title: [Gender, medicine and consumer culture: the cultural history of comb in the Ming and Qing Dynasties].
abstract: In the Ming and Qing Dynasties, in addition to combing the hair, the comb also gradually played a role in people's daily life for disease treatment and keeping people's health. In short, during this period, the characteristic of comb reveal, as a whole, its reinforcing practicability and weakening of its ornamentality. During its application, people's behavioral activities endowed the comb with definite cultural connotation, which, thanks to the presence of gender and personality, became the symbol for expressing love between man and woman. By analogizing people's thought, since the comb could dredge something. Therefore, it can be used to cure diseases. Thus, it could be seen that, based on consumer's cultural description, the comb, tiny as it may be, did reflect the aesthetic ideas and interests and daily life-preservation habit of the literati due to the flourishing of book market in the Ming and Qing Dynasties.
authors.affiliation: College of History, Nankai University, Tianjin, 300071, China.
authors.forename: Siyan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Chen
mesh_terms: D002681:China; D003469:Culture; D005260:Female; D006197:Hair; D049668:History, 15th Century; D049691:History, Medieval; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008516:Medicine, Chinese Traditional