Gao Xi
高唏

Gao Xi is professor of History and Medical History at the Department of History, Fudan University, China. Her research interests include medical missionaries, Chinese medical modernization, and the history of medical-cultural exchange between the West and the East. She is the author of A Biography of John Dudgeon A British Missionary and Chinese Medical Modernization in late Qing (德贞传 ——一个英国传教士与晚清医学近代化). After graduating from Fudan University in 1986, Prof. Gao taught medical history at Shanghai Medical University from 1986-2000. She was a Harvard-Yeching Institute Visiting Fellow from 2004-2006, and received her Ph.D. in history from Fudan University in 2008. She is member of the council of the China History of Science Association. 

In recent years, her research has focused on how the establishment of modern medical science influenced the spread of knowledge; how it changed Chinese people’s traditional views on health and disease through medical practice and clinical treatment; and how western doctors, who were confronted with the influence of Chinese traditional medicine as well as beliefs and customs of Chinese people, interpreted and understood Chinese traditional medicine from the perspective of knowledge. She looks at how western doctors sought a path to localize western medicine to adapt to Chinese society, which not only had to do with working out a special Chinese lauguage system tailored for the spread of western medical knowledge, but also involved localizaing western medical practice. Western medicine went throught a process—first being repulsed by, then merged into and adapted to Chinese traditional medicine. Her research project for the year 2013-2014 at HYI is entitled “Knowledge transition in medicine in modern China”.