[Doctors' social rescueactions taken for plagues in the Ming dynasty].
During the 277-year long history of the Ming dynasty (1368 - 1644), 75 plagues occurred in 54 years. People helping patients at that time included medical officials and folk doctors, even some Confucian scholars, officials and nobles who learned medicine assisted with disease control. Besides official free medical help, many other measures were taken, such as free herbs, free porridge and coffins. There were also other charitable acts, for example, the nobles or officials volunteered to employ doctors to help patients. By contrast, there were also some doctors who were afraid of plagues and would not like to assist patients. Concerning the effect of the rescue activities, recordings such as 'reviving many people' and 'quacks killing patients' could both be found. Limited by the medical level at that time, measures like evacuating and moving people to other places had to be taken when plagues could not be controlled.
College of History, Nankai University. Tianjin, 300071, China.
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Chen