"Uses the lens of cultural history to examine the development of medicine in Qing dynasty China. Focusing on the specialty of 'medicine for women' (fuke), Yi-Li Wu explores the material and ideological issues associated with childbearing in the late imperial period. She draws on a rich array of medical writings that circulated in seventeenth- to nineteenth-century China to analyze the points of convergence and contention that shaped people's views of women's reproductive diseases."--Publisher description.