta Hanson was Assistant Professor of late imperial Chinese history at the University of California, San Diego (1997-2004), Associate Professor of East Asian medical history in the History of Medicine Department, Johns Hopkins University (2004-2021), and is now a retired faculty member of The Academy at Johns Hopkins (2025-present). She was senior co-editor of the journal Asian Medicine: Tradition and Modernity (2011-2016), President of the International Society for the History of East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine (ISHEASTM, 2015-2019), and is currently Vice President of the International Society for the Critical Study of Divination (2023-present). She is on the editorial boards of East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine, East Asian Science, Technology, and Society, Asian Medicine, Chinese Medicine and Culture, Asian Journal of Medical Humanities, and International Journal of Divination and Prognostication.

She publishes broadly about the history of medicine in China, early modern Sino-European medical exchanges, and public health in East Asia. Her book is Speaking of Epidemics in Chinese Medicine: Disease and the Geographic Imagination in Late Imperial China (Routledge, 2011). Within cross-cultural medical history, she has an on-going scholarly collaboration with Gianna Pomata (early modern European historian) on 17th- to 18th-century translations of Chinese medical texts into European languages. This has resulted in several publications related to Specimen Medicinæ Sinicæ (1682), the first translation into Latin of Chinese medical texts. She is a member of the working group on Common Knowledge in Chinese Daily-use Encyclopedias in Department III at the Max Planck Institute for the History of  Science. As part of the DFG-funded “Knowing Hands” project, she is completing a book titled Grasping Heaven and Earth: The Mind in Hand in Chinese Medicine about how Chinese healers and diviners used their hands to think with, divine, and heal.

BOOKS
  1. Speaking of Epidemics in Chinese Medicine: Disease and the Geographic Imagination in Late Imperial China. Needham Research Institute Series on East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine. London: Routledge Press, 2011.
SELECTED ARTICLES

Published:

  1. “A Tribute for Nathan Sivin (11 May 1931-24 June 2022): Science and Civilisation in China Contributor, Non-conformist Scholar, Self-Proclaimed Generalist, and Proud Dilettante.” Co-authored with Asaf Goldschmidt and Michael Nylan. East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine 56 (2024): 1-43.
  2. “Embodying Divination.” International Journal of Divination and Prognostication 5.1 (2024): 24-44.
  3. L’esprit en main dans le Canon classifié (Leijing 類經, 1624) [The Mind in Hand in the Classified Canon, 1624]. Revue Historique 707 (July 2023): 463-510. https://doi.org/10.3917/rhis.233.0463
  4. Grasping Heaven and Earth (Qian Kun Zai Wo乾坤在握): The Body-as-Technology in Classical Chinese Medicine.” Chinese Medicine and Culture. 6.3 (2023): 233-246. Translated into Chinese by Lin Mengyue 林梦月and published in Research on the History of Chinese Medicine from a Global Perspective: Theory, Methodology, and Historical  Materials. Chung Wha Book Company.
  5. Blaming, Naming, and Treating the ‘Deadly Cold’ in 1918 China.” Co-authored with Michael Shi-yung Liu. Global China Pulse. 2.1 (September 2023): 45-55.
  6. Chinese Sources for AfterWards: From Premodern Poetry, Paintings, and Medical Texts, to Modern Novels, Documentaries, and Film.” Special Issue on Chinese sources for Narrative Medicine, Chinese Medicine and Culture 6.2 (June 2023): 127-138. DOI: 10.1097/MC9.0000000000000061
  7. News of the Profession: Eloge Nathan Sivin (1931-2022).” Co-authored with Michael Nylan and Hilary A. Smith Isis 114.1 (March 2023): 182-186.
  8. Epistemic Genre as a Conceptual Tool in the History of Chinese Medicine.” Chinese Medicine and Culture 5.1 (March 2022): 1-8.
  9. Pandemic Patterns: How depictions of past epidemics in art and literature illuminate COVID-19 today.” Co-authored with Lauren Small. Journal of General Internal Medicine 37 (2022): 878-884. Published online Jan. 3, 2022.
  10. What a Map and a Portrait Have in Common.” East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal 15.3 (Sept 2021): 1-5.
  11. From Under the Elbow to Pointing to the Palm: Chinese Metaphors for Learning Medicine by the Book (4th-14th Centuries),” 75-92. Special Issue “Learning by the Book: Manuals and Handbooks in the History of Knowledge.” British Journal for the History of Science: Theme. Edited by Angela Creager, Elaine Leong, Mathias Grote. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2020. The second link above is to the featured article on this special issue on the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science website.
  12. From the Sick Man of Asia to Sick Uncle Sam,” Perspective, Current History: A Journal of Contemporary World Affairs 119.817 (Sept 2020): 441-44.
  13. Visualizing the Geography of the Diseases of China: Western Disease Maps from Analytical Tools to Tools of Empire, Sovereignty, and Public Health Propaganda, 1878–1929.” Science in Context 30.3 (2017): 219–280.
  14. Medicinal formulas and experiential knowledge in the 17th-century epistemic exchange between China and Europe.” Co-authored with Gianna Pomata. Isis: A Journal of the History of Science Society 108.1 (March 2017): 1-25. Won the Derek Price and Rod Webster Prize for best article in past three years in Isis: Journal of the History of Science Society.
  15. “Kuhn’s Structure in East Asia.” Historical Studies of the Natural Sciences 42.5 (2012): 514-20.
  16. “Kuhn’s Structure in East Asia, Expanded.” East Asian Science Technology and Society: An International Journal 6.4 (2012): 561-567.
  17. “The art of medicine: Maoist public-health campaigns, Chinese medicine, and SARS.” The Lancet, vol. 372 (Oct. 25, 2008): 1457-8.
  18. “Hand Mnemonics in Classical Chinese Medicine: Texts, Earliest Images, and Arts of Memory. ”Festschrift issue in honor of Nathan Sivin, Asia Major series 3, 21.1 (2008): 325-57.
  19. “Jesuits and Medicine in the Kangxi Court (1662-1722).” Publication of Keynote Address given March 8, 2007, for “Medicine and Culture: Chinese-Western Medical Exchange” Symposium at the Ricci Institute for Chinese Western Cultural History, USF Center for the Pacific Rim, Pacific Rim Report 43 (July 2007): 1-10.
  20. “Northern Purgatives, Southern Restoratives: Ming Medical Regionalism.” English version. Asian Medicine: Tradition and Modernity 2.2 (2006): 115-170.
  21. “Enhancing the Practitioner’s Sense of Time, Place, and Practice: The History of Chinese Medicine for Practitioners Workshop ICTAM VI, April 30, 2006.” Co-authored with Andy Pham. Asian Medicine: Tradition and Modernity 2.2 (2006): 318-353.
  22. “The Significance of Manchu Medical Sources in the Qing.”  Proceedings of the First North American Conference on Manchu Studies (Portland, OR, May 9-10, 2003): 131-175.  Tunguso Sibirica 15, Vol. 1: Studies in Manchu Literature and History.  Ed. by Wadley Stephen and Carsten Naeher in collaboration with Keith Dede.  Weisbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2006.
  23. “Manchu Medical Manuscripts and Blockprints: An Essay and Bibliographic Survey.” Saksaha: A Review of Manchu Studies 8 (2003): 1–32.
  24. “The Golden Mirror in the Imperial Court of the Qianlong Emperor, 1739–1742.”  Special issue ed. by Catherine Jami on Science and State Patronage in Early Modern East Asia, Early Science and Medicine 8.2 (2003): 111–147.
  25. “Robust Northerners and Delicate Southerners: The Nineteenth-Century Invention of a Southern Wenbing Tradition.” In special issue “Empires and Hygiene” of Positions: East Asia   Cultures Critique vol. 6, no. 3 (winter 1998): 515–549.
  26. “Merchants of Medicine: Huizhou Mercantile Consciousness, Morality, and Medical Patronage   in Seventeenth-Century China.” In Keizo Hashimoto, Catherine Jami, and Lowell Skar, eds., East Asian Science: Tradition and Beyond, 207–214.  Papers from the Seventh International Conference on the History of Science in East Asia, Kyoto, August 1993. Osaka, Japan: Kansai University Press, 1995.

 

Imperial Chinese history, History of medicine and public health in China
ACADEMIC POSITIONS

04.2025 – 03.2028: Principal Investigator, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität (FAU), Erlangen Germany, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation): “Wissende Hände: Chinesische Hand-Gedächtnis-Techniken & Handy-Wissen in Situation, Vergleich und Kontak” (“Knowing Hands: Chinese Hand-memory techniques and Handy Knowledge in situ, comparison, and contact”). Based at CAS-E (Center for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences), Alternative Rationalities and Esoteric Practices from a Global Perspective, at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität (FAU), Erlangen, Germany

10.2024 – Present: Retired Faculty member of the Academy at Johns Hopkins

01.2024 – 06.2024: Visiting Professor, Hunan University, Yuelu Academy

06-09/2023 & 10.2021 – 10.2022: Visiting Scholar, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin

2011 – 2021: Associate Professor, Department of the History of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University, School of Medicine (Retired as of July 1, 2021) (Joint appointment in Department of the History of Science and Technology)

2004 – 2011: Assistant Professor, Department of the History of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University, School of Medicine (Joint appointment in Department of the History of Science and Technology)

1997–2004: Assistant Professor, Department of History, University of California at San Diego

1997: Instructor, Religious Studies Department, Macalester College, spring semester

1995–1996: Lecturer, Complete and Practical Scholar Program, University of Minnesota

EDUCATION

12.1997: Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania, History and Sociology of Science, Dissertation: “Inventing a Tradition in Chinese Medicine: From Universal Canon to Local Medical Knowledge in South China, the Seventeenth to the Nineteenth Century.”

Marta Hanson was Assistant Professor of late imperial Chinese history at the University of California, San Diego (1997-2004), Associate Professor of East Asian medical history in the History of Medicine Department, Johns Hopkins University (2004-2021), and is now a retired faculty member of The Academy at Johns Hopkins (2025-present). She was senior co-editor of the journal Asian Medicine: Tradition and Modernity (2011-2016), President of the International Society for the History of East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine (ISHEASTM, 2015-2019), and is currently Vice President of the International Society for the Critical Study of Divination (2023-present). She is on the editorial boards of East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine, East Asian Science, Technology, and Society, Asian Medicine, Chinese Medicine and Culture, Asian Journal of Medical Humanities, and International Journal of Divination and Prognostication.

She publishes broadly about the history of medicine in China, early modern Sino-European medical exchanges, and public health in East Asia. Her book is Speaking of Epidemics in Chinese Medicine: Disease and the Geographic Imagination in Late Imperial China (Routledge, 2011). Within cross-cultural medical history, she has an on-going scholarly collaboration with Gianna Pomata (early modern European historian) on 17th- to 18th-century translations of Chinese medical texts into European languages. This has resulted in several publications related to Specimen Medicinæ Sinicæ (1682), the first translation into Latin of Chinese medical texts. She is a member of the working group on Common Knowledge in Chinese Daily-use Encyclopedias in Department III at the Max Planck Institute for the History of  Science. As part of the DFG-funded “Knowing Hands” project, she is completing a book titled Grasping Heaven and Earth: The Mind in Hand in Chinese Medicine about how Chinese healers and diviners used their hands to think with, divine, and heal.

BOOKS
  1. Speaking of Epidemics in Chinese Medicine: Disease and the Geographic Imagination in Late Imperial China. Needham Research Institute Series on East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine. London: Routledge Press, 2011.
SELECTED ARTICLES

Published:

  1. “A Tribute for Nathan Sivin (11 May 1931-24 June 2022): Science and Civilisation in China Contributor, Non-conformist Scholar, Self-Proclaimed Generalist, and Proud Dilettante.” Co-authored with Asaf Goldschmidt and Michael Nylan. East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine 56 (2024): 1-43.
  2. “Embodying Divination.” International Journal of Divination and Prognostication 5.1 (2024): 24-44.
  3. L’esprit en main dans le Canon classifié (Leijing 類經, 1624) [The Mind in Hand in the Classified Canon, 1624]. Revue Historique 707 (July 2023): 463-510. https://doi.org/10.3917/rhis.233.0463
  4. Grasping Heaven and Earth (Qian Kun Zai Wo乾坤在握): The Body-as-Technology in Classical Chinese Medicine.” Chinese Medicine and Culture. 6.3 (2023): 233-246. Translated into Chinese by Lin Mengyue 林梦月and published in Research on the History of Chinese Medicine from a Global Perspective: Theory, Methodology, and Historical  Materials. Chung Wha Book Company.
  5. Blaming, Naming, and Treating the ‘Deadly Cold’ in 1918 China.” Co-authored with Michael Shi-yung Liu. Global China Pulse. 2.1 (September 2023): 45-55.
  6. Chinese Sources for AfterWards: From Premodern Poetry, Paintings, and Medical Texts, to Modern Novels, Documentaries, and Film.” Special Issue on Chinese sources for Narrative Medicine, Chinese Medicine and Culture 6.2 (June 2023): 127-138. DOI: 10.1097/MC9.0000000000000061
  7. News of the Profession: Eloge Nathan Sivin (1931-2022).” Co-authored with Michael Nylan and Hilary A. Smith Isis 114.1 (March 2023): 182-186.
  8. Epistemic Genre as a Conceptual Tool in the History of Chinese Medicine.” Chinese Medicine and Culture 5.1 (March 2022): 1-8.
  9. Pandemic Patterns: How depictions of past epidemics in art and literature illuminate COVID-19 today.” Co-authored with Lauren Small. Journal of General Internal Medicine 37 (2022): 878-884. Published online Jan. 3, 2022.
  10. What a Map and a Portrait Have in Common.” East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal 15.3 (Sept 2021): 1-5.
  11. From Under the Elbow to Pointing to the Palm: Chinese Metaphors for Learning Medicine by the Book (4th-14th Centuries),” 75-92. Special Issue “Learning by the Book: Manuals and Handbooks in the History of Knowledge.” British Journal for the History of Science: Theme. Edited by Angela Creager, Elaine Leong, Mathias Grote. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2020. The second link above is to the featured article on this special issue on the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science website.
  12. From the Sick Man of Asia to Sick Uncle Sam,” Perspective, Current History: A Journal of Contemporary World Affairs 119.817 (Sept 2020): 441-44.
  13. Visualizing the Geography of the Diseases of China: Western Disease Maps from Analytical Tools to Tools of Empire, Sovereignty, and Public Health Propaganda, 1878–1929.” Science in Context 30.3 (2017): 219–280.
  14. Medicinal formulas and experiential knowledge in the 17th-century epistemic exchange between China and Europe.” Co-authored with Gianna Pomata. Isis: A Journal of the History of Science Society 108.1 (March 2017): 1-25. Won the Derek Price and Rod Webster Prize for best article in past three years in Isis: Journal of the History of Science Society.
  15. “Kuhn’s Structure in East Asia.” Historical Studies of the Natural Sciences 42.5 (2012): 514-20.
  16. “Kuhn’s Structure in East Asia, Expanded.” East Asian Science Technology and Society: An International Journal 6.4 (2012): 561-567.
  17. “The art of medicine: Maoist public-health campaigns, Chinese medicine, and SARS.” The Lancet, vol. 372 (Oct. 25, 2008): 1457-8.
  18. “Hand Mnemonics in Classical Chinese Medicine: Texts, Earliest Images, and Arts of Memory. ”Festschrift issue in honor of Nathan Sivin, Asia Major series 3, 21.1 (2008): 325-57.
  19. “Jesuits and Medicine in the Kangxi Court (1662-1722).” Publication of Keynote Address given March 8, 2007, for “Medicine and Culture: Chinese-Western Medical Exchange” Symposium at the Ricci Institute for Chinese Western Cultural History, USF Center for the Pacific Rim, Pacific Rim Report 43 (July 2007): 1-10.
  20. “Northern Purgatives, Southern Restoratives: Ming Medical Regionalism.” English version. Asian Medicine: Tradition and Modernity 2.2 (2006): 115-170.
  21. “Enhancing the Practitioner’s Sense of Time, Place, and Practice: The History of Chinese Medicine for Practitioners Workshop ICTAM VI, April 30, 2006.” Co-authored with Andy Pham. Asian Medicine: Tradition and Modernity 2.2 (2006): 318-353.
  22. “The Significance of Manchu Medical Sources in the Qing.”  Proceedings of the First North American Conference on Manchu Studies (Portland, OR, May 9-10, 2003): 131-175.  Tunguso Sibirica 15, Vol. 1: Studies in Manchu Literature and History.  Ed. by Wadley Stephen and Carsten Naeher in collaboration with Keith Dede.  Weisbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2006.
  23. “Manchu Medical Manuscripts and Blockprints: An Essay and Bibliographic Survey.” Saksaha: A Review of Manchu Studies 8 (2003): 1–32.
  24. “The Golden Mirror in the Imperial Court of the Qianlong Emperor, 1739–1742.”  Special issue ed. by Catherine Jami on Science and State Patronage in Early Modern East Asia, Early Science and Medicine 8.2 (2003): 111–147.
  25. “Robust Northerners and Delicate Southerners: The Nineteenth-Century Invention of a Southern Wenbing Tradition.” In special issue “Empires and Hygiene” of Positions: East Asia   Cultures Critique vol. 6, no. 3 (winter 1998): 515–549.
  26. “Merchants of Medicine: Huizhou Mercantile Consciousness, Morality, and Medical Patronage   in Seventeenth-Century China.” In Keizo Hashimoto, Catherine Jami, and Lowell Skar, eds., East Asian Science: Tradition and Beyond, 207–214.  Papers from the Seventh International Conference on the History of Science in East Asia, Kyoto, August 1993. Osaka, Japan: Kansai University Press, 1995.